ABSTRACT

In Portugal, the outbreak of the financial and economic crisis in 2008 brought about deep changes in politics and society. This chapter analyses the political context of the crisis in Portugal and the adoption and consequences of austerity measures and delineates the emergence and evolution of the Portuguese anti-austerity cycle of protest, mainly focusing on the 'new new' social movements. It describes the mass media sources on which the study is based and analyses the interaction between mass media protest coverage and the social movements' digital communication. The chapter specifies the importance of the recent wave of contention in Portugal in terms of relations between mass media and movements. It analyses whether these preliminary findings on the Portuguese case could be generalised to other social movements strongly based on new information and communications technology (ICT).