More than cyberspaces for contention: Understanding the contemporary dialectics between online activism and offline protests

In recent years, many protest movements around the globe have involved substantial interplays between emerging digital media activism and more conventional street protests. This chapter provides a thematic analysis explicating how recent protest movements have been framed in relation to new media uses, and the ways in which the Internet is said to facilitate political activism and progressive social change. Drawing on an emerging scholarship which goes beyond the unidirectional impact of ICTs on collective action, it examines how digital media activism and street protests have been employed by political actors to constitute and reinforce each other in recent protest movements. As a whole, this chapter seeks to challenge the overemphasized centrality of the Internet and its disembodied customs in the literature, while offering a more nuanced understanding of the latest modes of mobilization and activism adapted to social and digital media uses.