ABSTRACT
To date, project activities have focused on conducting ethnographic and survey research among members of the global resistance coalition, with funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF), The University of California Pacific Rim Research Program, and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. Preliminary research included assessment of existing access to and use of advanced ITs by individual coalition members, the global resistance coalition, and the worldwide network of industry supporters (the backlash movement). Project activities have also included a series of meetings and workshops for project collaborators. Preliminary results suggest the crucial role played by advanced information technologies such as e-mail, the Internet, and the World Wide Web (WWW) in the formation and maintenance of resistance and industry networks, in facilitating vital communication among members of each network, and in each network’s strategy for achieving short-and long-term objectives. Preliminary work also reveals the virtually universal desire by the grassroots/non-governmental coalition members to increase access to, training in, and use of spatial ITs (maps, remotely sensed data, and GIS) and other ITs (e.g. e-mail, the Internet, the WWW) to achieve individual organizational and shared coalition objectives (Stonich 1998).
