Sos Venezuela: an analysis of the anti-Maduro protest movements using Twitter

In this study, we analyze the evolution of the protests after the election of the Venezuelan Constitutional Assembly in 2017. We adopt the idea of a social conflict over diverging opinions about how the world should be. Sharing similar opinion is one basis for a sense of collective identity that facilitates participation in action to bring about desired changes in the world. We approach social conflict as an interaction between different opinion-based groups, in which opinions are formed and transformed leading and supporting different forms of collective action. We analyze Twitter conversations before, during, and after the events of the summer 2017 anti-regime protests in Venezuela. Correspondence and cluster analysis of a corpus of 60,036 tweets is used to investigate the theme and opinions from July to September 2017. Results show that opinions become more extreme and one-sided in response to overt repression and the authority’s lack of negotiation with movements. After the repression of the protests and President Maduro’s successful implementation of an elected Constitutional Assembly, tweets supporting the rule of law and democratic procedures dissipated, while more radical positions strengthened. These finding suggests that democratic principles rest on a precarious relationship between the individual and the authority. Protest movements may arrive at the paradoxical position in which radicalization is the most straightforward response to repression: The most radical positions survive, while the moderate ones are co-opted or suppressed by the regime. We argue that this dynamic may have potentially negative consequences for democracy and social change.