Introduction

‘Have you seen what is going on in Madrid?’ The phone call came in mid May 2011 from a Spanish friend living in the UK at a time when names such as Indignados or 15M, still had to become established as the identifiers of the emerging ‘movement of the squares’. She had spent entire days watching the live video feed transmitted by Sol.tv. Making up for the initial silence of Spanish mainstream news media on the protests, this self-managed live-streaming service had for days broadcasted the events unfolding in Puerta del Sol in central Madrid, what would soon become one of the main icons of the so-called movements of the squares of 2011, the wave of grassroots mobilisation spanning from the Arab Spring revolution to Occupy Wall Street in the US, that used square occupations as its key protest tactic. The live feed that attracted 10 million visits during the first seven days of occupation (Monterde and Postill, 2013), was often flickering and pixelated. Yet, it still managed to convey the enthusiasm experienced by the people occupying the square. ‘You have to watch it. It's incredible!’ – my friend told me emphatically.

Many supporters of the 2011 wave of protest, like my Spanish friend, have found in live feeds ‘radiating’ from protest camps, either in the form of video feeds, transmitted via various live streaming services such as Livestream, Bambuser and so on, or in the form of text-based feeds transmitted via Twitter, a powerful way to connect from a distance with protest movements. Live feeds have provided movement sympathisers and supporters with the opportunity to follow the life of the protest camp, without relying solely the mediation of the often scorned ‘mainstream media’, in a way that is unprecedented in both intensity and extent when compared with previous protest movements starting from the anti-globalisation movement. Yet, so far, little discussion has been dedicated specifically to video live streaming (Thorburn, 2014), as well as to live tweeting, and the motivations that underlie them. Why have live feeds become such an important component to the protest camps of 2011? What does this host of practices tell us about their meaning?

Exploring these questions, this chapter proposes a cultural analysis of live feeds and their role within the protest communications of the movements of the squares of 2011.