With The Netherlands having the highest number of casualties following the MH17 horror of any country, many nationals have taken to social media to express their grief and take a stand. They have changed their profile pics to a solid black square to signify solidarity in grief and loss.

Almost two thirds of the people on board the Malaysia Airlines plane were Dutch nationals and with the population of the country being only 16 million, it is a personally felt loss for many citizens.

“Last night, there was a big snowball effect where everybody started to put their avatar on black to express their grief,” says Remco Janssen, a Dutch social media expert based in Amsterdam. Many feel the government in the Netherlands is not doing enough to get them back, he says.

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The hashtag [#BringThemHome] has also been used in Australia, Canada, the UK and the US – all countries which lost citizens in the crash. In Australia, many shared the front page of the Sunday Times which ran with the headline “Bring Them Home”.

Janssen says he doesn’t expect the hashtag, or the black avatars, to have much concrete effect. But he does believe that social media can help, in its own way, at a time like this. “Social media is like the village square… I think it has a big psychological effect on everybody to have this place to discuss – it feels like a place where everybody has a sense of joint grief.”

Find the full story at BBC News