ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates the technopolitical appropriation and mediation of the digital technologies by recent global social movements with political purposes and in the context of the economic crisis and the introduction of European austerity policies. More specifically, the discussion is informed by two country case studies, namely Spain – with special attention to the Movimiento 15 de Mayo, Podemos’s Demolocal 4.0 and the initiatives of OpenKratio; and in Portugal – with special attention to Geração à Rasca and to the Movimento 12 de Março. Critical discourse analysis and a digital ethnography draw on interview, participant observation and discussion group data collected since 2015. The chapter concludes that political participation as technologically expressed in the Southern European recent global social movements under analysis opened up technopolitical participation that mobilizes activism in an extended digital arena, where e-motions maximize the traditional repertoires of action and engage substantive participatory processes. Consequently, the paradigms proposed by such Southern European movements articulate alternatives to the established European institutions.
