ABSTRACT
Most of the news outlets, print media as well as broadcast media channels that have been discussed in previous Strands and units have a significant online presence, maintaining huge website operations that accommodate access to discourse that is largely unchecked by time or location. This chapter examines the potential of social media discourse communities who engage in ‘computer-mediated communication’ to play an active role in shaping social and political events. It offers a range of perspectives and representative examples that may point to an emerging ability of citizens to transcend traditional and long-established boundaries between those who produce institutional discourses and those for whom the common-sense realities they construct are naturalized and legitimized. Linguists have investigated social media language through a focus not just on traditional textual analysis but by analysing across the entire ‘multimodal ensemble’ of social media platforms. The Ladders Revolution demonstrates that a somewhat complex power relationship can exist between social media and traditional or mainstream media.
