Response to Castells

Castells first details the brief social movement of multiple Arab states, from 2010 called the 'Arab Spring'. He focuses on how digitality played a role in the uprisings, specifically mediating alienation from the respective states, consensus among the population in protest, and the defense of the movement by the international public opinion. Castells uses this example to show how media can play a very important communicative role in social movements. However, he also uses this example to point out that there is a very fine line that movements need to be wary of, and that is of counter violence as a response to military violence. Castells argues that once a movement becomes engaged in a counter-militant agenda, then the movement loses its democratic characteristic and any civil/peaceful weight.
He then transfers the themes of this section into a more abstract sense, focusing on the overall power of digital networks in a social movement. He claims that contemporary social networking engenders a "self communication" in the user, and this overall plays into the horizontal structure of networking and social movements. This is what Castells focuses on throughout this section, on how digital social networks factor into social movements. He claims they play a very important role, and argues that they are necessary, however they are not sufficient for creating/determining social movements. His argument is centered around autonomy of the movement, and how successful it is at occupying urban space; which Castells claims is the most important aim of a social movement.
For me, I instantly thought of Papacharissi's 'virtual sphere', and how that translates to this 'space of autonomy'. Papacharissi's 'public sphere' would seem to be exactly what Castells is going for when he talks of urban space. He may not be as articulate as to what specifications this urban space holds, but nonetheless, it is a public area that is required to inspire social/political change.
I did not find many similarities between Castells argument and Stewart, Smith, and Denton's, however they both argue that digitality and its prevailing social networks are crucial to social movements.