ABSTRACT
Social media are a type of digital media that form part of a wider communication technology and services framework. A major concern about the ways that personal channels of communication such as social media are being used and adapted to raise, share and debate civic issues, is how much publicly accountable debate these media allow. The combination of social change and communication change in the development of new relational networks generates a reconsideration of representation systems and their links with social belonging, political activism and civic engagement. The rise of social media within the digital media framework is a key feature of these trends, because it allows people to express and share their concerns via a range of communication networks. The characteristics of social and digital media interact with the circulation of content in a global information culture and with an array of social networks — whether personal, civic, popular or political.
