Tracking the 2011 Student-led Collective Movement in Chile through Social Media Use

Using social media archives of the 2011 Chilean student unrest and dynamic social network analysis, we study how leaders and participants use social media such as Twitter, and the Web to self-organize and communicate with each other, and thus generate one of the biggest " smart movements " in the history of Chile. In this paper we i) describe the basic network topology of the 2011 student-led social movement in Chile; ii) explore how the student leaders are connected to, and how are they seen by (a) political leaders, and (b) University authorities; iii) hypothesize about key success factors and risk variables for the Student Network Movement's organization process and sustainability over time. We contend that this social media enabled massive movement is yet another manifestation of the network era, which leverages agents' socio-technical networks, and thus accelerates how agents coordinate, mobilize resources and enact collective intelligence. The world has been in a process of structural transformation for over two decades. This process is multidimensional, but it is associated with the emergence of a new technological paradigm, based on information and communication technologies, that emerged in the 1970s and are spreading around the world. Society shapes technology according to the needs, values, and interests of people who use the technology: " Technology does not determine society: it expresses it. But society does not determine technological innovation: it uses it. " (Castells, 1996/2000, p.15) Furthermore, information and communication technologies are particularly sensitive to the effects of social uses on technology. The history of the Internet provides ample evidence that the users, particularly the first few thousands, were, to a large extent, the producers of the technology. However, technology is a necessary, albeit not sufficient condition for the emergence of a new form of social organization based on networking, that is, the diffusion of networking in all realms of activity on the basis of digital communication networks. Changes in the technologies, economic organization, and social practices of production in this networked environment have shaped new opportunities for how we create and exchange information, knowledge, and culture. These changes ''have increased the role of nonmarket and nonproprietary production, both by individuals alone and by cooperative efforts in a wide range of loosely or tightly woven collaborations'' (Benkler, 2005, p.5). These changes have increased the thresholds of available freedom for users, consumers and citizens, and thus hold great practical promise: as a dimension of …