Communication is, of course, something we engage in all the time, both within and outwith organisational settings. For Beer, the kind of communication at work in self-organisation and viable systems ranges from informal conversation during tea breaks to that of formal communication systems and dedicated infrastructures. From a cybernetic perspective, communication is something functional to effective organisation. For anarchist cybernetics the same is true. While communication plays many roles in our day-to-day lives, when thinking about self-organisation, it is the functional value of specific forms of communication that are of interest. In Occupy Wall Street, the communication that allowed it to function in participatory and democratic ways included the highly structured processes of the general assembly and spokes-council, as well as the conversations that camp members were having with one another throughout the days and weeks that the camp was in place. In this chapter, I want to build on the previous discussion to explore how functional communication with respect to self-organisation might be supported by technology. Given the articulation of communication as conversation in Pask's cybernetics, it is social media, that is, communication technologies that privilege interaction over direct broadcasting, that I will discuss here. Rather than examining the potential of existing platforms, such as Facebook, for self-organisation, I want to consider how bespoke, alternative social media might support and reinforce collective selforganising processes. The aim here is to provide an outline of the organisational (rather than technical) functions that such a social media platform might need to include if it is to aid effective self-organisation, doing so by drawing on the discussions of control and communication throughout this book so far.

Alternative media

A useful place to begin thinking about the kind of alternative social media platforms that lend themselves to anarchist and radical organisation is the literature on alternative media in general. At least since the Levellers, the egalitarian populist movement of mid-17thcentury England, who pioneered the use of pamphlets as a means of communication, radical political groups have always valued the production of media.