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 Content
AcknowledgementsIntroduction
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 hash-tag 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
Notes
Index