I think the Iranian protests in 2009 against election results kicked that off. Twitter at the time was the only way to relay information to the wider world as t

I think the Iranian protests in 2009 against election results kicked that off. Twitter at the time was the only way to relay information to the wider world as the government had disabled phone service. Before that Twitter was relatively obscure. Global media coverage happened almost exclusively through people's tweets and photos. https://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/meast/06/14/iran.protests.twitter/ https://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/meast/06/14/iran.protests.twi...