Desde el ciclo de las multitudes conectadas que arranca en 2011 con la Primavera Árabe o el 15M en el estado español, el #YoSoy132 en México en 2012 o #NuitDebout en Paris en 2016, las manifestaciones en las plazas alumbraron un devenir feminista de la acción colectiva que es simultánemante in situ y online (es decir, “onlife”). Los programas, la pertenencia identitaria, la adscripción a organizaciones y las figuras de liderazgo masculino han estado menos presentes que nun ca en estas protestas que con todas sus variantes comparten la exigencia democrática de tomar las riendas de la vida común. En el mismo sentido, aparecen nuevas politizaciones feministas que rompen los límites de las militancias, con llamados a la acción que no reconocen autoridad y que se expanden como constelaciones performativas. En 2016 y 2017, la ola de movilización global más relevante es precisamente esta andanada de nuevos feminismos transnacionales que irrumpen en las calles y en las redes poniendo la vulnerabilidad del cuerpo como base de la política, denunciando las violencias, y autoconvocándose a través de hashtags como la #PrimaveraVioleta en México en 2016, lemas como Ni Una Menos en 2017 o la Huelga de Mujeres en 2017 y 2018. Analizar las caracterísiticas de esta “feministización” de la política contenciosa es el objetivo de este artículo.

E-mail and Web pages made it possible to generate a space for global mobilization against the repression of the Zapatista indigenous rebels in the 1990s. The global justice movement that started in Seattle in 1999 extended global networks to organize action. In recent years, with the development of what has been called ‘Web 2.0’, spontaneous mass mobilizations emerged in large cities. These struggles are specific to each country and context; however, in all cases, they create shared spaces both in the physical world and in the networks, connecting the streets to the global flow of indignation. The intricate urban and digital spatiality of these insurgencies brings a demand for democracy that goes beyond national identities, through forms of protest that are more prefigurative than programmatic.

Since it first originated in the United States, #MeToo has spread around the world, giving rise to the most powerful and widespread global campaign against sexual violence in history. In March 2019, Mexican women created Twitter accounts and hashtags to share their experiences of sexual assault at workplaces and schools, in a country where nearly eleven women are murdered every day. The #MeToo campaign was intense and brief. It was trending at the end of March 2019, but by mid-April interest in it had plummeted. This article examines how the hashtag depended on activists’ efforts in order to build an affective community for disclosure of sexual harassment. Based on the voices of participants, this study argues that although activists were able to handle affective labor to solve collectively urgent problems arising within the campaign, they failed to withstand the backlash which followed the suicide of Armando Verga Gil, a famous rock musician, after being accused of sexual abuse online. From the perspective of social movements theory, #MeToo is characterized as digital direct action forming part of the repertoire of contention of feminist crowds.

In recent years, women are acting all over the world against gender violence and femicide. This new wave of feminist claims is characterized by the intensive use of social media to spread consciousness and amplify influence. For this research, we analyse three femitags (i.e., feminist hashtags) from Twitter that have been relevant in different crucial mobilizations in Argentina, Spain, and Mexico. These are three hashtags with different functions for activism that have shown special relevance due to their continuity or their intensity in the Spanish-speaking area between 2015 and 2020 (before the confinement due to the COVID-19 pandemic). #NiUnaMenos (#NotASingleWomanLess) started in Argentina in 2015 and called to massive mobilizations on the streets. #Cuéntalo (#TellIt) was initiated in Spain in 2018 for sexual abuse disclosure. #NiUnaMas (#NotASingleWomanMore) trended in México around 2020 to denounce every new victim of rape or femicide. We analyse how those hashtags have spread in the Spanish-speaking region, what kind of social actors have been involved and what has been the role of opinion leaders. All data were collected with academic access to the Twitter API during December 2021. We have found that the most influential actors in the conversation are contingent and circumstantial, the leadership structure tends towards horizontality, and opinion leaders with large numbers of followers are only important in very specific moments. In all cases, femitags serve as a toolbox for action and build up an archive of grievances with a transnational dimension. Furthermore, all of them point out that structural violence against women leads to feminicide.¹.

Este artículo analiza el ciclo de protestas de las multitudes conectadas feministas mexicanas entre marzo de 2019 a marzo de 2020. Este periodo marcado por una creciente conflictividad transgresora inicia con la intensa campaña del #MeToo entre marzo y abril de 2019 y culmina con la marcha del 8 de marzo de 2020 y el Paro de Mujeres. El movimiento feminista se radicaliza con la aparición de repertorios de acción directa y se convierte en un actor colectivo de gran relevancia en el país, con un poder disruptivo en los gremios profesionales, en los centros de estudio y en la política institucional, estableciendo estrategias y sinergias con actores nuevos, inesperados y enormemente diversos. Para una aproximación descriptiva de este ciclo como estudio de caso, se aplica la triangulación entre métodos cualitativos y etnográficos con el análisis de redes sociales.

ResumenA lo largo de las dos últimas décadas, la extensión del acceso a Internet así como los nuevos desarrollos de las Tecnologías de la Información (tic) han transformado las formas de gestación, difusión e impacto de las protestas y el activismo político. La apropiación de los instrumentos técnicos por parte de públicos muy extensos ha contribuido a la aparición de redes horizontales donde se tejen marcos de significados compartidos, acciones y reflexiones para las protestas sociales. En este artículo se caracteriza a la red activista como un nuevo tipo de actor colectivo que no encaja en las definiciones habituales de movimiento social y que tiene una marcada dimensión comunicativa. A la vez, se hace una genealogía de la apropiación de las tic para las causas sociales, desde los inicios de Internet hasta llegar a la Web 2.0 y el ciclo de acción global que irrumpe en 2011 con la Primavera Árabe, las Indignadas en España, Okupy Wall Street en Estados Unidos, entre otros.AbstractFor the last two decades, the expansion of Internet access as well as the new developments of the Information Technologies (it), have transformed the forms of management, transmission and impact of protests and political activism. The appropriation of the technical instruments by extensive publics has contributed to the appearance of horizontal networks in which frameworks of shared meanings, actions and reflections for social protests are webbed. In this article the activist network is characterized as a new type of collective actor who does not fit in the traditional definitions of social movement and who has a marked communicative dimension. Furthermore, we present a genealogy of the appropriation of the it for social causes, from the beginnings of the Internet until we reach the web 2.0 and the global action cycle which bursts in 2011 with the Arab spring, the Indignants in Spain and Occupy Wall Street in the United States, amongst others