Social networking sites take lead role in demonstrations

Social networking sites have for the first time played an important role in a protest movement in Hong Kong. They were used to motivate protesters against the railway project to swarm the chief executive's residence on Friday night.

Up to 1,000 protesters caught police off guard when they rushed from the Legislative Council building to Government House on Upper Albert Road, where they staged a sit-in and demanded to see Donald Tsang Yam-kuen. The people involved were informed of the stealth move by the social networking site Twitter.

Internet Society chairman Charles Mok said the high-speed rail protests were the first to actively use Twitter in Hong Kong, a tactic which has been deployed in other civil disobedience movements around the world.

In 2007 in Xiamen , in coastal Fujian province , protesters against a planned petrochemical plant were mobilised with cellphone text messages, catching police by surprise. The plant was forced to relocate after more than 10,000 marched.

In Hong Kong, users checking the hashtag '#stopxrl' - short for stop express rail link - could be continuously updated on the situation of the protesters as the debate for funding approval continued inside Legco.

Thousands of 'tweets', as the updates are known, were posted over the last two days by the protesters themselves. They called people to join the protest and express their concerns over the project to lawmakers and activists inside Legco during the debate.