Cyber activism played a vital role in creating spaces of contention under repressive Arab regimes when traditional media was acting as regime mouthpieces protecting the status quo. After the Arab uprisings, the banalisation of the use of social media by various actors, including repressive regimes, and the subtle interplay between social and traditional media in reporting the aftermath of political change, are changing the nature of the use of cyber space and its political significance. They are both expanding and limiting its potential for empowering political dissent. In this paper, I will examine the subtle interplay between social media and traditional national media, exploring the significance of these interactions in empowering political dissent as well as its impact on traditional journalists’ practices and on their political engagement. The paper will take as a case study the use of online news and Facebook during the 20 February pro-democracy movement in Morocco and in its aftermath, analysing its impact both on countering national media discourse and on creating alternative political engagement for journalists. I argue that experiences of collaboration between professional journalists and activists were successful in countering hegemonic media discourse and in challenging mainstream politics but they were not able to create sustainable forms of political engagement and new media practices. The extensive use of Facebook by professional journalists is allowing them to challenge entrenched taboos but without seriously impacting their professional practices. The paper is empirically grounded in the findings of a field research conducted in Morocco in 2015 with a sample of professional journalists and media stakeholders, as part of a research project looking at the interplay between national media and democratization in the aftermath of the Arab uprisings based at the Middle East Centre of the London School of Economics.