OAPEN (The OAPEN Foundation)· 2012
Tweets and the Streets: Social Media and Contemporary Activism
- 1,480citations
- 2012year
Short summary
Social media, particularly Twitter and Facebook, are integral to contemporary protest movements, not as detached cyberspace, but as tools for re-appropriating public space and assembling diverse groups around physical locations.
AI-generated from the title and abstract; the full text is not read.
Key points
- Social media is a key tool for contemporary protest movements.
- Activists use platforms like Twitter and Facebook to re-appropriate public space.
- Social media facilitates the assembly of diverse groups around physical 'occupied' locations.
- New media presents both creative possibilities and risks of political evanescence for protests.
AI-generated from the title and abstract; the full text is not read.
Abstract
Tweets and the Streets analyses the culture of the new protest movements of the 21st century. From the Arab Spring to the 'indignados' protests in Spain and the Occupy movement, Paolo Gerbaudo examines the relationship between the rise of social media and the emergence of new forms of protest. Gerbaudo argues that activists' use of Twitter and Facebook does not fit with the image of a 'cyberspace' detached from physical reality. Instead, social media is used as part of a project of re-appropriation of public space, which involves the assembling of different groups around 'occupied' places such as Cairo’s Tahrir Square or New York’s Zuccotti Park. An exciting and invigorating journey through the new politics of dissent, Tweets and the Streets points both to the creative possibilities and to the risks of political evanescence which new media brings to the contemporary protest experience.
The authors' abstract, as published at the source. OAPEN (The OAPEN Foundation), 2012 · DOI ↗
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Field: Communication
CommunicationSocial Sciences