Does the Spanish 15M have an ideology? Issues of method and measurement

Resumo

The broad aim of this paper is to look into the implications of applying two different methods of research and analytical assumptions to the study of social movements. In order to develop and discuss this aim, I focus my analysis on the emergence of a social movement that impacted Spanish society in 2011: the ‘indignados’ movement 15M. Particularly, in this case, I confront the main conclusions of two different methodological approaches that analyze the emergence of the movement, focusing my interest in the ideological roots of its collective identity. The first approach is mainly based on ethnographic data (Laraña & Díez, 2012a; 2012b) and the second one consists of a statistical macro-analysis. Whereas in the two first works we highlighted the most micro and intersubjective aspects of the social action, through ethnographic techniques, that allowed us to study how the activists organize the actions of the movement, spread their frames and construct its collective identity, this paper mainly focuses on macro statistical data in order to: i) analyze the ideological bases of the movement, ii) compare the results obtained regarding this issue from the both aforementioned approaches, and iii) look at their complementarities.