From emotion to action: Fear and xenophobic violence of social media land in Ibarra

Abstract

At dawn on January 20, 2019 in the city of Ibarra - Ecuador, citizens organized through social media to terrorise, attack, and throw out Venezuelan migrants from their homes through the slogan of a “social cleansing” immediately after Diana’s femicide Carolina. The objective of this work is to analyze the collective behavior of the social phenomenon that occurred on January 20, 2019. It is proposed to study the case from the perspective of the sociology of the collective action of emotions, the theory of networks and the figuration of the Other, address the xenophobic act and account for the mechanism that produced the mobilization. Anger, anger, and other aggressive emotions do not always represent a compelling approach; they engage protesters in the Bad / Good dilemma. Protesters felt better avoiding this dilemma than having their options restricted because insubordinate emotional expressions are excluded from the start. It is for this reason that social networks legitimize the actions of the attendees and their action was seen as something “good and necessary”, that day the aggressors were heroes.