Nota: puede consultar el resumen del estudio en español, más abajo.

The two leading unions in Spain called for a general strike last 9 March 2012 as a protest against the new Labor Reform approved one day before by the Parliament with the positive votes of the governing party Partido Popular (PP),  and regional parties Convergència i Unió (CiU), UPN and FAC. The new reform was approuved with 197 favorable votes versus 142 votes opposing to it (PSOE, IU, Amaiur, PNV, UPyD, ERC and CC). General strike takes place this 29 march 2012.

Government considers that the rigidities of the legal labor conditions are one the sources of the dramatic surge of unemployment in Spain, 5 million unemployed for a total population of 46 million inhabitants. This is an unemployment rate above 21% of the work force. The labor reform adopted is substantial adn modifies a lot of labor mechanisms that were present for long tiem. The Government assume that this reform will push unemployment higher in the very short term, but will help strongly small and mid size firms to hire new people as soon as economic perspectives become brighter, thanks to the new framework of increased flexibility.

Labor unions consider that the new labor conditions will weaken workers’ rights and will not be useful for creating new jobs. They consider that the measures adopted by the new conservative Government reduce drastically the protection of worker conditions and the stability in the workplace. They call to a first general strike as an justified and necessary mean to force the Government to completely reconsider and revise the measures just adopted.

There are finally some other that are opposed to the labor reforms adopted by the Government, but who will not follow the general strike because they consider that this is not the best way to improve the working conditions and the economic outlook in Spain, due to the weakness of the Spanish economy, the critical pressures from international markets and the need to preserve the international image of Spain in this context of ultimate fight against recession.

See below the official banner and slogan proposed the union  Unión General de los Trabajadores (UGT)

I have my own opinion about the opportunity and the value of the labor reform, and I have my opinion about the opportunity and the value of the general strike. Following the golden rule of this blog, I will not share with the readers my own opinions about this issue. They are not relevant for the readers, they are not relevant for the interpretation of the quantitative analysis proposed in this post and in general in this blog.

We will show in this post what have we learnt about the debate in the social media by applying our Twitter measurment and content analysis techniques.

We have used Twitter content analysis in several of our previous posts. Twitter is a completly open source, that enables a common construction of the communication. All people inside the Twitter community can act as reader and as writter. People can form opinion of any kind of topic and current events, and can try to co-create content, meaning, influence and opinion, by producting tweets with impact, by reinforcing the message channeled by others with retweets (RT) or by increasing the visibility of opinion and content outside the Twitter community by publishing tweets with links to external sources. Twitter is a tool for configuring social opinion about all kind of issues, controversies, political or cultural debates. We do not see any other social source or traditional media playing such a role. We are thus convinced that the social relevance of Twitter (or other eventual new platforms following Twitter configuration) will always increase.

Its relevance is even greater when connected to hot topics linked to events with a deadline or with crisis created by single extraordinary events. This is why we see that the role of Twitter in the design and evolution of all kind of political processes like the electoral campaigns will also increase. Something similar happens with the crisis that we are considering in this post: the call to a general strike by many labor unions, baked by left oriented political parties, like Izquierda Unida (a federation of parties including the Communist Party). PSOE, the Socialist Party and leading opposition party has not baked it officially, but it has shown sympathy and some components of the party like Youth sections support it. PSOE voted against the labor reform at the origin of this crisis. In the other side, there is of course opposition to this strike in the camp of the ruling conservative party PP. As Spain is suffering an extremely severe and long economic crisis, the opportunity of the workers’ protests is a highly divisive issue. A recent poll showed an amost perfect 50/50 division of opinions about supporting/opposing the general strike.

Twitter is thus a very stimulating social media framework to consider and analyse the mood of Twitter users as a proxy for public opinion measurments. Twitter is also a platform for trying to increase awareness about the impact and consequences of the strike, in both sides of the labor and political struggle.

First measure refer to the impact of the debate about the general strike in Twitter, and its evolution. Data since the beginning of March and up to 27 March in the figure below show that the announcement of the call for a general strike (just after three months of the new Government) by 9 March 2012 created a vivid debate in Twitter, as we identified some 22,000 tweets about the topic that day. The intensity of the debate dropped substantially the day after to some 7,300 tweets. The passion for debating about the strike and the reform decreased substantially after the initial surge, and it moved 2,000 and 4,000 tweets per day. This is a sustained but not a hot explosive debate. As expected, number of tweets explode as the protest day appraches. in 27 March the barrier of 10,000 tweets was broken again.

