Marisa von Bülow

Commentary: What Can we Ask of Civil Society?

As citizens and scholars, we have been asking a lot of ‘civil society.’ We want it to be an actor and a space, complex and coherent, organized and full of contingency. Having lost faith in the effi...

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.

Introduction: Social Movements in Contemporary Chile

In the past few years, Chile has become the stage for widespread demonstrations. This introduction situates this recent upswing of social movements in contemporary scholarly debates. It does so by offering an overview of the intertwined relationships between social movements, the state, and political parties in Latin America’s history. The introduction then outlines some of the theoretical challenges that derive from this. It is argued that only a framework centered on the interactions between social movements and institutional actors can help us understand the shift to contentious politics that Chile is experiencing, and its impacts. Grounded on this approach, the chapter offers an overview of these interactions in Chile’s recent history. The chapter concludes by outlining the structure and the content of the edited volume.