The insurrection on Capitol Hill was brewing on social media long before it began.

The march on the Capitol wasn't a secret, President Trump himself said on Twitter "Big protest in D.C. on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!"

His supporters made plans to head to Washington, some organizing on Facebook and Twitter.

But plans to take over the Capitol building in Washington were not a secret, either. 

They were discussed openly on right-wing social media sites like Parler and Gab, and on "The Donald," a website created after Reddit took down a thread of the same name.

Multiple posts on The Donald urged followers to "storm the capitol."

A Professor of Journalism and Creative Media, and former visiting assistant professor at NYU, AJ Bauer said Trump's own words become more dangerous on these platforms.

"These sorts of ideas, the sorts of calls for violence that Trump is, that the President is perpetuating, these are going to circulate in right-wing social media," he said.

According to Paul Levinson, an author and professor of media studies at Fordham University, social media has become an effective way to quickly mobilize people. It's how many marches against police violence were organized during the spring and summer. 

Levinson blames sites like these for helping spread the lies about election fraud that fueled the anger of Wednesday's mob.

"Unfortunately, this wasn't a peaceful demonstration, it was nothing but a group of thugs and criminals, literally, touching the very physical premises of our democracy," he explained. "Unfortunately, sometimes people with hate in their hearts adopt these conspiracy theories and then we have what happened yesterday."

Facebook and Twitter said they have been working to remove threats and calls for violence on their platforms, but these experts say it will take a bigger cultural change to keep such threats from entering the mainstream.