Representation of youth political action on social networks: Critical analysis of discursive practices produced during student mobilizations in Chile (2011-2013)

Abstract

This paper shows preliminary results of an ongoing investigation about the online discursive practices produced by young Chileans in the context of the recent student mobilizations (2011-2013): counter-information management and transmedia expansion in social networks. On one hand, it is noted that young people resist strategically news coverage of traditional media, disputing the formation of critical social representations of his collective action from an ideological reorientation of available information about their protest. On the other hand, it is observed that young people produce and disseminate a set of distinctive multimodal discourses of their current repertories of communicative interaction, amplifying relevant social and cognitive effects for the formation of collective interpretation frames. Both discursive practices promote unprecedented resignification exercises on the Social Web, with which young people systematically claim their identities, knowledge and intra-generational memories.