ABSTRACT
Social networking sites are increasingly lauded as vehicles for political activism and political expression, challenging traditional forms of political participation. This chapter focuses on the #FeesMustFall student protests at the University of Cape Town (UCT) in South Africa in 2015 and 2916, exploring the role played by Twitter, with specific reference to student leadership. Through a mixed methods approach, the chapter analyses the viral hashtag #UCTShutdown, highlighting the importance of Twitter in facilitating the protest action. The social network analysis shows that Twitter facilitated a flat leadership structure, representing a crowd enabled network and enabling widespread organisation across multiple communities.
