ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that social movement literature has to offer some analytical tools to foster our understanding of social networking sites with regard to pro-democracy and anti-austerity protests. In order not just to discuss their role in recent uprisings, but also to address more complex patterns of entrenchment between social movements and social media platforms. When conceptualising social movements as processes, two dimensions have crucial role in understanding of such empirical phenomena: the temporal and the relational dimensions. Although various forms of protest had already developed in Latin America as well as Africa, the uprising in Iceland was the first moment of rebellion in Europe against way in which national governments managed the harsh consequences of the financial and economic crisis. In 1999, moreover, they gave life to the famous alternative informational website Indymedia, which was first set up on the occasion of protests in Seattle against the World Trade Organizations (WTO) summit and quickly replicated all over the world.
