Augmented Revolution: The Role of Social Media in the Arab Spring and the Hong Kong Umbrella Movement

This thesis explores the role of social media in social movements. It focuses on how social media changes the environment of communication in social movements; how activists operate in social movements through social media; and how social movements travel from one region to the next through social media. The thesis views social media as an extension of activists' fields of operation, enabling them to fight for change in the actual and virtual worlds simultaneously. Supported by the perspectives of public sphere, networked publics, affective publics and augmented reality, the thesis argues for "augmented revolutions" where online and offline actions interact. The thesis proceeds through a comparative analysis of two social movements where social media played an important role: The Arab Spring in 2011 and the Hong Kong Umbrella Movement in 2014. These case studies show that social media changes the activists' ways to participate, to express and deliver messages, and to mobilise crowds. It enables connective actions and the reconstruction of communal spaces. Based on these findings, this thesis asserts that social media may trigger social movements in other regions.