Tweets and the Streets : Social Media and Contemporary Activism

Paolo Gerbaudo

• Publisher: Pluto Press
• Year: 2012
• Topic: Social Sciences
• eBook ISBN:
  9781849648004
• Subtopic: Media Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

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.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 ‘Friendly’ Reunions: Social Media and the Choreography of Assembly
• 2 ‘We are not guys of comment and like’: The Revolutionary Coalescence of Shabab-al-Facebook
• 3 ‘We are not on Facebook, we are on the streets!’: The Harvesting of Indignation
• 4 ‘The hashtag which did (not) start a revolution’: The Laborious Adding Up to the 99%
• 5 ‘Follow me, but don’t ask me to lead you!’: Liquid Organising and Choreographic Leadership
• Conclusion
• Appendix
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index