New Media, the "Arab Spring," and the Metamorphosis of the Public Sphere: Beyond Western Assumptions on Collective Agency and Democratic Politics

Salvatore focuses on the media of political communication. He argues that the real novelty that emerged from these protests is a new political language. The use of new media for social communication, especially electronic forms such as blogs and Facebook, have produced a new, more plastic form of collective agency that in turn affects the concept of citizenship. This new political language, common to the Arab Spring and the opposition in Iran, is ultimately a way of acting in the interstices between reality and fiction and walking the thin line between an intense privateness and a radical publicness. Adapted from the source document.