Online representation of Chilean students' movement: News' re-appropriation on Facebook

Abstract

This article analyzes the ways in which circulating discourses in social networks shape representations about the political action of the Chilean students' movement. The theoretical and methodological framework come from Critical Discourse Studies (CDS), whose socio-cognitive approach seeks to enquire about linguistic, epistemic and ideological factors that influence the ways of self and hetero representation of the youth actors. The corpus has been taken from the Facebook fan page "Estudiantes Informados" (Informed Students) during September and December 2011, and it comprises pieces of news from online press which retrieve controversial events related to the educational conflict and their associated comments. It is observed that the generational appropriation of historical and political conditions resignifies journalistic discourses about students' action, straining representations that redefine the social knowledge on mobilized youth.