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"The hundreds of protesters that were arrested on Wednesday evening in the Canadian province of Quebec for rallying against university tuition hikes have been organizing their efforts on social media for months. \nThe tuition hikes, which would raise university costs in Quebec by $300 each year for seven years, were first proposed in February. Students and their supporters immediately began rallies to bring attention to the issue, while some argued that the hike is needed for budgetary reasons. Talks between students and government officials to come to an agreement on the tuition increase have fallen apart several times.\nThe tipping point came Wednesday evening when the rallies intensified and ended in hundreds of arrests. Thousands of students and their supporters poured into the streets of Quebec's two biggest cities, Montreal and Quebec City, banging pots and pans in a protest that was organized on Twitter with the hashtags #manifencours (French for \"manifestation en cours,\" or \"protest happening now\") and #casserole (French for \"pan\").\nBy Thursday morning, almost 700 protesters were arrested by Quebec police, according to the BBC.\nThe increased protesting came after the Quebec government passed a controversial rule, Bill 78, which outlawed protesting without prior approval from the police. \nMashable has collected a sampling of tweets, twitpics and videos from this week's heavy protests and arrests throughout Quebec. Check them out below.\nIs organizing over Twitter the \"new normal\" for protestors? Sound off in the comments below.\n[View the story \"Quebec Student Protests on Social Media\" on Storify]\nThumbnail image courtesy of Flickr, Tina Mailhot-Roberge"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2012/05/24/quebec-protests/>