The blurred lines between vlogger / live-tweeter and protest participant are responsible for a lot of this. Police have arrested journalists and camera crews b

The blurred lines between vlogger / live-tweeter and protest participant are responsible for a lot of this. Police have arrested journalists and camera crews before... but they generally avoid this because of the terrible optics, and there's a pretty firm line between "observing the protest" and "egging on the protest". But if an independent journalist now doesn't need a team, just a cell phone and a twitter account, I think it's very easy for (1) far, far more people to self-identify as journalists, and (2) the police to not believe or care about the distinction between casual tweeter and casual journalist.