New Media and Contentious Politics in the Middle East The role of internet-based new media in sparking contentious politics has received considerable attention in recent years. From Facebook and blogs in Egypt to the Twitter Revolution in Iran, new media technology has been seen as pivotal in creating new forms of contentious politics. But analysis of the role of new media has been plagued by severe data limitations, inattention to basic questions of research methodology, and a failure to precisely specify causal mechanisms. This paper lays out a comprehensive set of plausible causal pathways by which new media might impact contentious politics, and then considers the evidence for such effects across a range of Arab countries and Iran.