In his book No Respect: A Social Crisis Byung-Chul Han makes this very clear. "In social networks, maximum care is not applied, but maximum wounds and offenses are inflicted. In these spaces, disinhibition is rewarded, which manages to capture even more attention." That's what almost everything is about now: capturing attention; and that is why social networks, in the time of "hyperinformation" and immediacy, have an increasingly important role. That is why they have been - and are - a key element in how the protests are developing in France, Italy, Belgium or Spain. Networks are, in short, the mobilizing element due to their speed, sometimes with disruptive and violent purposes, beyond the mere call.
"There is a common thread that unites protest movements of generation Z and they have not started now. What happened in the south of the world last year, we are seeing today in the north of the world and in particular in this Europe in which we are soon entering an electoral supercycle. And the sparks that ignite the protests are different. In France, education, this symbol of the social elevator, of the Republic, in Spain it is housing, in Albania it is corruption. But they all have in common a protest of a generation, generation Z, which feels that the social contract has been broken," explained the former Foreign Minister and current dean of the School of International Affairs at Science Po Paris, Arancha González Laya. And the common home of that generation Z is social networks.
The reality is that social networks have been a key accelerator of the European protests in recent weeks: according to RTVE, one TikTok video exceeded 78,000 shares and another accumulated more than 9,000, while the French mobilizations gathered around 550,000 people on October 17 alone. In addition, Maldita.es has detected calls for this weekend in 46 cities in at least nine European countries, spread through TikTok and WhatsApp and Telegram groups. These figures show the capacity of the networks to amplify and extend the calls, although they do not demonstrate that they are the direct cause of the protests or violence.
Such is the relevance that in France itself the debate quickly began: banning them or limiting them to alleviate the protests. The Government of Emmanuel Macron opened the door to blocking them to prevent the spread of the calls and blockades, but has ended up backing down. "Its only purpose was to create disorder," assumed the French president, who at the same time recognized "failures of anticipation" in the authorities. Asked about the high number of young people injured during police attacks on high school blockades, Macron also expressed his "compassion" for the victims and described the situation as a "collective failure." However, he also recalled that hundreds of police officers and members of educational personnel have also been injured, stressing that "no demand justifies violence."
Javier Carbonell, researcher at the European Policy Center in Brussels and associate professor at Science Po Paris, explains to 20minutos that everything has changed as a result of networks. "Social networks are very important because I believe that what is happening in the field of demonstration is what has happened a little in the rest of the fields: traditional organizations, which had a traditional organization with their demonstration, with their banner, with their motto, and then create orderly demonstrations, have now seen how networks give space to groups that cause more violence," he comments.
We see another type of mobilization, which has much more to do with destabilization and manipulation in networks.
Now the marches, due to the influence of the networks, are, says Carbonell, "totally spontaneous, in many cases disorganized, in many cases sometimes even called by small groups or simply small ideas that can be put on TikTok or other networks." This diffusion is what causes the demonstrations to end up being massive... but also unpredictable. Social networks also cause uncertainty. "The traditional organization is destroyed and a kind of monster is created as a result of dissemination on networks."
Carbonell's summary is very clear: "Very little is known [about who is behind the marches], but it seems that they are a couple of accounts on TikTok, above all, that create WhatsApp groups, which are created out of nowhere. It is not something that existed or could be talked about a week ago." These groups did not exist and are actually designed to provoke riots. "We see another type of mobilization, which has much more to do with destabilization and manipulation in networks," says the professor.
In that formula, he says, it is difficult to determine whether far-right, far-left movements or even foreign agents are behind it. "They are very fast, very active movements, in which several accounts that were 'sleeping' are suddenly activated, because we know how manipulation works within the networks," explains Carbonell. And there appears the name of Blocus, about whom (or whom) the analyst cannot delve too deeply because, he says, "no one is very clear what exactly he is."
Blocus is, in itself, a label; It was created in France in the framework of student protests, but it was already seen in Germany, Italy and, above all, in the riots that occurred in Barcelona last week. The short videos, digital posters and hashtags that Blocus 'hides' under allow you to quickly share messages and reach users who are not part of structured organizations. That is what ends up generating chaos in the streets.
