ABSTRACT
At the national, regional/EU, and global levels, the political economic and social crises are intensifying. There has been a marked decline in both trust and participation in the formal electoral politics in much of the Western world, which often serves to intensify the crises. Yet we witness at the same time a resurgence of participation in the realm of alternative politics. Much of this can be seen as responses to the specific devastations that derive from the crises and ensuing austerity measures, but it also represents a general world-wide confrontation—on many fronts—with neoliberal policies and their vision for societal development. The broad array of alter-globalization movements in particular gives witness to this. In other parts of the world, people have been challenging authoritarian regimes with varying degrees of success. In all of these contexts, media are a central feature; traditional mass media still play an important role, but increasingly citizens are making use of the web generally, and social media in particular, for their political purposes.
