1. Jeremy Brecher, Tim Costello and Brendan Smith Social Movements 2.0

2. Internet and Social Movements This tension around the pros and cons of online organizing has spurred a healthy debate in the social movement community. "How the Internet Makes Union Organizing Harder," Earlier this year Eric Lee, the godfather of the online global labor movement, posted "How the Internet Makes Union Organizing Harder," an article that drew a flurry of responses. 2

3. Social Movements 2.0 As labor activists we have been experimenting with online strategies for more than a decade, spurred by our work in the 1990s building a large but informal network of contingent workers, and now running

4. Social Movements 2.0 What's New and What's Not Social networking is not new and not about technology. What is Technology? Social Networking? It's not about MySpace, Facebook or YouTube; instead it's about what all of us do every day: kindle and expand networks of friends, family, co-workers, etc. In Politics In the politics, it's about finding and building communities of interest, linking common struggles and acting collectively.

5. Social Movements 2.0 The Internet and the Online World: Not Simply More Technology But at the same time, the online universe is not simply another place for people to congregate, circulate a petition, debate politics or mail out a newsletter. Nor is it simply a new technology like cable television--merely bringing more channels into the home. Revolutionary Potential Instead, the web is increasingly looking like the invention of the printing press, which radically changed the lives of even those who could not read, by spurring the Protestant reformation and scientific revolution.

6. Social Movements 2.0 Revolutionary Potential: from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0 During the past several years, the Internet has evolved from its first generation as a static information portal (e.g. websites) to what is now referred to as Web 2.0: user-generated and interactive content. Web 2.0 Could amount to the "largest increase in human expressive capability in history."

7. Social Movements 2.0 Revolutionary Potential: from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0 What makes the web 2.0 potentially revolutionary: 1. Group Formation 2. Scale and amplification 3. Interactivity 4. Destruction of hierarchies 5. Cheapness and ease of tools

8. Social Movements 2.0 Problems and Questions Web 2.0 also raises an number of challenging questions: 1.What does it mean when individuals begin organizing outside and without the help of traditional organizations? 2.It's easy and cheap for organizations to bring people together into a swarm or smart mob, but what do you do with them then? 3.Will offline social movement organizations be willing to cede control as ordinary people increasingly leverage social networking tools to channel their own activities? 4.How does offline and online social movement building fit together?