Venezuelan retired army general Angel Vivas had heard the authorities were coming for him on Sunday. He had no intention of surrendering, so he put on a flak jacket, took out his assault rifle—and started tweeting.
First, he posted a picture of workers from CANTV, the government-owned Internet provider, working in front of his house. He claimed that they were there to cut his Internet connection. Then he warned that "Cuban and Venezuelan henchmen" had just arrived to get him.
Llego la CANTV a "trabajar"frente a mi casa, si no me equivoco estan cortando la linea, la internet o interfiriendola pic.twitter.com/ukYjK3Ghrj
— Angel Vivas (@Gral_Vivas_P) February 23, 2014
What followed was an armed standoff, in which Vivas resisted the arrest with the help of his neighbors who blocked the security forces and live tweeted the event. All this reportedly began because he had posted a controversial tweet suggesting to protesters a way to knock down policemen riding bikes.
See also: Protests Sweep Venezuela: Answers to 6 Key Questions
This standoff incident is representative of how much Venezuelans have been relying on social media, particularly Twitter during the protests that started over two weeks ago.
Twitter has been used by the protesters to both get their voices out into the world and to document the protests. But contrary to other popular uprisings, where social media was the domain of just one side of the story, no one side controls the narrative on Twitter in Venezuela.
It's hard to pinpoint the reason, exactly, why Twitter is so popular in Venezuela, but journalist Luis Carlos Diaz tells Mashable that Venezuelans have been using Twitter since at least 2007 when numerous bloggers migrated to the social network.
The late President Hugo Chavez himself joined in 2010, and quickly started amassing followers, encouraging Venezuelans—as well as then Cuban president Fidel Castro—to join him.
When Chavez became ill and went to Cuba for cancer treatment, Twitter became the only platform where Venezuelans could get news on their leader's health according to Ashley Greco-Stoner, a researcher at Freedom House who focuses on Internet freedom in South America.
"It seemed like if you weren't on Twitter you wouldn't even know the state of your government," she told Mashable.
The Venezuela government has long been accused of using Twitter as a propaganda platform.
It has allegedly purchased followers, created fake accounts to boost pro-government hashtags, and hired a group of users to harass critics on the San Francisco-based social network, according to The Freedom of the Net report, which was released by Freedom House.
Government officials, many of whom have enorme followings on Twitter, have also used the platform to denounce the protests as a coup d'état orchestrated by "fascists," as President Nicolas Maduro so often claims.
"Peace with justice and equality will be our victory against the coup d'état that we're dismantling, and we will win for the love of our homeland," he tweeted on Monday from his official Spanish language account, which has 1.8 million followers (Maduro also has unverified accounts in English, French, Portuguese, and Arabic.)
La Paz con Justicia e Igualdad será nuestra Victoria frente al Golpe de Estado que estamos desmontando y Venceremos por Amor a la Patria...
— Nicolás Maduro (@NicolasMaduro) February 24, 2014
Some government officials live-tweet Maduro's speeches, like the country's Communications and Information Minister Delcy Rodriguez (who has 110,000 followers). Others, like Elias Jaua (600,000 followers), the Minister of Foreign Affairs, have openly accused opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez (whose 2.46 million followers dwarfs those of his opponents) of being a "murderer."
For the protesters, Twitter is the last place that the government doesn't control; a forum where they can freely express their opinions and dissent.
"Venezuela is a dictatorship, and the only free media is Twitter," Gaby Castellanos, told Mashable.
Castellanos is a publicist and an opposition figure, who has been accused by the pro-Maduro website La Iguana of "controlling the media war" against the government,.
When the unrest reached its highest point, with country-wide protests on Feb. 12, the government flexed its censorship muscles and pulled the Colombian news channel NTN24 from satellite listings. Other channels, seeing what happened to NTN24, voluntarily stopped reporting on the protests. Then, on Feb. 21, the Venezuelan government revoked CNN's press credentials.
With traditional media unable to cover the protests, citizens turned to Twitter.
"[The Internet] seems to be the last space that the government has not figured out how to monopolize," said Greco-Stoner of the Freedom House.
Yet, the government did try to expand its influence on the online world, reportedly by preventing users from posting and see photos on Twitter, throttling and shutting down the Internet in certain areas of the country, and blocking the walkie-talkie app Zello.
In response on its official Spanish account, Twitter suggested Venezuelans use text messages to tweet.
Usuario en #Venezuela: Sigue y recibe notificaciones por SMS de cualquier cuenta en Twitter. Manda "SEGUIR [usuario]" a 89338 (@MovistarVE)
— Twitter en español (@twitter_es) February 14, 2014
The government eventually backed off its ban on sharing images through Twitter, and citizens have been widely using Twitter for many purposes since then.
"I use it to write and post pictures of what happens in my state," Vanessa Alfonso Ortega, a Venezuelan journalist living in Puerto de la Cruz, tells Mashable.
But Venezuelans don't just tweet for themselves.
"We use it mostly so that the international community can notice what's happening and help us spread the word in every corner," Alfonso Ortega added.
According to Topsy, a social search and analytics tool, Venezuelans have been using a variety of hashtags, with some of them have racking up a high number of mentions.
#SOSVenezuela, the main hashtag used around the last month's protests, was tweeted 4.1 million times. #Venezuela has been tweeted 5.3 million times. And #ResistenciaVzla a total of 1.7 million times. We don't know how many of these mentions are coming from within Venezuela's borders, but it does tell us one thing.
Venezuelans, using Twitter, are being heard.
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