Nelson Quichillao, Twitter and the class struggle

Abstract

Currently there is a growing number of researches which describe the transformations of political mobilization in the 21st century. Those researches are distinguished due to the widespread growth of digital communication technologies. The present proposal is an attempt of discussion that criticizes the optimistic assessment of technology. This assessment usually understands ICTs as tools for horizontalization and democratization of political mass participation. From a techno-skeptical perspective, this study denies such a possibility. For such purposes, an empirical follow-up is made of the communications made on Twitter regarding the death of the Chilean miner Nelson Quichillao. The results indicate that digital platforms such as Twitter, instead of achieving a flat political participation and communication, they reproduce the asymmetries of the social world. In this sense, the category of class struggle is presented as an alternative to analyze such inequalities of the contemporary world.