Browsing by Author "Toro, Sergio"

Now showing 1 - 6 of 6
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    Amplifying Counter-Public Spheres on Social Media: News Sharing of Alternative Versus Traditional Media After the 2019 Chilean Uprising
    (2022) Luna, Juan Pablo; Toro, Sergio; Valenzuela, Sebastian
    While much research exists on the role of digital media use in protest movements, few studies compare the long-term impact of protests on online use of alternative and mainstream digital media. This holds particularly true in countries of the global south. Our study addresses this knowledge gap by examining the massive demonstrations that occurred in Chile on 18 October 2019. Based on data from 1,221,487 Facebook posts from 31 media outlets collected 10 months before and after the protests, we detected significant discontinuities in users' interactions with news content. Whereas both media types display different baseline levels, for alternative media, the time series reflects a "step" type of shock-a long-lasting increase in news sharing-whereas for mainstream media, it is a "pulse" type of shock-a burst of interactions that quickly returned to pre-existing levels. These results suggest that social media users relied on alternative news media to amplify counterpublic spheres in Chile.
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    Delayed and Approved: A Quantitative Study of Conflicts and the Environmental Impact Assessments of Energy Projects in Chile 2012-2017
    (MDPI, 2021) Huneeus, Sebastian; Toro, Sergio; Luna, Juan Pablo; Sazo, Diego; Cruz, Andres; Alcatruz, Daniel; Castillo, Bryan; Bertranou, Camila; Cisterna, Javier
    The Sistema de Evaluacion de Impacto Ambiental (Environmental Impact Assessment System-SEIA) evaluates all projects potentially harmful to human health and the environment in Chile. Since its establishment, many projects approved by the SEIA have been contested by organized communities, especially in the energy sector. The question guiding our research is whether socio-environmental conflicts affect the evaluation times and the approval rates of projects under assessment. Using a novel database comprising all energy projects assessed by the SEIA, we analyzed 380 energy projects that entered the SEIA review process between 2012 and 2017 and matched these projects with protest events. Using linear and logit regression, we find no association between the occurrence of protests aimed at specific projects and the probability of project approval. We do, however, find that projects associated with the occurrence of protest events experience significantly longer review times. To assess the robustness of this finding, we compare two run-of-river plants proposed in Mapuche territory in Chile's La Araucania region. We discuss the broader implications of these findings for sustainable environmental decision making.
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    Learning to cluster urban areas: two competitive approaches and an empirical validation
    (2022) Vera Villa, Camila; Lucchini Wortzman, Francesca; Bro, Naim; Mendoza Rocha, Marcelo; Löbel Díaz, Hans-Albert; Gutiérrez, Felipe; Dimter, Jan; Cuchacovic, Gabriel; Reyes, Axel; Valdivieso López, Hernán Felipe; Alvarado Monardez, Nicolás; Toro, Sergio
    Urban clustering detects geographical units that are internally homogeneous and distinct from their surroundings. It has applications in urban planning, but few studies compare the effectiveness of different methods. We study two techniques that represent two families of urban clustering algorithms: Gaussian Mixture Models (GMMs), which operate on spatially distributed data, and Deep Modularity Networks (DMONs), which work on attributed graphs of proximal nodes. To explore the strengths and limitations of these techniques, we studied their parametric sensitivity under different conditions, considering the spatial resolution, granularity of representation, and the number of descriptive attributes, among other relevant factors. To validate the methods, we asked residents of Santiago, Chile, to respond to a survey comparing city clustering solutions produced using the different methods. Our study shows that DMON is slightly preferred over GMM and that social features seem to be the most important ones to cluster urban areas.
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    Much Ado About Facebook? Evidence from 80 Congressional Campaigns in Chile
    (ROUTLEDGE JOURNALS, TAYLOR & FRANCIS LTD, 2021) Luna, Juan Pablo; Perez, Cristian; Toro, Sergio; Rosenblatt, Fernando; Poblete, Barbara; Valenzuela, Sebastián; Cruz, Andres; Bro, Naim; Alcatruz, Daniel; Escobar, Andrea
    How do political candidates combine social media campaign tools with on-the-ground political campaigns to pursue segmented electoral strategies? We argue that online campaigns can reproduce and reinforce segmented electoral appeals. Furthermore, our study suggests that electoral segmentation remains a broader phenomenon that includes social media as but one of many instruments by which to appeal to voters. To test our argument, we analyze the case of the 2017 legislative elections in Chile. We combine an analysis of Facebook and online electoral campaign data from 80 congressional campaigns that competed in three districts with ethnographic sources (i.e., campaigns observed on the ground and in-depth interviews with candidates). The results of this novel study suggest that intensive online campaigning mirrors offline segmentation.
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    Parties and Party Systems in Latin America: Perspectives from an Expert Survey 2009
    (PONTIFICIA UNIV CATOLICA CHILE, INST CIENCIA POLITICA, 2009) Altman, David; Pablo Luna, Juan; Pineiro, Rafael; Toro, Sergio
    This research note presents a classification of Latin American parties and party systems, according to mainstream ideological currents and country-specific competitive patterns. This classification is based on a preliminary analysis of the results of an expert survey on Latin American party systems that was carried out from 2007 to 2009. We factor-analyze parties' positions on a wide set of issues and estimate three (talent) ideological dimensions: statism, conservatism (moral, religious, nationalist), and attitudes towards democracy. On the basis of these three ideological dimensions we perform a cluster analysis and classify the political parties of the region in ten "ideological families".
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    Telar and TelarKG: Data-Driven Insights into Chile’s Constitutional Process
    (2024) Angles, Renzo; Bro, Naim; Donoso Guzman, Ivania Nadine; Luna Farina, Juan Pablo; Hogan, Aidan; Reutter De La Maza, Juan Lorenzo; Rosales-Méndez, Henry; Toro, Sergio