The protest will be organized, digitized and downloadable

The protest will be organized, digitized and downloadable

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Australian Occupy protesters don't stray far from their computers. (Flickr/Kate Ausburn)

More and more, social media and technology, and protest organizing go hand-in-hand. The digital world has allowed those involved to become more closely, and regularly connected. Organizing and protests have evolved along with your internet, handheld device and social networking worlds.

Listen to this conversation on Afternoon Shift

The NATO and G8 summits are heading to Chicago this spring, and today we’re looking at how people are using technology and social media to network and organize for the summits. We also look at the sociology behind crowd behavior, and the role technology plays in that.

Today on Afternoon Shift, we spoke with Bill Wasik, Senior Editor at Wired US, and the author of the book And Then There’s This: How Stories Live And Die In Viral Culture. His article “Crowd control: How today’s protests, revolts and riots are self-organising” appears in the January issue of Wired Magazine.

We were also joined by Andy Thayer, a longtime organizer and activist, and a representative of the Coalition Against NATO/G-8 War & Poverty Agenda.