Founded on November 24th, 1999, IndyMedia (also known as the Independent Media Center) launched for the first time. This website would allow independent media organizations and journalists to cover different news stories from around the world. IndyMedia eventually expanded to 150 different outlets worldwide in multiple languages as well.
IndyMedia originated in 1999 during the anti-WTO protests in Seattle, Washington. During that time, corporations led the media coverage of the protests and monitored what was shown to the public so images of violence were exposed. However, this did not display the actual issues of the protest. This would confuse bystanders watching the protest on the news, and therefore they needed a source to discover what the protests were about. As a result, IndyMedia was created as a different voice for the people.
From a journalism aspect, the development of IndyMedia started citizen journalism where the public could comment and share news stories easily. Through commenting, people could see the opinions of other people and then form their own independent opinion. Due to this new addition to news sites, more people began to sign up for blogs and share their point of view to the world.
Commenting and sharing news articles with peers and the public has developed into something bigger in these past few years. Especially on Facebook, we are now able to share our own opinions on people’s status, which are initially their original thoughts. Also, when someone shares a link or a photo, we are able to comment on that as well, thus contributing our personal ideas and views.
IndyMedia also influenced many movements for activism. Since people were now able to provide their opinions, many people also agreed with that and wanted change in the world for the topics at hand. Most articles posted on IndyMedia are about protests or stories that are not generally known about, or given priority to on other news sites. Due to this, the articles are posted only every few months. For example, the last article that was published was on October 10th, 2011 and the previous one was posted on April 2nd, 2011. This is only for global issues though – the outlets for IndyMedia, such as the San Francisco outlet, has posts or updates at least twice every week.
It is interesting to see how social media has changed the way people interact with each other on a political scale. Commenting and sharing has evolved into blogging and contributing your own point of view to the public, which ultimately creates new ideas and changes for everyone to contemplate. It’ll be intriguing to see how the site will continue to thrive in the next few years.