Social Movements in Politics and the Media: The case of the Pro-underground railway Platform of Murcia in the 2019 local elections

Abstract

15M was the first reaction by some of the most important social movements in recent years in Spain. It was the impetus behind the emergence of the ‘tides’ or movements dedicated to education and health issues. However, after a few years of social inaction, citizen movements seem to have revived thanks to the feminist demonstrations of 8th March 2018 and the pensioners’ protests because of their loss of purchasing power. In these times, when parliamentary majorities are in decline, it seems that citizen platforms are emerging as an alternative means of making their demands known to institutions. In the case presented in this study, the citizens of Murcia created a platform to demand that the Government comply with the plan for building the AVE railway tracks underground, as they had promised. Since then, the Citizen Pro-Underground Railway Platform has held several demonstrations and thanks to social networks it has developed a successful mass communication strategy. This study has been carried out in two phases and presents a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the Platform’s communication strategy. In addition, it aims to determine its level of participation in the political and media Twitter conversation ahead of the 2019 local and regional elections in Murcia.