Abstract

In the field of ICT4D, social movements have long been recognized as key collective actors in the process of social change. Social movements are contesting traditional centers of power and generating emerging forms of organization and well being while transforming the nature of political participation. Despite this recognition, the intersection between social movements and IC4D still remains an understudied area of inquiry. This paper helps expand existing knowledge on the relationship between youth, social media and social movements. In particular, it helps to better understand how the mediations of Facebook have broadened the participation opportunities of youth participants in Social Movement Organizations (SMOs) linked to the Immigration Reform Movement in the US. It also shows how youth participants have gained power within these organizations and in other sociopolitical scenarios and social movements. This paper also suggests that the interactions that SMOs’ youth participants have through Facebook, have contributed to transform the SMOs interaction among the agents that encompass the SMOs and their stakeholders.

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