¿Quién dió la orden? Mediations for social change, affects and digital media

Abstract: In 2019,  Movice and CT created a mural that depicts faces of  high-ranking military officers who were in command when more than 6.000 civilians were killed by soldiers and were presented as guerilla members. After being censored by the military, the mural was reproduced on hundreds of walls in Colombia and other cities such as  New York, Berlin, Paris. On Twitter, the hashtag was used at least three times a day for two years.  Then, how could the contents of ¿Quién dio la orden? (Who gave the order? - WGO)  contribute to social change in the digital society while others go unnoticed? Through in-depth interviews and online participant observation, the organisational practices that produced WGO and the practices of social appropriation are analysed. In particular, the role played by affects and connective action. The research approach is from a non-media-centric perspective, a holistic view of the online/offline communication process of meaning-making. The study relies on the Latin American Theory of Mediations with some components from the theories of Collective Action, Connective Action and Affective Intensity. The findings mainly show that, first, the production of WGO was a permanent negotiation of collective meanings to reach the common goal. Second, WGO was appropriate when the citizens participated in the production of WGO and were able to  identify themselves subjectively. Third, the production of WGO increased affective intensities that triggered exchanges of discourse and action between diverse groups of social actors. In terms of social change, the alternative narrative of WGO was partially legitimised for Colombian society, turning it into a collective referent that challenged the hegemonic narrative of “rotten apples”.