🤖 AI Summary
This study examines the ecology of digital disability activism on Twitter within Latin American contexts. Drawing on a dataset of over 18,000 tweets tagged with #disability, the authors construct a mention network and employ social network analysis, graph-theoretic modeling, and visualization via Gephi using the Force Atlas 2 algorithm. Findings reveal a highly fragmented online discourse in which women activists occupy central positions and collaborate closely with institutional actors such as the ONCE Foundation, forming critical support hubs that have garnered political and institutional attention. The research elucidates gendered advocacy patterns and organizational synergies, thereby advancing understanding of disability-related digital activism in the Global South.
📝 Abstract
The dissemination and viralization of information on social media has been widely studied from various perspectives, including that of digital activism. On the other hand, disability-related activism has conquered the online environment, thus obtaining a reach that goes beyond the offline space and generating dialogue in the digital sphere. This article analyses the conversation generated on Twitter, taking as a sample all the tweets with the #disability hashtag before and after the International Day of Persons with Disabilities. More than 18,000 tweets, containing almost as many mentions, were analysed and interpreted as the weighted edges of a graph created using Gephi software and applying the Force Atlas 2 brute force algorithm. The focus was placed on the conversational communities generated around that hashtag, their main themes and the prominent participants in them. In conclusion, although the network of mentions is very dispersed, Twitter is the setting for assertions that receive certain institutional and political support in the Latin American environment, for organisations related to the cause (such as the ONCE Foundation) and, above all, the clear predominance of female activists.