Paper Short Abstract:

This paper aims to analyze, through a hashtag network, the digital activism of an Indigenous organization from the Amazonia (COICA) in the context of COVID-19 to see how the use of social networks has evolved in this indigenous organization as a new form of political activism.

Paper Abstract:

This paper presents the results of a digital ethnography on the social networks of the Coordinator of Indigenous Organizations of the Amazon Basin (COICA) on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. For the results, I will present a hashtag network to analyze the digital activism carried out by this indigenous organization, specifically in three periods: October 2019 – February 2020 (pre-COVID-19), March 2020 – July 2020 (COVID-19), and July 2021 – November 2021 (post-COVID-19). I chose these three periods to see if and to what extent the COVID-19 pandemic affected the digital activism of this transnational indigenous organization. The findings show that as of March 2020, the publications in the different social networks increased, as well as online activities such as webinars, while this indigenous organization began to implement other tools for their digital activism, such as podcasts and digital magazines.

With this, I aim to discuss how Indigenous Peoples have been using different technologies, specifically the Internet, for new forms of political activism, seeking new ways for their voices to be heard.