The beginning of the #SPANISHREVOLUTION

Cuando nos encontramos a escasos 30 días del aniversario oficial del movimiento 15-M, me gustaría rescatar de las oscuras profundidades del ordenador algunas partes del ensayo que redacté hace un año en Helsinki para la asignatura "Social Media (Webcourse)". Se trata de un resumen en tono explicativo acerca del nacimiento y los primeros pasos de esta iniciativa ciudadana, que supo encontrar su mayor aliado en las redes sociales:

Events and context

On May 15th, right before the local and municipal elections taking place in Spain, on May 22nd, young people –well, overall young but not exclusively- within the entire country decided to take the streets to claim for a better future´s perspective. The economic crisis, the extremely high rate of unemployment ( that affects more than the 20% of the active population) and the general degradation of the welfare state have led Spanish citizens to start a long term demonstration complaining about the shameful and inefficient political actions manifested by the two bigger Spanish parties: PSOE (the one that is in the government nowadays) and PP (the main opposition party). These two political formations are accused of handling the economic crisis that hits the nation in a very dreadful way: they seem to be much more interested in blaming each other about being responsible of the situation to take political advantage of citizens´ desperation than in figuring out the right ways out to the crisis. Furthermore, the citizens consider that the liberalization measures that have been adopted so far to overcome this situation have reduced their rights and are more close to the problem itself than to the solution. Most of the time these demonstrations have been located in emblematic places such as "La Puerta del Sol" (Sun´s door) in Madrid or Pza de Catalunya a Parc de la Cuitadella (Catalonia Square and Ciutadella Park) in Barcelona; the location here is especially relevant cause in these two cities the assistance to the protests has been counted by thousands of people.

Furthermore, whereas these demonstrations are meant to have a clear political dimension, this political nature is not to be understood as one party supporting but rather none of them. People with very different backgrounds and political attachments was gathered together trying to promote a more participative democracy, far from the practical bipartisan PP-PSOE. That way, demonstrations have been given the name of "Outraged Movement -15 M", a movement that included unemployment people, mileuristas (person with higher education that has difficulty in earning over 1.000 Euro per month), housewives, immigrants and citizens in general united under the motto: "We are not goods in the hands of politicians and bankers", and, " Real Democracy: Now!" - the latter alluding to the protests organizer entity, the movement Real Democracy Now.

Real Democracy Now

Real Democracy Now is a Spanish political platform that defines itself as non-partisan, asyndicate, pacific and contrary to take part into any kind of ideology (but non apolitical). This platform is one of the main movements behind the happenings on May 15th, plus, later on it played a crucial role acting as the official manager (food distribution or meeting agenda act as an example) of the camps that were erected after that date in which the long term demonstrations were established.

This movement was born into the Internet and the social networks themselves along the first months of 2011. It considers that citizens are not represented neither listened by the current Spanish politicians and demands a change of course inside the social and economic politics being developed right now. Those same politics that have led a large number of people to unemployment and precarious situations inside the context of the economic crisis 2008-2011. The platform has usually been organized around three of the most damaged collectives on society: the unemployed, those who have been evicted due to the impossibility of facing their mortgages any longer, and finally young people counting on university studies whose probabilities to find a job in which develop the professional skills they have been prepared for are not rather likely. (1. Wikipedia. Entry: Democracia Real Ya)

Last March 2011 the platform published one manifesto that defines its posture and summarize its goals. This document counts on eight different items that gather together a total of thirty-seven concrete politic and economic proposals conceived mainly in an "alter- capitalism" line of action. Those eight general items are: 1. elimination of the political class´ privileges, 2. measures to fight against the unemployment rate, 3. measures to promote the right to the housing, 4. measures to promote quality public services regarding the education, health system and public transport, 5. control of bank entities, 6. fiscal measures, 7. measures in favour of the citizens freedoms and the participative democracy, 8. reduction of the military budget.

