• Central Mediterranean Sea
• communication and advocacy strategy
• criminalisation of solidarity
• human mobility
• non-governmental organisations
• search and rescue
• Twitter

The purpose of this research is to investigate the different strategies of communication and advocacy of Non-Governmental Organisations operating Search and Rescue activities in the Central Mediterranean Sea. Their activities at sea have been increasingly criticised, in parallel with a securisation phenomenon of Europe's external borders. Accused of facilitating irregular migration, NGOs are facing delegitimisation and criminalisation. Taking the spectrum of their activities on Twitter, it aims at understanding why and how NGOs practicing humanitarian assistance developed over the years a very specific approach of communicating and sending advocacy messages on this social media. They had to elaborate and professionalise “template” messages with different tools, lexicon and thematic scopes. The research methodology consists of qualitative and quantitative analyses, through interviews and Twitter observation to collect and process information. The study demonstrates that, within a small ecosystem, varied communication and advocacy practices are used among these NGOs due to their core values and missions. Limited by many obstacles, it coexists different strategic thinking, tools and ways of using them.