Communication And Media: Chilean Student Movement

COMMUNICATION AND MEDIA: CHILEAN STUDENT MOVEMENT
By
Course Name
Professor’s Name
University
City, State
Date of Submission
Communication and Media: Chilean Student Movement
Introduction
Social movements and interest groups greatly influence public policy (Burstein and Linton 2002, p. 381). Many social movements have large number of supporters and they share similar views. These groups are able to make demands from government officials, share messages concerning the government to their supporters, and argue what they want from government. The influence of social movements and interest groups has made it impossible for governments to make policies without their involvement. The most common means how such groups influence policymaking is by interfering with the policymaking process during its final stages before it is passed into law (Burstein and Linton 2002, p. 381). Many social movements have a high number of followers and are able to influence the public when it comes to elections and campaigns. It is difficult for politicians to ignore such groups since they can determine the success or failure of some candidates. However, the influence of social movements and interest groups cannot be effective with the support from the public. Majority of social movements try resolving the issues that concern certain individuals in the community.
Politicians know the effect of social movements and interest groups on their political success. Most politicians give attention to social groups that have many followers since they believe that such groups have many votes. Some of the main points that politicians consider are the demand of the group and whether they can be met, the number of followers that the group has, the influence of the groups on the votes of the people, and the group’s ability to provide resource that can be useful to win an election (Burstein and Linton 2002, p. 387). The interest of politicians seems to be for themselves instead of public. Nonetheless, when citizens are fully engaged in politics, they get understanding, and they can highly influence the political culture and system. As in the case of Chile, the student movement developed attitude and values that caused trouble for the government. As a result, the movement influenced various non-institutional outcomes. This essay seeks to discuss the Chilean student movement and their influence on politics and policies.
The Chilean Student Movement
During the ‘Chilean winter’, many people went to streets in Chile demanding for reforms in environmental policies, indigenous rights, and gay rights. The government of Chile had seen the biggest number of strikes within 2011. However, the most noticeable one was the Chilean student movement. The group comprised of students from universities across the country. They took over the universities, held strikes and created big protests all over the country. The student complained over high tuition fees and demanded reforms in the education system.
Although the initial demand by the students was the reducing of university education fees, the group now wanted a change in the whole tertiary education system, saying that education was a basic human right and did not deserve to be treated like a good in the store shelves. The movement challenged two main ideas that were present in the education system; the use of private educational institutions to make profits and that education is not a consumer good. After having realized the influence of the group, the Chilean student movement sent a letter to the president, and it had twelve key demands. The demands included recognizing education as a basic human right, de-municipalization of secondary and primary education, removing profits gained from institutions of higher learning and giving same opportunities to the students.
With time, the movement became more influential and developed new demands that were not associated with education. The group demanded a new constitution, which would be created through a constituent assembly and new tax reforms. The demand from the group gained the interest of most citizens in the country since they had challenged the country’s political, social and economic model, which had been in existence since independence. However, to ensure the movement succeeds in making such demands, it needed the support of the general public. This means persuading the citizens of Chile to come together and fight for what they want.
Influence of the Movement on the Public
To involve the public in the campaign, the students used the physical and digital public spaces. They held large marches, and attracted from 100,000 to 1 million people during the protests of June to August. Additionally, the group used viral campaigns, flash mobs, and kiss-a-thons (Cabalin 2013, p. 28). Their protests included the use of dance, music, and theatre to attract the attention of the public. Aside from the active use of physical public space, the group also made use of online media campaigns as a means of raising awareness about their demands. The main social media site used by the group was Facebook (Cabalin 2013, p. 26). The Student Federation of the University of Chile (FECH) had a Facebook page which was used to announce to citizens and gain more support. The movement got the support of 80% of the public (Cabalin 2013, p. 27). Their use of online allowed for the message to spread and reach many people. However, the main reason for gaining the support of the public was they were able to tell the people their message. The message shared by the movement was much more logic and technical since it communicated the main problems that affected the educational system in Chile, which includes high learning fees, inequality, and segregation. The FECH Facebook page had more than 62,000 followers, which was more than the total number of student’s at the University (Cabalin 2013, p. 28). The messages posted on the Facebook page received a large amount of reaction from their fans since they got more than 47,000 likes and 8,686 comments on their page (Cabalin 2013, p. 30). The use of social media helped the group to spread its message and gain more support.
Media Bias
During the demonstra...