ABSTRACT
During the 2009 and 2010 protests against G20 summits in London, Pittsburgh and Toronto, the protest coordinators urged activists to report on the demonstrations using major social media platforms, including Twitter, YouTube, Facebook and Flickr (Bennett and Segerberg, 2011; Poell and Borra, 2012). In January and February 2011, the opposition against the dictatorial regimes in Tunisia and Egypt especially used Facebook and text messaging to share reports on the events in the streets, while Twitter played a vital role in the transnational communication on these revolutions (Lim, 2012; Lotan et al., 2011). Inspired by the Arab Spring, large protests subsequently erupted in Spain, the US, Italy and many other countries during the summer and fall of 2011. Again, major social platforms were used for mobilisation and communication purposes (Castells, 2012; Gerbaudo, 2012).
