Civic Engagement and Social Media: Political Participation Beyond Protest

The recent wave of protests, from the Arab Spring to the Occupy movement and austerity protests, have reinvigorated hopes for the democratic potential of the Internet, and particularly social media. With their popular appeal and multimodal affordances social media such as YouTube, Twitter and Facebook have generated both media and scholarly interest in their possibilities for granting visibility to and facilitating the organization of activism. However, the role of social media in sustaining civic engagement beyond protest and fatalism remains under-explored. How can social media contribute to sustaining longer-term involvement of civil society? What is the potential of social media for making available alternative social imaginaries? And what role may social media play in facilitating social change through cooperation with business? This volume offers answers to these questions by providing empirical examples of civic engagement and social media in different societal contexts that explicitly address conceptions of civic engagement.