ABSTRACT
This chapter highlights a few ways in which recent social movements like Occupy Wall Street (OWS) can inform resource mobilization theory by showing how the Internet and social media now serve as key resources for social movement actors. It also raises theoretical questions regarding new organizational styles of social movement activity as allowed for through new media and how they help us to update and inform other traditional theories of social movements. Both OWS and the Indignados movement were enabled by new technologies and displayed a distinct organizational structure that set them apart from previous forms of collective behavior that embrace contentious politics. To put OWS in perspective, the chapter examines one of its key precursors, the Indignados movement, which coalesced in response to the global economic crisis that began in Europe and the austerity measures imposed by governments to address the financial fallout.
