Indigenous movements, ICTs and the state in Latin America
In: Journal of information technology & politics: JITP, Volume 18, Issue 4, p. 387-400
ISSN: 1933-169X
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In: Journal of information technology & politics: JITP, Volume 18, Issue 4, p. 387-400
ISSN: 1933-169X
In: New media & society: an international and interdisciplinary forum for the examination of the social dynamics of media and information change, Volume 26, Issue 3, p. 1566-1584
ISSN: 1461-7315
Indigenous social movement organizations are increasingly using social media to engage in strategic framing, a dynamic discursive process that seeks to attribute meaning to events and circumstances. But there remains a gap in our knowledge with respect to the impact of social media on the capacity of Indigenous actors to engage in frame competition in the virtual world. Based on a comparative frame analysis of online content in three Latin American countries where Indigenous organizations have recently engaged in large-scale protest, we ask to what extent the frames generated by Indigenous actors on social media are reflected in the online public sphere. We examine how their protest action is framed by Indigenous organizations themselves, the media, and government agencies. We find that social media do provide an outlet for Indigenous actors to disseminate counter-hegemonic frames. But state and media actors do not engage with Indigenous frames disseminated over social media, and their messages do not change the tone or direction of online discourse.
In: Canadian journal of Latin American and Caribbean studies: Revue canadienne des études latino-américaines et carai͏̈bes, Volume 45, Issue 1, p. 64-82
ISSN: 2333-1461
In: Latin American research review: LARR, p. 1-20
ISSN: 1542-4278
Abstract
Indigenous peoples in Latin America have produced some of the region's strongest and most enduring social movements, drawing on a diverse repertoire of contention to pursue their goals. In the twenty-first century, social media have transformed the landscape of collective action, compelling Indigenous movements to navigate the evolving dynamics of digital platforms. There is an ongoing debate in the literature regarding the role of social media in mobilization. But we know relatively little about how social media fit into the tactical repertoires of Indigenous actors and what tasks these platforms are used for. This article addresses this gap through an examination of how Indigenous actors use social media during protest events. We conducted a comparative analysis of social media content produced by Indigenous social movement organizations during major protest events in three countries from 2018 to 2019. We find that the most common functions include activating supporters and exposing state violence. These functions support several of the organizations' core mobilization tasks by providing actors with tools to complement collection action.