General strike was lanuched by labor unions against the current Government economic policies and labor reforms. Union act as active promotors of the protests, and the Govern appear in the dispute as passive actor. Organizations defending corporation owners interests are also directly affected by this dispute, but they also play a secondary role as workers attack is not directly oriented to emoployers but to Government decisions. Initiative corresponds to the unions. We have monitored the presence in Twitter of the main institutional players. We have given a value 100 to the number of mentions received by unions (as a general term, ‘sindicatos’, not as individual unions).

According to our results, labor unions lead clearly the debate in the social media, as if they take value 100, the references to Government in the context fo the general strike just reach a value 30. Governmet as such is viewed as the main opposing body to labor union demands, as the ministry in charge with the labor reforms, the ‘Ministro de Fomento’ just reaches a value 9. Our results also confirm that employers’ organizations will play a minor role in the social media debate, as the one representing big corporations (CEOE) takes value 9, while the one represeinting the interests of small and mid size firms obtain just 1 point. It receives 100 less social media attention in Twitter than labor unions.

The outcome of the general strike is crucial for the interests of the labor unions. The extent of the success in terms of social mobilization will probably not be decissive for influencing the decisions of the Spanish Government in the short term (remember that the ruling conservative party Partido Popular counts with a strong Parliamentary majority and that, in contrast with some previous labor reforms, it has counted with the positive votes coming from other parliamentary perties). The degree of economic paralization of the country will be probably decissive for gauging how strong is the support that the labor union have to continue in the next future their fight against labor reforms and the opposition to the economic decisions taken by the conservative Government.

In a sense, and in the framework of analysis of our blog, UGT and CC.OO. have created a crisis with their call of a general strike, that it is also a reputation crisis for the credibility of the role and strenght of the labor unions as antagonic reference to the conservative Government. There is much in stake for the unions in this strike.

We present in the following figure the impact of the call for a general strike in the joint social media visibility of the leading unions UGT and CC.OO in Twitter. We have gieven a value 1 to the average daily visibility in Twitter before the announcement of the strike.

Unions increases their visibility in Twitter community by 132 times the day the call for the strike was announced. After this their visibility has moved between a minimum of 4-5 times over normal times, to a range10-25 in the majority of days. These results reflect how important is the current general strike for unions, as the attention is concentrated on them in an extraordinary path. Many people in the social media will fix their position about the role and relevanece of labor unions in the context of the current economic crisis based in the results of 29 March strike.

(content in English coming)

As this issue is specialy relevant for people in Spain, we show below a summary of our main findings in Spanish.

RESUMEN

HUELGA GENERAL 29M EN ESPAÑA. EL DEBATE EN LAS REDES SOCIALES. UN ANÁLISIS DE CONTENIDO DE TWITTER

El rápido crecimiento de Twitter entre los usuarios en España convierte a esta plataforma social en un vehículo cada vez más relevante de debate político y de difusión de ideas. La movilización social y el impacto final de la huelga pueden verse influenciados por las tendencias que se generen en las redes sociales con respecto a la opinión dominante sobre la reforma social, las mejores vías para salir de la crisis y la oportunidad y necesidad de una huelga general. Partidarios y opositores ala huelga general inciden directamente sobre el estado de opinión en las redes sociales. Twitter convierte a los usuarios no sólo en consumidores de información y opinión, sino también en protagonistas activos de la creación de opinión social.

Los resultados del estudio indican que la convocatoria de la huelga generó un fuerte debate social, pero de corta duración. La convocatoria de la huelga por parte de los sindicatos mayoritarios generó 22.000 tuits durante el 8 de marzo. Se superaron los 7.000 tuits el día siguiente. El interés en las redes sociales decreció notablemente a partir de ese momento, puesto que en las dos semanas siguientes el flujo diario osciló entre 2000 y 4000 mensajes. Lógicamente, en los días previos a la huelga el interés vuelve a dispararse, y el martes 27 de marzo se volvió a superar la cifra de los 10.000 tuits.

El análisis de contenidos de Twitter muestra también que los sindicatos son los protagonistas principales en el debate sobre la huelga en las redes sociales. Si se da un valor 100 a las menciones recibidas por sindicatos, obtenemos que las menciones directas al Gobierno alcanzan 30 puntos, el Ministerio de Fomento recibe 8 puntos y la patronal CEOE obtiene 9 puntos.

