Protest in an Information Society: a review of literature on social movements and new ICTs

Abstract New Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) are changing the ways in which activists communicate, collaborate and demonstrate. Scholars from a wide range of disciplines, among them sociology, political science and communication, are working to understand these changes. The diversity of perspectives represented enriches the literature, providing an abundant repertoire of tools for examining these phenomena, but it is also an obstacle to understanding. Few works are commonly cited across the field, and most are known only within the confines of their discipline. The absence of a common set of organizing theoretical principles can make it difficult to find connections between these disparate…