Within minutes of the grand jury’s decision Wednesday, Twitter and Facebook lit up with thousands of messages around hashtags such as #EricGarner, #ICantBreathe and #BlackLivesMatter. Facebook pages called for protests in cities around the country. Hundreds of people soon crowded in protest at New York’s Grand Central Station and Times Square.
This was not serendipitous. The speed with which these demonstrations came together and grew reflected intense planning by organizers and activists and shows how social media has matured into a crucial tactic for coordinating activity, drawing people to the streets and trading tips.
“This can happen offline, but online we can amplify it more, and it reaches people faster,” says New York-based feminist media activist Jamia Wilson. “This is why these on-the-ground demonstrations can happen so quickly.”
A similar scenario played out last week around the grand jury’s decision not to indict police officer Darren Wilson in the shooting death of teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo. In that case, organizers had prepared ahead of time by using social media to organize demonstrations, setting up a website that mapped out potential places to protest and a Tumblr page to denote protests happening in places around the country.
Organizers Mariame Kaba and Kelly Hayes, both in Chicago, for example, started a Facebook event page planning protests in their city. They tried to estimate when the Ferguson decision would be made, and updated the page accordingly. In part due to their planning, the protest unfolded very quickly.
With the momentum of the success of the Michael Brown protests, activists were again able to set the stage, deciding on hashtags ahead of time and choosing locations to gather at after the New York verdict.
Hayes was following conversations on Twitter Wednesday ahead of the Eric Garner decision, when she saw mention of a peace circle to be held in Rogers Park, Chicago, in memory of Garner. She arrived at 6 p.m., to find 40 others already there.
After meticulous planning, once the demonstrations begin it’s the vivid photos and videos sent by people on the scene that ultimately spur throngs of others to join the protests, social-media experts say.
“You can see that it’s not just five people standing in Times Square — it’s people marching throughout the city,” said Marcus Messner, associate professor of journalism at Virginia Commonwealth University who teaches social-media journalism. “The immediate visuals we’re seeing on Twitter and Instagram help people overcome that barrier to getting out and protesting.”
Antonio French learned about unrest in Ferguson in a tweet from a traditional news outlet that used the term “mob” in it. The St. Louis alderman wanted to see for himself. When he arrived at the site of the protests, he found no media there, and no one capturing what the community was saying and feeling.
“My role in those first few days was kind of like a reporter,” said the former journalist, whose Twitter following has climbed from about 4,000 before the Mike Brown protests to 120,000 today. His role has changed, he said, to peacekeeper, and then mediator between protesters and police. All of that has had a social media aspect to it, he said.
“Had it not been for Twitter, I’m pretty sure that Ferguson would not have become what it has,” he said. “In fact, it’s now hard to talk about Ferguson without hashtag Ferguson.” He said he has watched as even the Ferguson police have joined the Twitter conversation.
This isn’t the first time protests organized on social media have grown to such large proportions of course. In Egypt in 2010 and 2011, for example, people organized around the Facebook group “We Are All Khaled Said,” created in memory of a young man who was killed by the police after he had posted anti-police videos online from an Internet café. His murder sparked protests that ultimately led to the revolution that toppled long-time President Hosni Mubarak.
One of the advantages activists have found to organizing on social media, both in Egypt as well as now in the U.S., is the ease with which they can trade ideas on the best ways to plan events.
Shortly after Brown was killed, for example, New York-based activist ‘Feminista Jones’ called for people to volunteer to host local national moments of silence to mourn Brown on Aug. 14 under the hashtag #nmos14. People who had never launched a protest asked on Twitter: “What materials do we need?” “How do we get the word out?” Some activists recommended using “light boards” that can project messages on buildings to help get the attention of passersby and tell them where the protests are occurring and what the messages are.
“Across different states, you see similar demonstration tactics being used because social media allows us to share,” Chicago-based activist Suey Park says.
Hayes notes that social media has also made it more likely that mainstream media will notice an event, if not as it is unfolding, then later when reporters notice the trail of photos and comments on Twitter and Facebook. “Before we had Twitter and Facebook, the main chance for people to learn about our event was if the media covered it,” she said. “Now with social media, we cover our own story.”
As organizers tell their story, many are keen to elevate the voices of the people most involved in local communities. “Yes, it’s important to retweet reporters, it’s important to retweet the news, but for this, many groups are advising their grassroots members to retweet people on the ground to elevate their stories,” Wilson says.
But even as activists call on one another to retweet certain voices, no single face has emerged for this movement.
“People are looking for an overarching leader, and I don’t think that we’re going to find that,” says Joseph Mayton, a blogger who reported in Cairo throughout the Arab Spring and now lives in California’s Bay Area. “There is no need for one leader—people can come together online and do their own thing, and head into the streets and make change.”
Twitter’s data team put together a map showing the global conversation around the hashtags #BlackLivesMatter, #HandsUpDontShoot and #ICantBreathe. Note how the colors change as the news unfolds:
–Jeff Elder contributed to this article
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