[All posts lead to pages in Spanish, except where otherwise noted.]

This post, contributed by Elisa Moreno Gili, is the second part in a series on student revolts in Chile. The original post, “Las revueltas de los estudiantes chilenos: Chile Movilizado (2ª parte)” was published in Periodismo Ciudadano.

As mentioned in our first segment on “Chile Movilizado” and student movements in Chile [en], the creation of digital media in this region is now a well-established practice. In September of 2005, citizen journalists from Chile, Peru, and Mexico, among other countries, began to spark a desire among the Chilean populace for communication beyond the traditional means. Inspired by the South Korean medium OhMyNews [en] and driven by former senator Fernando Flores, the Atina Chile movement created El Morrocotudo. This daily news site, still in operation, has had an impact on the creation of other local citizen media sites less influenced by the initial figure of the senator, as seen in the case of Maulee.

In large part, the philosophy of information sources in Chile regarding information management reflects the assimilation of citizen journalism into the population. In PC's recent interview with Pablo Loyola, a co-founder of Chile Movilizado, he underscored the importance of viewing information horizontally, that is, available to everyone to be read and shared. When traditional media sources reprint information originally published by Chile Movilizado, this must be seen as a positive outcome, a reinforcement of the work being carried out by the contributors.

Cuando nosotros vemos que en un diario se publica información que nosotros tenemos en nuestra página como reportes de ellos, sabemos que estamos generando impacto positivo y lo seguimos haciendo

When we see that a newspaper has used information from our page and published it as its own, we know that we're having a positive impact, so we continue doing what we're doing.

Chile Movilizado as a medium came about as the result of protests by Chilean students for reforms in the Ley General de Educación, or General Education Act. A geotracking platform allows for the mapping of higher-education campuses that are currently being occupied by students.

From left to right:  Juan Jose Peters, Pablo Loyola, and Aníbal Vivaceta, co-creators of Chile Movilizado

The protests, which Minister of Education Carolina Schmidt regards as “illegitimate”, have resulted in several student injuries by police forces. Pablo Loyola states that “the police or security forces in Chile have access to a great deal of information; the people who are not so well-informed are the citizens themselves.”  Therein lies the importance of creating citizen media like Chile Movilizado, which give the population access to updated information on a local level.

It's no secret that web-based social movements are playing a key role in the Chilean elections. Members of the political elite, such as current presidential candidate Marcel Claude, take advantage of social networks (in Claude's case, with support from Twitter-based student organizations) to spread their messages. A recent lecture presented by Claude at the Universidad del Mar was promoted on Chile Movilizado as a movement-sponsored event.

Chile Movilizado is working to attain complete coverage of student protests in the future. Its goal is to include information updated on a daily basis as well as coverage of both past and future events in order to create a “handbook” for demonstrators.

Queremos de este año hacer visible todo lo que sucedió en el movimiento estudiantil y para eso tenemos que revisar todo lo que sucedió durante el año y todo lo que va a suceder.

We want to make everything visible that has happened with the student movement during the last year, and to do that we have to review all of the year's events up until now and into the future.