Social media: the perfect ally for manifestations

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Twitter and Facebook became tools for the protests for education in Colombia and the manifestations of the "yellow vests" in France

Student’s manifestations

In the Colombian student marches, where they asked for a bigger budget and investment for education in the country, as well as the most recent protests of the "yellow vests" against the increase of the prices of the gasoline and the low social policy of the French government, social networks managed to help unify different sectors in the same cause: social protest.

Leer en español: Redes sociales: el aliado para las protestas en Francia y Colombia

In France’s case, the protests caused President Emmanuel Macron to reverse the fuel tax. On the other hand, in Colombia, Ivan Duque, through his Minister of Education, managed to hold meetings to negotiate with the students an exit to the crisis that public education is going through. So, the question arises: what role did social networks play in both cases?

The student march of Colombia on Twitter

The hashtags # LaEsperanzaEsLaEducación (Education is hope), #MarchaPorLaEducación (protest for education), # SOSUniversidadPública (SOS public university) and #Educación (Education) managed to unify hundreds of Twitter users who marched on October 10, demanding greater resources from the government for the public university, "a budget that was cut back since 1992 and that today has left as a result a deficit of around $ 16 billion ", highlights El Heraldo.

Among the protesters, there was the presence of teachers and administrators of different educational institutions. Twitter became a window to inform the development of the march and its reasons, at least to that Colombian society that has access to the Internet.

For two months the marches for education seized the Colombian streets. However, the pressure exercised both in social networks and in the cities of the country by the education sector, led Duque’s government hold 10 meetings with the student leaders.

In these, they agreed, according to a recent interview made by El Tiempo with the student leader, Álex Flórez and a student at the University of Medellín, "that in the Law of financing will be expressed that teachers will resume the tax situation they had before to the year 2016; it will create a budgetary base for these institutions (technical, technological and university that are not of a university nature, but are public) and will begin to receive resources from the Nation and reform Icetex."

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The protests of the "yellow vests"

The movement of the "yellow vests" that has managed to give a hard time to the president of France, Emmanuel Macron, was made known with great force following a video published on Facebook on October 18 by Jacline Mouraud, a Frenchwoman who denounced that Macron was going to raise the gas tax and that his social policies are very weak.

The video went viral and was shared in different accounts and Facebook groups, detonating the power of the "yellow vests". These grew little by little, but they have neither had a leader nor a place of concentration because they are workers and people of limited resources who live in the peripheries of France.

Macron's response to the "yellow vests"

When the fourth weekend of protests with over 137,000 "yellow vests" was completed, Emmanuel Macron decided to announce some urgent measures with the aim of appeasing not only the protests but also responding in social matters to the request of those who consider that the government does not think of the French on foot.

The measures were to raise the minimum wage 100 euros, remove taxes on overtime and a tax relief for retirees who earn less than 2,000 euros per month. The return of the tax on fortunes was not approved, reports France 24.

LatinAmerican Post | Edwin Gustavo Guerrero Nova

Translated from: 'Redes sociales: el aliado para las protestas en Francia y Colombia'