ECREA16-Abstract

Friday, November 11

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CDE10

Social Movements, Activismand Social Media

PP 326

The Spread of Information in Social Movement Networks: Exploring the Ego-Net of Nawaat During the Arab Spring in Tunisia

L. Perez-Altable

Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Communication, Barcelona, Spain

In this paper we discuss the personal network or ‘ego-net’of nawaat, a Tunisian independent blog which was founded in 2004 and whose main goal was to

provide a public platform forTunisian dissident voices and debates. About one month before the start of the Arab Spring inTunisia, on Nov.28, 2010, Nawaat

launched Tunileaks, a website dedicated to publishing the revelations related to Tunisia, only one hour afterWikileaks’release of 17 cables with information

about Tunisia. Thanks to Tunileaks the Tunisians had evidences about the corruption of the Ben Ali’s regime and the bad image of Ben Ali’s regime abroad.

In this sense, the digital network played an important role to put on the digital public sphere it, which would not otherwise have been possible in a country

without freedom of expression. After this, during the uprising that took place in Tunisia in 2011, Nawaat played a key role. In our paper spread refers the dif‑

fusion of information, ideas and practices from a source to an adopter, and necessarily focuses attention on the role played by established social ties and

newly forming ties (Strang & Soule, 1998). An ego-net is the network of contacts (alters) that form around a particular node (ego) (Crossley, et al., 2015: 18).

Our aims are twofold. Firstly, we want to make a contribution to the growing literature on the significance of social networks, and the use of social media,

in relation of social movements. Secondly, at a methodological level, we want to contribute to ongoing efforts to bring qualitative concerns and issues back

into social network analysis, generating a dialogue between qualitative and quantitative approaches (Edwards and Crossley, 2009: 37). The quantitative

methods of network analysis are invaluable, but there are properties of networks which are better and more easily accessed qualitative methods. Data were

gathered in the period from April, 2010 to December, 2010 and it was collected using the online tool Topsy Pro. The software Ucinet is used to map and

visualise the activist network and the qualitative approach is based in interviews with activists and Twitter content analysis. Some preliminary conclusions

show us the key role of Nawaat before and during the uprising and the importance of the Tunileaks, because in a country without freedom of speech, as

Tunisia pre-revolutionary was, Nawaat did what mainstreammedia had done in theWest and thanks to it the Tunisians had evidences about the corruption

of the Ben Ali’s regime and the bad image of Ben Ali’s regime abroad. Most of them had found out it for first time. In this sense, the Nawaat’s network

played an important role to put on the digital public sphere it, which would not otherwise have been possible in a country without freedom of expression.

PP 327

Activism, Video and Protests in Rio de Janeiro

A.L. Nunes de Sousa

Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona, Ciencias de la Comunicación, Cerdanyola, Spain

Over the last years we have moved from a society where personal relationships prevailed to a hyper-connected society, where everything is photographed,

recorded and narrated in the social networking sites. Since 2011, streets and squares around the world have been taken over by riots and demonstrations

for more democracy. At the same time, the virtual world was submerged with images of these protests, created by ordinary people. In June 2013, massive

social protests took place in the Brazilian streets. The Cyberspace became the main arena for the communications created by social movements, especially

in the social networking site Facebook. Activists launched more than three hundred fan pages aiming to provide counter-information about the uprising.

The videos recorded in the riots went viral very quickly and in this way, a network was being created, formed of groups and individuals, who became

known as “video-activists”. This paper aim to reflect upon the role of video-activist practices in the uprisings of the city of Rio de Janeiro as well as to

understand the characteristics of filmmaking methodology carried out in this context. In order to understand the phenomenon we have used a junction

of methodologies capable of answering the questions that arise in the streets and in the virtual world. Thus, the fieldwork was conducted starting from

Big Data methodologies with the use of Netvizz and Nvivo software for capture, analysis and visualization. First, the ten most active groups in the context

of the protests against the FIFA World Cup were mapped. This procedure consisted of crossing the “likes” in the fan pages, with the number of uploaded

videos and the followers on YouTube channels. However, the Internet data, gathered and highlighted, was not sufficient to provide the answers, reflections

and possibilities for analysis that we desired with this research. We wanted to know what happened with this particular type of activism, which was it is

complete path.Thus, starting from the definition of the corpus, three groups with different approaches were selected to work using participant observation,

carried out between June and July 2014 - a group that worked with advocacy video (Rio40Caos); a group dedicated to broadcasting the protests by stream‑

ing (Carranca Collective); and a group whose work was to produce news' reports (A Nova Democracia Newspaper). Furthermore, in-depth interviews were

carried out with twenty video-activists, with a strong presence both in the street and on-line. In the context of this research, video activismwas analyzed as

an important tool to promote social justice.Theoretically, we find that specialized academic literature has not yet defined a consistent terminology to define

this practice. Despite this, we can highlight that video activism online helped to change the dynamics of the social protests, previously narrated almost

exclusively by the mainstream media; ensured the safety of the demonstrators, acting as witness cameras for police conduct, and was used as a evidence

of the human rights violations.