Sebastián Valenzuela

Unpacking the Use of Social Media for Protest Behavior: The Roles of Information, Opinion Expression, and Activism

Recent studies have shown a positive link between frequency of social media use and political participation. However, there has been no clear elaboration of how using social media translates into increased political activity. The current study examines three explanations for this relationship in the context of citizens’ protest behavior: information (social media as a source for news), opinion expression (using social media to express political opinions), and activism (joining causes and finding mobilizing information through social media). To test these relationships, the study uses survey data collected in Chile in 2011, amid massive demonstrations demanding wholesale changes in education and energy policy. Findings suggest that using social media for opinion expression and activism mediates the relationship between overall social media use and protest behavior. These findings deepen our knowledge of the uses and effects of social media and provide new evidence on the role of digital platforms as facilitators of direct political action.

The Mediating Path to a Stronger Citizenship: Online and Offline Networks, Weak Ties, and Civic Engagement

Empirical studies of citizen communication networks and participation go as far back as the 1940s, with a bolder focus in political—not civic—activities. A consistent finding reveals that individuals with larger networks are more engaged than those with smaller networks. This article expands this line of work with a number of novel tests. First, it compares the predictive power of online versus offline network size on civic engagement. It then explores the role of strong-tie versus weak-tie discussion frequency and participatory behaviors. Finally, it examines the extent to which the contribution of network size, both online and offline, on civic engagement is mediated by discussion with weak ties. Using original survey data from a large national sample of U.S. adults, results indicate that (1) the relationships between online and offline network size and civic engagement are positive and fairly similar in strength, (2) weak-tie discussion is the strongest predictor of civic behaviors, (3) weak-tie discussion largely mediates the association between participation and network size online and offline, and (4) online networks entail greater exposure to weak ties than offline networks.

Citizen Journalism and Democracy: How User-Generated News Use Relates to Political Knowledge and Participation

The contribution of professional journalism to democratic citizenship is well-established, but the proliferation of online user-generated news begs the question of whether citizen journalism plays a similar role. Use and trust of both professional and citizen journalism were investigated for their associations with political knowledge and participation. User-generated journalism was negatively related with knowledge of national political figures, but strongly and positively associated with higher levels of online and offline participation; professional news media produced gains in knowledge and offline participation. Trust in user-generated news amplified the link between citizen journalism and online participation.

Blogging as a journalistic practice: A model linking perception, motivation, and behavior

As blogs have become a fixture in today’s media environment, growing in number and influence in political communication and (mass) media discourse, research on the subject has proliferated, often emphasizing the high-profile conflicts and controversies at the intersection of blogging and journalism. Less examined, however, is the psychology of everyday citizen bloggers in this context. In studying a randomized sample of US bloggers, we attempt to puzzle out these questions: to what extent do bloggers (1) perceive their work as a form of journalism, and how might such a perception influence (2) their motivations for posting and (3) the topics around which they blog? Most critically, (4) this article constructs a model by which all these antecedents predict whether bloggers behave like professional journalists. Results indicate that bloggers who see their work as a form of journalism are more inclined to inform and influence readers, write about public affairs, and behave as a more traditional journalist.

Student and Environmental Protests in Chile: The Role of Social Media

In 2011, Chile experienced two massive protest movements – one against the cost and quality of public education and another against the construction of power plants in Patagonia. This represented a unique opportunity to analyse and compare how Facebook and Twitter use were related to street demonstrations. Using a probabilistic face-to-face survey among urban youth (18–29 years old) conducted shortly after the protests, this study revealed a positive relationship between the use of social media and participation in both social movements, even controlling for other relevant variables (e.g. political interest, ideology and trust). The theoretical and methodological implications of these findings are discussed in this article.

