‘To activists: Please post and share your story’: Renewing understandings on civic participation and the role of Facebook in the Indignados movement

Abstract

The global upsurge in protest, which has accompanied the current international financial crisis, has highlighted the extensive use of online social media in activism, leaving aside the extent to which citizenship is enacted, empowered and potentially transformed by social media use within these movements. Drawing on citizenship and communication theories, this study employs a cross-country analysis of the relationship between citizenship, civic practices and social media within the Indignados movement in Greece and France. By the use of semi-structured interviews, we attempt to discern the degree of involvement of actors with the political community in question and explore the complex layers of their motivations and goals around participation. Content analysis employed in the movement’s Facebook groups allows us to critically evaluate the potential of social media in (re)defining the meaning and practice of civic participation. Findings indicate that the failure of traditional forms of civic participation to attain and resolve everyday political issues becomes its potential to transfer the political activity in other sites of struggle. The role of Facebook is double: it can reinforce civic talk and debate through activists’ digital story telling (around shared feelings and personal stories) significant for meaningful activist participation online and offline. Second, it can support new forms of alternative politics inspired by more participatory modes of engagement.

Recurrent Narratives Around the COVID-19 Crisis in Social Networks: A Case Study Analysis on Facebook

“…Sharing emotionally charged stories online requires motivation and incentive and is not as easy as clicking on the "like" button. This kind of practice can potentially promote the subjective side of civic empowerment and offer a sense of civic agency through online practices significant for engagement and participation in discursive or informational circulation during crises (Papa, 2017). Practices of this nature can be established as civic resources and motivate citizens towards creating and disseminating civic knowledge necessary in periods of crisis.…”

“…2 formation of public opinion on the basis of disseminating analyses posted within their public spaces (Tchubykalo, Manfredi-Sánchez, and Sánchez-Giménez, 2019) while producing civic resources (e.g. economic, technical, and discursive) readily available for users, and generating channels for civic engagement and participation, which can in turn engender new forms of civic identities (Papa, 2017).…”

Beyond the familiar challenges for children and young people’s participation rights: the potential of activism

“…Being a part of an activist movement can foster a sense of inclusion and belonging to a community of peers that think alike, have similar aims, and share a feeling of being left out of mainstream structures. 91 This is connected to the well-documented motivations of children and young people to engage in participatory initiatives to make a change, even when in restricting environments. Children and young people's participation structures (such as child parliaments, councils, and clubs) can be limiting and excluding for many, as these can be complex and bureaucratic; activism is likely to be less constraining as it can operate outside of traditional participation spaces.…”

Propuesta teórica para la sistematización, archivo y recuperación de los datos de los sitios Web de entidades del tercer sector: El caso Colombia – Cataluña

“…De las que analizan comunicación por la paz destacan las que analizan programas de organismos de comunicación por la paz de organizaciones (Fernández et al 2011), las que sistematizan experiencias de construcción de paz desde la comunicación, especialmente en Colombia (Rodríguez;Gonzáles, 2007;Vega, 2011), y las que se centran en el periodismo de paz (Lynch, 2007). Sobre social media existen investigaciones que analizan cómo las entidades sin ánimo de lucro crean engagement en Twitter y Facebook (Thelwall; Cugelman, 2017) y sobre el activismo y la implicación en la vida política de usuarios de estas plataformas (Cabalin, 2014;Papa, 2017). Finalmente, los sitios Web institucionales han sido el eje de investigaciones alrededor de la participación ciudadana en instituciones (Giraldo Luque; Villegas Simón; Durán Becerra, 2017), la comunicación política de administraciones (Fernández-Falero et al 2017) la transparencia de organismos públicos (Moreno-Sardà; Rodríguez-Navas; Corcoy Rius, 2013; Rebolledo, Zamora-Medina, Rodríguez-Virgili, 2017) e incluso el posicionamiento de la publicidad en sitios Web de juegos para menores (Marti-Pellón; Craveiro, 2015).…”