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Tracking the 2011 Student-led Collective Movement in Chile through Social Media Use

Using social media archives of the 2011 Chilean student unrest and dynamic social network analysis, we study how leaders and participants use social media such as Twitter, and the Web to self-organize and communicate with each other, and thus generate one of the biggest "smart movements" in the history of Chile. In this paper we i) describe the basic network topology of the 2011 student-led social movement in Chile; ii) explore how the student leaders are connected to, and how are they seen by (a) political leaders, and (b) University authorities; iii) hypothesize about key success factors and risk variables for the Student Network Movement's organization process and sustainability over time. We contend that this social media enabled massive movement is yet another manifestation of the network era, which leverages agents' socio-technical networks, and thus accelerates how agents coordinate, mobilize resources and enact collective intelligence.