ABSTRACT
The growing relevance of mobile phones in political protests and contentious politics has attracted considerable attention around the world as an increasing number of people are appropriating their mobile phones for the real-world mobilisation of collective action and the subsequent initiation, organisation, and implementation of social movements (e.g. Rheingold 2002; Rafael 2003; Suárez 2006; Castells et al. 2007; Hermanns 2008). In the spring of 2011, for instance, the world watched as online and mobile-phone–facilitated, twitter-based revolutionary fervour swept the Middle East (Hounshell 2011). As one of the latest eye-catching, mobile-phone–facilitated rebellions, the “Arab Spring” not only mobilised widespread offline protests, but also prompted further study of the role of the mobile phone in protests in the wake of the increasing use of mobile devices in political activism, social movements and contentious politics (e.g. Allagui and Kuebler 2011; Howard and Hussain 2011).
