Peer2Politics

The existing literature on the recent global wave of social protest ranges from theories that regard new media as ‘game-changers’, to those that stress the centrality of global communication networks or of online/offline articulations in the occupied squares, to those that seek explanations not in new media but in the protracted crisis of financial capitalism. This article proposes an alternative theory of the new protest movements centred on the growing convergence of the global movement for digital freedom with local forms of social unrest.

“We live within networks because we’ve evolved within networks. Regardless of whether you’re connected to the Internet or not, the culture you live in is connected to the Internet, as a fish is connected to water.” Is trying to achieve change over the Internet any use? What's the chasm that separates it from the RealWorld™