ABSTRACT
This chapter attempts to explore and evaluate the micro-political or molecular modes of contemporary media-sustained new social movements. New media and the social movements have virtually become co-substantial and in the process of empowering and promoting the new social movements, media have redefined their own role and mission. The constituent power of media and the emerging subject of the social activists or the hactivists like Assange or the journalists of are redefining the world. The new social movements are characterized by right-based, issue-based and identity-based collectivities, and such configurations are deepened and consolidated by the new media. The chapter addresses the alignment of civil society protests with real political agency or re-radicalized anarchic agenda. It argues that Partha Chatterjee's concept of the division between civil society and political society is highly relevant here and in the context too media can and do play a crucial role.
