Tweets and the Streets

* Book: Paolo Gerbaudo. TWEETS AND THE STREETS: SOCIAL MEDIA AND CONTEMPORARY ACTIVISM.

URL = http://www.plutobooks.com/display.asp?K=9780745332482

Description

"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, as a means to 'choreograph' the physical assembling of participants 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." (http://www.kcl.ac.uk/artshums/depts/cmci/eventrecords/tweetstreets.aspx)

Contents

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 on the streets, we are not on Facebook’: 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

Excerpt

Book sample via http://www.tweetsandthestreets.org/2012/10/04/tweets-and-the-streets-free-sample/

PDF of Introduction via http://www.tweetsandthestreets.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Tweets__the_Streets_Introduction.pdf