Si analizamos las menciones expresas a sindicatos, constatamos que Comisiones Obreras (CC.OO) se ha convertido en la organización sindical de referencia en las redes sociales desde que el pasado 9 de marzo anunció la convocatoria de una huelga general para el 29 de marzo, junto con UGT.

CC.OO recibe el 50,1% de las menciones publicadas en Twitter referentes al papel de los sindicatos en la próxima huelga general. UGT, el otro sindicato mayoritario ocupa la segunda posición, con 35,2%. El resto de los sindicatos han jugado un papel minoritario en la movilización a través de las redes sociales: CNT genera 3,4% de las menciones, por 3% de ELA y 1,9% de LAB.

CC.OO ha forjado su presencia dominante en el debate en las redes sociales sobre la huelga general gracias a su presencia más sostenida en Twitter en la última semana. Los resultados sugieren que las bases sindicales de Comisiones Obreras han utilizado de una manera mucho más activa que UGT las nuevas oportunidades de comunicación política y laboral que aportan redes sociales como Twitter.

Un dato relevante del estudio del contenido de los mensajes en Twitter es que cae notablemente el peso sobre la reforma laboral en el debate sobre la huelga general. En la semana del anuncio de la convocatoria, 10,1% de los tuits se referían explícitamente al papel de la reforma laboral. En la última semana esta proporción ha caído al 5,2%. Esta tendencia sugiere que los sindicatos pueden encontrar problemas de comunicación para transmitir las razones y objetivos que les llevaron a convocar la huelga: el debate está pasando de la reforma laboral al propio papel de los sindicatos.

En el informe sobre ‘El seguimiento del debate sobre la huelga general del 29 de marzo en Twitter’ se lleva a cabo un innovador análisis para identificar los medios más influyentes en las redes sociales.

Los mensajes en Twitter permiten que el usuario haga un enlace a fuentes externas a Twitter. Muchos usuarios refuerzan sus opiniones y posiciones proponiendo la lectura de noticias o análisis on-line.

MRI Universidad de Navarra ha elaborado el ranking de los medios de comunicación más influyentes en las redes sociales sobre la huelga general, basado en el número total de enlaces a artículos publicados en sus redacciones, referidos explícitamente a la huelga general, desde su convocatoria.

Las mediciones se refieren al período 8 al 27 de marzo de 2012.

Los resultados indican que el media más influyente ha sido El País. Ha conseguido que se enlacen sus artículos un total de 1642 veces. En segunda posición, a gran distancia, se sitúa Público.es con 630 menciones, que ahora cuenta sólo con su versión online. La tercera posición es para el gratuito 20 Minutos (588) menciones, la cuarta para El Mundo (526 menciones) y la quinta para ABC (512 menciones).

Por tipo de fuente, los periódicos con base tradicional son la primera referencia, ya que generan el 41,4% de todas las menciones. Los medios puramente digitales son la segunda fuente, con un 17,2% de menciones. La tercera fuente son los blogs generados por los propios usuarios, con 16,4%.

Seguimiento de la huelga en twitter

En el gráfico siguiente se muestra la visibilidad de la huelga general en Twitter, con datos que se irán actualizando progresivamente. En estos momentos contiene los datos de seguimiento en Twitter hasta las 13h del 29 de marzo.

Para facilitar la toma de perspectiva, incluimos en la gráfico la evolución de las menciones desde el inicio del 28 de marzo. El índice toma un valor 1 para la media horaria de tuits publicados a lo largo del 28 de marzo. En las horas previas al inicio oficial de la huelga se disparó el tráfico sobre el tema ya que de 23 a 24h el índice alcanzó un primer pico de 3,7 puntos. Las horas nocturnas implican lógicamente una disminución del ritmo de mensajes, con un nivel mínimo de 0,4 entre las 5h y las 6h de la madrugada. Observamos un crecimiento sostenido de la movilización y del debate a partir de las 6h. El tráfico entre las 12h y las 13h genera un nuevo máximo provisional de 4,9 puntos.

A partir de las 15h está cayendo fuertemente la intensidad del debate en Twitter alrededor de la huelga general. A las 19h se sitúa en 1,1 puntos.

Mostramos a continuación el resultado de un análisis llevado a cabo por Paradigma Labs, de análisis de contenido de mensajes en Twitter, para el blog especializado Financial Red. Se trata de 180.000 tuits referidos directamente a la huelga general. Puede acceder aquí (fuente: financialRed) al blog original en el que hace un comentario somero de los resultados.