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Comunicar Journal 68: Networks, social movements and their myths in a hyperconnected world (Vol. 29 - 2021)
Online research, new languages and symbolism of digital activism: A systematic review
Julio Rodríguez-Suárez
Lorena Morán-Neches
Juan-Bautista Herrero-Olaizola
In recent years, digital networks have given rise to new spaces for socialization, action and protest, favouring the emergence of new forms of social participation that generate their own languages and new symbolic strategies. In order to analyze online mobilization within the Spanish context and in order to explore these realities in more depth, a systematic review of empirical articles with their own methodology was carried out. It includes those manuscripts published over the last decade by Spanish Sociology journals with the highest impact factor. After identifying 101 general studies that met the initial inclusion criteria, 34 were chosen whose subject of study included online social mobilization and/or used virtual ethnography as a research technique. The final sample for analysis was drawn from these, comprising the 16 publications that addressed this issue as the central topic. Among the main results obtained we have the scarcity of publications on the virtual dimension of social mobilization, as well as the growing use and adaptation of virtual ethnography as a research methodology for studying this field of knowledge. Likewise, the potential of the Internet to amplify the impact of demands, the need to break the online-offline dichotomy, the creation of new narratives and the transformation of the symbolic production of contemporary social movements are noteworthy.
Keywords
Social mobilization, virtual communities, cyberactivism, online participation, digital communication, scientific journals