Political Protest 2.0: Social Media and the 2012 Student Strike in the Province of Quebec, Canada

Abstract

Recent years have been marked by the emergence of a new breed of social media-fuelled grassroots protest phenomena that have challenged the dominance of political elites in several advanced liberal democracies. Whether it is the Occupy Wall Street movement in the United States, the #idlenomore movement in Canada or the student-led demonstrations in Chile, they have quickly mobilized narrow segments of the public and have ultimately succeeded in forcing formal political actors to acknowledge their presence. In some cases, they have compelled them into taking their demands into account in their decision-making.