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Recent crises as well as the rise of social media have made it especially theoretically and topically important to understand how grassroots actors, i.e. actors who are not institutionally recognized and established, frame a crisis. This research contrasts and relates grassroots actors’ to established actors’ framing (e.g. media and social movement organizations). Building upon framing and social movement literatures as well as upon emerging works on social media affordances, we develop mixed-methods analyses of framing related to the Gulf of Mexico oil spill of 2010 and produced through the popular microblogging platform Twitter. Building upon empirical findings, this research conceptualizes why and how, with microblogging, grassroots actors’ framing of a crisis does not simply diffuse but rather builds upon, reacts to and opposes established actors’ framing. It adds to the literature by showing and …