Social network sites, marriage well-being and divorce

We analyze the link between SNS use, marriage well-being and divorce in the U.S.At the state-level, Facebook penetration is associated with increasing divorce rates.At the individual-level, SNS use is negatively correlated with marriage quality.Our results can be explained from either a causal or a self-selection perspective. This study explores the relationship between using social networks sites (SNS), marriage satisfaction and divorce rates using survey data of married individuals and state-level data from the United States. Results show that using SNS is negatively correlated with marriage quality and happiness, and positively correlated with experiencing a troubled relationship and thinking about divorce. These correlations hold after a variety of economic, demographic, and psychological variables related to marriage well-being are taken into account. Further, the findings of this individual-level analysis are consistent with a state-level analysis of the most popular SNS to date: across the U.S., the diffusion of Facebook between 2008 and 2010 is positively correlated with increasing divorce rates during the same time period after controlling for all time-invariant factors of each state (fixed effects), and continues to hold when time-varying economic and socio-demographic factors that might affect divorce rates are also controlled. Possible explanations for these associations are discussed, particularly in the context of pro- and anti-social perspectives towards SNS and Facebook in particular.

Politics without Citizens? Public Opinion, Television News, the President, and Real-World Factors in Chile, 2000-2005

This study tests the generalizability of agenda-setting theory in less developed democracies by analyzing data on public opinion, television news coverage, presidential policy, and real-world indicators from Chile between 2000 and 2005. After tracking attention to five different issues—crime, unemployment, health, poverty, and education—we estimate both average and issue-specific agenda-setting effects using time-series, cross-sectional ordinary least squares (OLS) regressions. The results show that there are multidirectional influences between the public, television news, and the president. Both the public and the president appeared responsive to prior news coverage, and while news coverage was not influenced by public attention, it was affected by presidential rhetoric. While these processes differed from one issue to another, overall there was a top-down pattern of agenda adoption: Policy preferences are “negotiated” between the president and the news media, with no noticeable input from the public. From a comparative perspective, the evidence shows that television news in Chile are considerably powerful and that citizens’ priorities are basically ignored by the elites, although their maneuvering is still constrained by objective conditions.

An Experimental Comparison of Two Perspectives on the Concept of Need for Orientation in Agenda-Setting Theory

Need for orientation (NFO) is a key contingent condition for agenda-setting effects. Traditionally, this concept has been measured by two lower-order components, but a recent reconceptualization expanded it to three dimensions. The current experimental study tested how comparable the traditional and new NFO scales are, and how strongly they predict agenda setting. Findings indicate that both NFO scales are (1) reliable tools for predicting first-level agenda-setting effects, and (2) significantly correlated with each other. The question whether or not the new NFO scale predicts second-level agenda-setting effects, however, needs further exploration.

One Step, Two Step, Network Step? Complementary Perspectives on Communication Flows in Twittered Citizen Protests

The article analyzes the nature of communication flows during social conflicts via the digital platform Twitter. We gathered over 150,000 tweets from citizen protests for nine environmental social movements in Chile and used a mixed methods approach to show that long-standing paradigms for social mobilization and participation are neither replicated nor replaced but reshaped. In digital platforms, long-standing communication theories, like the 1955 two-step flow model, are still valid, while direct one-step flows and more complex network flows are also present. For example, we show that it is no contradiction that social media participants mainly refer to intermediating amplifiers of communicated messages (39% of the mentions from participants go through this two-step communication flow), while at the same time, traditional media outlets and official protest voices receive 80–90% of their mentions directly through a direct one-step flow from the same participants. While nonintuitive at first sight, Bayes’s theorem allows to detangle the different perspectives on the arising communication channel. We identify the strategic importance of a group of amplifying intermediaries in local positions of the networks, who coexist with specialized voices and professional media outlets at the center of the global network. We also show that direct personalized messages represent merely 20% of the total communication. This shows that the fine-grained digital footprint from social media enables us to go beyond simplistic views of a single all-encompassing step flow model for social communication. The resulting research agenda builds on long-standing theories with a new set of tools.

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

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?,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.,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.,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.