The Role of ICTs in Anti-Austerity Protest Media Ecologies: A Comparative Analysis of Communication Flows in Southern Europe.

The paper presents some preliminary results of an empirical study that investigates the media ecologies that developed in anti-austerity protests in several countries in Europe, with a special focus on Southern European countries where the economic crisis was particularly harsh—Italy, Greece, and Spain. The paper aims at positioning ICTs – and their multiple usages during mobilizations – in broader media ecologies focusing on the communication flows and affordances that surrounded and sustained such protests. With this aim in mind, the analysis triangulates social movement documents, media accounts and reports (including mainstream media, alternative media and social media) and in-depth interviews with activists who participated in the mobilizations against austerity in the three countries. The paper contributes to the growing literature considering mobilizations against austerity, adopting a comparative methodology. Some authors have already adopted a comparative perspective to investigate the transnational dimension and diffusion mechanisms in such protests (della Porta and Mattoni 2014). However, the role of ICTs in recent European anti-austerity mobilizations still needs to be studied using a systematic comparative methodology, focusing not only on social media platforms (Castells 2012, Gerbaudo 2012), but also on the encompassing flows of communication that originated from anti-austerity protests and constituted complex media ecologies in which ICTs played a key role.