Historical trajectories of social media protests in Latin America

• In Event: Mediating protest: oppositional uses of social and traditional media

Abstract

It is often assumed that the use of social media by oppositional movements and protesters may potentially help reconfigure the dynamics of power in public spheres of deliberation; possibly shifting the balance in favour of previously marginalised groups. Across Latin America, diverse communities that share political agendas have employed the possibilities offered by digital technologies to radically modify their connectivity, social visibility, strategies and organisation. However, these emerging spaces of public contestation created by online user-generated dialogic communication forms have antecedents in pre-digital expressions such as the mimeograph, the communitarian radio and independent video. The so-called alternative, counter-informational, marginal, participatory, clandestine or autonomous uses of the Internet as a means of dissemination and contestation must be understood as a continuation of earlier forms of electronic activism. In this paper, I explore the production, circulation and consumption of alternative media in several Latin America countries from a historical and critical perspective. This brief genealogy analyses three moments with reference to specific empirical examples; the pre-digital background of political activism and the creation of alternative channels of information, the shift toward digital platforms and user-generated content in the early 21st century, and recent examples of the use of social media as a vehicle for protest.

Author

• José A Huidobro Goya, University of Bergen