  Although much has been published regarding street protests on social media,
few works have attempted to characterize social media users' spatial behavior
in such events. The research reported here uses spatial capture-recapture
methods to determine the influence of the built environment, physical proximity
to protest location, and collective posting rhythm on variations in users'
spatial detectability and density during a protest in Mexico City. The
best-obtained model, together with explaining the spatial density of users,
shows that there is high variability in the detectability of social media user
protest supporters and that the collective posting rhythm and the day of
observation are significant explanatory factors. The implication is that
studies of collective spatial behavior would benefit by focussing on users'
activity centres and their urban environment, rather than their physical
proximity to the protest location, the latter being unable to adequately
explain spatial variations in users' detectability and density during the
protest event.
