Macao before and beyond Social Media: The Creation of the Unexpected as a Mobilisation Logic

In May 2012 a skyscraper was occupied in Milan by a group of artists and art workers which gathered around Macao, claiming a new role for art and culture in society. The paper investigates the role of digital communication practices in Macao's contentious action. Starting from an overview of the ongoing debate about the relationship between digital media and political protest, the contribution shows the eccentricity of Macao with respect to three already established analytical models: the logic of connective action (Bennett and Segerberg 2013), the concept of communicative cultures (Kavada 2012), and the logic of aggregation (Juris 2012). On the basis of the empirical analysis of media practices (Couldry 2012) together with the critical discourse analysis (Fairclough 1992) of the symbolic production of Macao, the article will propose the notion of «eventful logic» as a new pragmatic concept through which the strategies and the logics of collective action through social media can be satisfactorily explained.