From networks to public places: Web 2.0 and the new cycle of protests in the world

Abstract

For the last two decades, the expansion of Internet access as well as the new developments of the Information Technologies (IT), have transformed the forms of management, transmission and impact of protests and political activism. The appropriation of the technical instruments by extensive publics has contributed to the appearance of horizontal networks in which frameworks of shared meanings, actions and reflections for social protests are webbed. In this article the activist network is characterized as a new type of collective actor who does not fit in the traditional definitions of social movement and who has a marked communicative dimension. Furthermore, we present a genealogy of the appropriation of the IT for social causes, from the beginnings of the Internet until we reach the web 2.0 and the global action cycle which bursts in 2011 with the Arab spring, the Indignants in Spain and Occupy Wall Street in the United States, amongst others.