The spreading and organization of the platform through Social Media Networks

From the "home screen" of the official website we can easily click on three different social networks networks in which the platform counts on its own profile and the citizens, in case they also count on a personal profile on the site, can actively participate on a public discussion forum by posting their own comments on a large variety of subjects and news. These three networks linked by the platform are the following ones:

· Facebook page: the official facebbok profile of the platform, that so far has gotten 387.435 facebook-likes, provides a broad range of possibilities to encourage citizen participation. From this site those who already have an individual profile in force on the site can access to "the wall", a public forum for discussion in which the organization posts news related to the demonstration and other alternative initiatives that contribute to the success of the protests, plus, people can like/share/comment on them. In some cases the comments have overcome the figure of 2.500 (the news was about one of the protest camps in Málaga being attacked by an extreme-right group). However, sometimes when there is that much people taking part in the discussions and introducing lots of new topics, links and opinions the consequences are that this discussion can just be held in a very superficial way, which leads us to conclude that due to the lack of moderator and follow-up, facebook is not the more suitable environment to hold these kind of discussions ( there is not enough empowerment of the outcomes extracted from the conversation). On the other hand, you can also find a wide selection of videos - with a testimonial character of the demonstrations, overall- and photographies - not only testimonial but also creative. Finally, the organizers have also opened a space called "forum", in which a total of 1352 concrete topics are been discussed between a more concrete number of people (such as the reform on the electoral law or the globalism of the platform).

· Twitter profile: throughout this social network the discussion (under the key word @democraciarealya) is being followed by a total of 74.489 people while the figure for the Tweets is 2.868 - and increasing-. In here, although the short nature of the tweets doesn´t allow a deep conversation, these comments seem to be much more useful to share interesting links related to the topic that contain both news and videos. Within the section named "lists" there is located a list of all the other discussion that @democraciarealya is interested in. The options that the net surfer finds on this site appear as narrower than on the Facebook page, however, we have to take into account that in Spain Tweeter is not one of the most popular social networks - as they are Facebook or Tuenti-.

· YouTube Channel: the organization has fit out an official channel in collaboration with YouTube, that already counts on 2.125 subscriptions, through which they have uploaded a wide range of videos related to their cause. The most part of this material is edited to appear as partially testimonial and partially "fun and creative". That way, the environment of this page is very interesting because the user can easily share these videos on its own social network profile at the same time that commenting on the videos and "like" them. So far the channel offers a total of 40 videos and some of them have been highly spread thanks to their presence in citizens´ personal profile on social networks. One of the most popular videos (130. 378 views) is the interview made to Jose Luis Sampedro (one of the most reliable and prestigious personalities regarding the anti-capitalism fight) in which the economist declares his support to the demonstrations and the movement in general.

However, although these three social networks are being the most used by the platform there are also another online sites in the same line in which the organization is present. A good example to reflect this is Tuenti, one of the most popular social networks for young generations in Spain -mostly teenagers-, where RDN counts on a profile visited by 168.815 users so far. In here we can also find comments, videos and photographies (uploaded not only by the organization but also by the users). However, it is clear that the profile of the people being active on the forum arena change a little bit from other SNTs like facebook or twitter, and in this sense we can analyse certain lack of matureness or knowledge on the subject. Furthermore, the moderator of the site remembers in first place that respect must be always in force on the comments and he asks directly to the users not to use any kind of insults or bad language and also not to upload pornographic material and so on. Finally, we also have to mention that the platform is being supported not only by its individual members but also by a broad number of alter-globalization movements that somehow have been fighting for the same goals for a long time - maybe one of the better examples here is ATTAC-Spain**. This way, the unstopping sharing of information about their common interests is making the "blog-reference" an increasingly popular tool, what means that both personal and collaborative blogs are also playing an important role when it comes of spreading and supporting the RDN platform.

** ATTAC is an international organization involved in the alter-globalization movement. They oppose neo-liberal globalization and develop social, ecological, and democratic alternatives so as to guarantee fundamental rights for all. Specifically, they fight for the regulation of financial markets, the closure of tax havens, the introduction of global taxes to finance global public goods, the cancellation of the debt of developing countries, fair trade, and the implementation of limits to free trade and capital flows.