Acción colectiva y movimientos sociales en las redes digitales. Aspectos históricos y metodológicos

Abstract

The shift in certain episodes of collective action towards the communications landscape and, more specifically, towards the new technology and digital media space, has led to the emergence of a complex variety of sociological phenomena, challenging some of the legacy of theoretical assumptions about the sociology of social movements. Moreover, the types of interaction and intertwining between these social movements and communication technology networks depends on multiple factors. Analysing them from this perspective allows historical periods to be distinguished and classified analytically. Similarly, the well known fact of the emergence of new forms of collective action and unconventional political participation entails the development of research methods that depart in some respects from those traditionally used. In this paper we aim to present some of the methodological tools of this "virtualization of political protest", such as Audience Studies or Virtual Ethnography, which are valid sociological research methods to analyse some contemporary cases of collective action. One of the particularities of social movements using new digital media is the need to rethink the methodological approach to their comprehension due to their sporadic, dynamic and fluid nature.