The 15M movement, Olmo Calvo/WikimediaWhat are the possibilities and limitations of digital media for contesting austerity? What are the options for citizens’ appropriation of digital media to favour an emancipatory use of technologies? Which other instruments could work in synergy with online practices? These questions can be addressed by looking at the experiences of the 15-M, or indignados movement, and the Spanish political party Podemos.
The 15-M movement: the birth of a culture of resistance
The 15-M launched a cultural intervention in which collective action succeeded in introducing a powerful discourse into the public sphere that provided an alternative interpretation of ‘the crisis’. The messages produced and shared online and in the plazas, erupted onto national television sets, breaking the spiral of silence in the mainstream media in relation to citizens’ dissatisfaction with the abuses of the two-party system and major financial institutions that were calling for austerity-induced reforms.
One of 15-M’s key propositions was that we should turn to techno-politics. This was based on the idea that a key element of change is the knowledge generated and shared by a connected multitude in the cyber-territory (organisation) for the strategic creation of innovative and participatory uses of online platforms (communication), aimed at generating changes in the social and political systems (social action).
