Varieties of digital activist practices: students and mobilization in Chile

ABSTRACT

Recent protests throughout the world have fueled debates about how social movement organizations use digital tools. In this article, we analyze the variety of digital activist practices (DAPs) enacted by Chilean student movement organizations over time (2011–2016). We define DAPs as proactive actions that seek to achieve political impacts in a particular context through the use of digital tools. Based on content analysis of Facebook posts and in-depth interviews with key informants, we show that movement actors have appropriated digital tools in diverse and asymmetric ways, and that asymmetries have remained constant over time. The article also shows that DAPs sponsored by organizations vary across three dimensions: online presence, goals, and the audiences to which they speak. This variation is explained by differing levels of financial and human resources, and, most importantly, by the choices actors make as they interpret political constraints and challenges in particular contexts. These choices are, in turn, informed by the political views of rotating sets of student leaders.

KEYWORDS:

• Digital practices
• digital activism
• social movement organizations
• student movement
• youth activism
• Chile

Acknowledgements

This article benefited greatly from the critiques of two anonymous reviewers and the thoughtful suggestions of Rebecca Abers and Suely Vaz de Araújo. We are also indebted to the participants of the research groups ‘Web in Movement’ (Catholic University, Santiago, Chile), and ‘Rethinking Relationships Between State and Society’ (University of Brasilia, Brazil), with whom many of the ideas that appear in this article were first discussed. Special thanks go to the research assistants who helped conduct and analyze the interviews, most specially Anita Perricone, Camila Ponce, José Marín Álvarez and Cristóbal Alonso Sandoval Rojo.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Marisa von Bülow is Professor of Political Science at the University of Brasilia, Brazil. She is the author of numerous books and articles on social movements and transnational networks, including Building Transnational Networks: Civil Society and the Politics of Trade in the Americas (Cambridge University Press, 2010) [email: [email protected]].

Luiz Vilaça is a PhD student in Sociology at the University of Notre Dame, U.S.A., and a Kellogg PhD Fellow [email: [email protected]].

Pedro Henrique Abelin is a Masters' student at the Political Science Institute at the University of Brasilia, Brazil [email: [email protected]].

ORCID

Marisa von Bülow http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3272-0323

Notes

1. The assumption that the younger generation has more digital skills than the elders has not been immune to criticism. As Wells, Vraga, Thorson, Edgerly, and Bode (2015) have argued, it is an oversimplification, because other variables may explain Internet practices better than age.

2. For a review of the differences between digital activism and traditional forms of activism, see, for example, Butler (2011), esp. chapter 4; Earl and Kimport (2011). The debate about the continuing relevance of leaders and organizations is developed elsewhere (von Bülow, 2018).

3. Netvizz is a data extracting tool that runs in Facebook and has been designed for research purposes. See Rieder (2013).

4. For a more detailed analysis of the student movement and its demands, see von Bülow and Bidegain (2015) and Donoso (2005, 2017).

5. See https://www.facebook.com/LaEducacionEnCrisis/photos/a.1630098447230860.1073741830.1624126297828075/1751171798456857/?type=3&theater, accessed 30 June 2016.

6. For a more detailed analysis of the uses of Twitter, see von Bülow (2018), and García, von Bülow, Ledezma, and Chauveau (2014).

7. “Ranking de Universidades en Chile”, available from http://www.emol.com/especiales/2014/actualidad/nacional/psu2014/rankings-locales.asp, accessed 18 October 2016.

8. For more details on the political divisions within the movement, see Donoso (2017).

9. See the declarations to the press by the then FEUC President, Ricardo Sande, in http://www.elmostrador.cl/noticias/pais/2014/11/07/ricardo-sande-nuevo-presidente-de-la-feuc-chile-no-esta-listo-para-un-sistema-gratuito/ and http://www.emol.com/noticias/nacional/2015/04/14/712556/presidente-de-la-feuc-no-adhiero-a-marcha-de-la-confech-la-piedra-de-tope-es-la-gratuidad.html, accessed 15 February 2017.

10. Interview with Ricardo Sandes, 2014–2015 President of the FEUC, available from http://www.elmostrador.cl/noticias/pais/2014/11/07/ricardo-sande-nuevo-presidente-de-la-feuc-chile-no-esta-listo-para-un-sistema-gratuito/, accessed 1 March 2017.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Conicyt-Chile [Fondecyt Grant 1130897]; Iniciativa Científica Milenio, Ministerio de Economía, Fomento y Turismo, Chile [Project RS130002].