1 How to cite this paper? CASERO-RIPOLLÉS, Andreu and FEENSTRA, Ramón A. (2012) “The 15-M Movement and the new media: A case study of how new themes were introduced into Spanish political discourse”, MIA. Media International Australia, 144: 68-76 The 15-M movement and the new media: a case study of how new themes were introduced into Spanish political discourse Andreu Casero-Ripollés and Ramón A. Feenstra Universitat Jaume I de Castelló (Spain) Abstract The 15-M movement, driven by mass mobilisations calling for the regeneration of the political system in May 2011, has had a profound impact on Spanish political discourse. This paper analyses the changes in news production and distribution resulting from the example set by this social movement. The introduction of news using social media outside the boundaries established by the journalistic and political elites represents an innovative strategy to bring the movement’s demands onto the mainstream media agenda and to instigate monitoring processes. Key Words: new media, Spanish Revolution, 15-M movement, social media, news media environment, news cycle, media hybridity, monitoring processes. Introduction On 18 August 2011 a group of ten officers from the National Police Corps strode purposefully along a street in the centre of Madrid, on a tense day marked by the Pope’s visit and the peaceful protests of secular citizens against the drain on the public purse of this event. The protesters’ public denouncements of the treatment they had received from the police in the preceding days had met with scant attention. But a video was soon to turn the events into a news story with remarkable repercussions in the Spanish political discourse, first virtually, and then in the mainstream media. The video of the ten police officers, a 17-year-old woman and a freelance journalist was filmed by a witness who followed the police and captured the events on a mobile telephone.