The proliferation of new media, including practices, applications and tools, currently structures not only how people interact, but also how collective actions infl uence ideas and messages both globally and locally. Technology now has the capability of inciting and shaping social movements, but also, and maybe more importantly, being shaped by them. The diverse sets of practices within new media circles inspire many questions about their signifi cance. We discuss and deconstruct these issues in order to understand their signifi cance. In particular, we investigate the ways in which new media have been both a source and a consequence of reconfi guring gender relations within society as well as in shaping social movements (for a timeline of ‘new media’ see Figure 31.1 ).