Publication

This paper connects political opportunity structure theory with scholarly advances on the behavior of social movements on the internet. It does this in an attempt to understand the impact of a political regime on the strategies that movements opposed to a regime use on the internet. Relying on website analysis and semi-structured interviews with activists of two organizations of Chávez’s opposition in Venezuela and two organizations of the Indignados movement in Spain, the study concludes that the type of regime present does not impact the use of the internet by the opposing social movements. It does, however, affect mobilization strategies.