ABSTRACT
Since the first World Social Forum (WSF) in January 2001, social forums have developed as spaces for sustained and intensified communication across thematic and ideological divisions within the global justice movements (GJMs) (della Porta 2005b; Rucht forthcoming). After the first WSF meeting and its follow-ups received wide media coverage and proved attractive and successful in the eyes of the participants, the social forum process was soon extended to the continental, national, and local levels. In contrast with the elitist World Economic Forum (WEF) that usually gathers in the Swiss mountain resort Davos, the social forums are conceived as an inclusive attempt to establish a transnational public sphere from below (Ylä-Anttila 2005; Doerr 2007; see also Chapter 1 in this volume). Accordingly, the organizers face the task of communicating the forum in an open, transparent, and inclusive way. By ‘communicating the forum’, we mean a manifold and only partially planned process that includes (a) informing and attracting potential participants, and (b) explaining the goal of the forum to the local citizenry and the wider public. Communicating the forum also has an internal dimension, namely coordinating the various groups that are involved in its organization. In the following, however, we will largely neglect this latter aspect and concentrate, instead, on the two dimensions of external communication in the context of the European Social Forum (ESF). First, forum organizers aim at attracting as many participants as possible. The more widespread and detailed the communication concerning the nature, location, and content of the event, the more likely it is to mobilize movement constituencies. Involving participants from all over Europe implies a significant effort in communication that, to be successful, requires the lowering of barriers to participation related to language, resources such as money needed to travel, and time to attend the forum. Second, and probably more important, the ESF is conceived as a mass event that sends a message not only to the wider public in the respective host city or country, but possibly to European citizens at large. For this purpose, the organizers must think about how to reach their external target groups and audiences.
