Online and Mobilized Students: The Use of Facebook in the Chilean Student Protests

Cabalín-Quijada, Cristian Online and Mobilized Students: The Use of Facebook in the Chilean Student Protests. Comunicar, 2014, vol. 22, n. 43, pp. 25-33. [Journal article (Paginated)]

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English abstract

Considering the relationship between new social media and youth political actions, the purpose of this article is to describe the use of Facebook during the 2011 Chilean student movement, through a content and textual analysis of Facebook’s page of the Student Federation of the University of Chile (FECH). In 2011, Chile experienced massive mobilizations for seven months. These were perhaps the most important social protests in Chile's recent history, where young people played a leading role in the discussion over education. During these events, Facebook was one of the digital social networks most widely used by the mobilized organizations. In FECH’s case, it utilized Facebook mainly to call for protest actions, to highlight the achievements of the movement, and to indicate their opponents. However, most of the content published on this Facebook page was produced by traditional media, demonstrating that conventional communication strategies of social movements are interrelated with new innovative practices. Therefore, this article rejects technological determinism, because it does not recognize the complex characteristics of student and youth movements.

Spanish abstract

Considerando la relación entre los nuevos medios digitales y la acción política de los jóvenes, el objetivo de este artículo es describir el uso de Facebook durante el movimiento estudiantil chileno de 2011, a través de un análisis de contenido y textual de la página de Facebook de la Federación de Estudiantes de la Universidad de Chile (FECH). En 2011, Chile experimentó una serie de movilizaciones, quizás las más importantes de su historia reciente, donde los jóvenes fueron los protagonistas de la discusión sobre la educación. Durante estas manifestaciones, Facebook fue una de las redes sociales en Internet más utilizadas por las organizaciones participantes. En el caso de la FECH, esta agrupación estudiantil usó Facebook principalmente para convocar a las acciones de protestas, para resaltar los logros del movimiento y para señalar quiénes eran sus adversarios. Sin embargo, la mayor parte del contenido publicado fue generado por los medios de comunicación tradicionales, demostrando que en el nivel comunicacional también se entrelazan las estrategias usuales de los movimientos sociales con las nuevas prácticas más innovadoras. Por lo tanto, se rechaza la visión del determinismo tecnológico, porque no da cuenta de los fenómenos complejos que caracterizan el desarrollo de los movimientos estudiantiles y juveniles.

Item type: Journal article (Paginated)
Keywords: Student movement, Facebook, social networks, Internet, protests, students, education
Subjects: C. Users, literacy and reading.
Depositing user: Alex Ruiz
Date deposited: 02 Jul 2014 12:18
Last modified: 02 Oct 2014 12:32
URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10760/23376

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