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The western economic and financial crisis began with the collapse
of Lehman Brothers in 2008 and led the European Union countries
into recession. After this, governments started to implement
austerity measures, such as cuts in public spending, including
public subsidies and jobs, and rising prices. In this context,
Europe started to experience a wave of protest movements.
Individuals started to use the manifold interactive digital media
environment to both fight against the austerity measures and find
alternative ways of claiming their democratic rights. Inspired by
the 2011 Arab Spring and the Occupy Wall Street movement in New
York (USA), the Occupy LSX encampment in Central London (UK), The
Outraged (Los Indignados)/ 15M encampment in Central Madrid
(Spain), the Syntagma Square's Outraged movement in Athens (Greece)
and the March 12th Movement in Lisbon (Portugal), although
short-lived, epitomize an emerging alternative politics and
participation via the media. This wave has promoted a debate on how
the realm of politics is changing, as citizens broaden their ideas
of what political issues and participation mean. Beyond the
Internet examines the technological dimension of the recent wave of
protest movements in the United Kingdom, Spain, Portugal, Greece,
and Ireland. Offering an opportunity to achieve a better
understanding of the dynamics between society, politics and
technology, this volume questions the essentialist attributes of
the Internet that fuel the techno-centric discourse. The
contributors illustrate how all these protest movements were active
in the social media and garnered high levels of media attention and
public visibility, in spite of their failure to achieve their
political goals. As intra-elite dissent was pivotal in
understanding the Arab uprisings, the coalition of national ruling
elites with European institutions in terms of austerity strategy is
essential in understanding the limits of media/technology power
and, therefore, the dissociation between communication and
representative power.
The western economic and financial crisis began with the collapse
of Lehman Brothers in 2008 and led the European Union countries
into recession. After this, governments started to implement
austerity measures, such as cuts in public spending, including
public subsidies and jobs, and rising prices. In this context,
Europe started to experience a wave of protest movements.
Individuals started to use the manifold interactive digital media
environment to both fight against the austerity measures and find
alternative ways of claiming their democratic rights. Inspired by
the 2011 Arab Spring and the Occupy Wall Street movement in New
York (USA), the Occupy LSX encampment in Central London (UK), The
Outraged (Los Indignados)/ 15M encampment in Central Madrid
(Spain), the Syntagma Square's Outraged movement in Athens (Greece)
and the March 12th Movement in Lisbon (Portugal), although
short-lived, epitomize an emerging alternative politics and
participation via the media. This wave has promoted a debate on how
the realm of politics is changing, as citizens broaden their ideas
of what political issues and participation mean. Beyond the
Internet examines the technological dimension of the recent wave of
protest movements in the United Kingdom, Spain, Portugal, Greece,
and Ireland. Offering an opportunity to achieve a better
understanding of the dynamics between society, politics and
technology, this volume questions the essentialist attributes of
the Internet that fuel the techno-centric discourse. The
contributors illustrate how all these protest movements were active
in the social media and garnered high levels of media attention and
public visibility, in spite of their failure to achieve their
political goals. As intra-elite dissent was pivotal in
understanding the Arab uprisings, the coalition of national ruling
elites with European institutions in terms of austerity strategy is
essential in understanding the limits of media/technology power
and, therefore, the dissociation between communication and
representative power.
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