Social media in Latin America: deepening or bridging gaps in protest participation?

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between social media use and protest participation in Latin America. It advances two questions. First, does social media increase the chances of protest participation at the individual level, as prior research shows for advanced democracies? Second, in a region with glaring economic and political inequalities, does social media deepen or reduce the gaps in protest participation that exist among men and women, the young and the old, different social classes, or people with varying levels of political engagement? Design/methodology/approach The paper uses cross-sectional Latin American Public Opinion Project survey data from 2012 representing the adult population of 17 Latin American countries. It presents binary logistic regression models with protest participation as the dependent variable, social media use for political purposes as the main independent variable, control variables, and interactions. Findings Using social media for political purposes significantly increases protest chances – it is the second strongest predictor. Additionally, social media reduces protest gaps associated with individuals’ age, gender, psychological engagement with politics, and recruitment networks. Originality/value First, the paper shows that the contribution of social media to collective protest travels beyond advanced democracies – it also holds for more unequal regions with weaker democratic trajectories like Latin America. Second, it shows that social media may mitigate participatory inequalities not only, as shown by past research, regarding institutional participation (e.g. voting), but also regarding contentious tactics.

“I’m with her” or “we’re with her”? Personal versus group leader-based identities and types of political participation

“…In Latin America, there is a wealth of literature on different factors that help to explain political participation including those on the structural conditions, individual-level factors, and the combination of the two (for example: Booth & Seligson 2009;Collier & Handlin 2009;Dunning 2009;Hawkins 2010;Moseley 2015;Moseley 2018;Piñeiro et al 2016;Valenzuela et al 2016), but we argue that leaderbased identification is one individual-level factor that has largely been omitted from this conversation or conflated with other factors.…”

Redes sociales en Iberoamérica. Artículo de revisión

“…Finalmente, Valenzuela et al, (2016) estudian participación política y uso de redes sociales a través de una encuesta realizada en 17 países latinoamericanos, y señalan que si bien "las redes sociales se han convertido en un objeto de estudio prominente para la investigación sobre movimientos sociales y participación política en América Latina y otros lugares, hay vastos sectores de la población que permanecen excluidos de estas plataformas" 2 (p. 705).…”

“…En primer lugar, y en términos de objetos de estudio, sería deseable continuar con estudios que explícitamente comparen entre plataformas y entre (sub)regiones -como lo han hecho algunos trabajos relevados. En ese sentido cabe mencionar que las plataformas distan de ser universales (Valenzuela et al, 2016), y que su uso varía dependiendo de qué región se trate -como el caso de Twitter que, si bien lidera el ranking de las plataformas más estudiadas en Iberoamérica, en 2018 era utilizada por solo el 12,1% de la población latinoamericana (Statista, 2019).…”

Still Images—Moving People? How Media Images of Protest Issues and Movements Influence Participatory Intentions

“…Examining explanations for individual protest, Schussman and Soule (2005) as well as DiGrazia (2014) found that respondents interested in politics are much more likely to participate. Exploring the relationship between social media use and protest participation, Valenzuela et al (2016) showed that political interest was strongly related to protest activities. People with high political interest are more likely to guide their attention toward political information, which may then induce attitude change and contribute to further participation (Kazee 1981; Zaller 1996).…”