Social media played a complementary role in helping activists win reparations for victims of police torture in Chicago from 2013 to 2015. Examining how an established social movement incorporated new communications technology into an old fight, this chapter employs qualitative methods to argue that social media supplemented, rather than supplanted, traditional repertoires of collective action while potentially marginalizing key constituents. The short duration, moderate goals, and diffuse leadership of the reparations coalition militated against state repression.
