New Movements, the Digital Revolution and Social Movement Theory: Five Propositions Concerning New Forms of Internet Mobilisation

2011 was not only a year ridden in newly emerging social movements and revolution, it was also a year where the role of the Internet in mobilising these new movements has been universally highlighted by scholars, activists and the international press alike. From Egypt to Spain, Tunisia to the USA, authors have spent countless words on the role of the web, and in particular, social networking sites (especially blogs, Twitter and Facebook) in fostering the birth of new movements. This paper seeks to update the existing literature on social movements regarding the role of Internet mobilization through theoretically driven analysis of the recent developments in social movements in the Western world, particularly with regards to the 2011 wave of protests. In the first part, this paper analyses the recent literature on the role of the Internet in social and political movements and outlines its main developments as well as its empirical and methodological limitations. The second part is devoted to presenting the new developments in Internet driven mobilization emerging from the literature on the Grillini in Italy, the M15M in Portugal, the Indignados in Spain and Greece and Occupy Wall Street in the United States. The final part of the paper outlines five theoretical propositions emerging from the recent waves of Internet driven movement emergence, regarding both the importance and the dynamics of this process.