Ten days after the first session of the Constituent Convention, this week was marked by the creation of commissions, by the health protocol and, in the past few hours, by the imprisonment of two constitutional delegates of the People’s List.

One of the topics to be defined in the Convention this week was the health protocol that the organization will follow in the context of the coronavirus pandemic. On Tuesday afternoon, a proposal drafted by the Medical Association, the Chilean Society of Epidemiology and the Chilean Society of Health was approved.

In addition, the ground rules for the convention were approved on Wednesday, July 14. The creation of three commissions to regulate the organization was approved. An External Attributions Committee was create, as well as the Regulation Committee, the Ethics Committee, and the Budget and Internal Administration Committee.

Lastly, on Thursday, July 15 in the afternoon, the constituent delegates Alejandra Pérez and Manuel Woldarsky were imprisoned while they demonstrated supporting those detained in the October protests. The president Elisa Loncón announced on her Twitter account that the directive table of the Convention was present at the third police station in Santiago to support the liberation of the delegates detained.

In the Digital Debate, we analyzed the movements and content of the publications made on Twitter related to the constituent process from Monday at midnight until Wednesday, July 15 at 3pm. The frequency of tweets per hour reached its peak on July 13 at 11pm, with 6,232 publications, due to controversial comments made by Jorge Baradit. The district 10 delegate stated that, because of the aggressions against the RN delegates Rugero Cozzi and Luciano Silva, it “seems convenient that they now suffer a little of what we Chileans have been suffering since the protests: persecution, violence and repression on the streets”. That statement was widely criticized, and Jorge Baradit apologized on the following day. The tweets responding to that statement reached a significant number of retweets and replies.

The second highest peak was reached today at 2pm, with 5,727 tweets, by the publication containing the news of the detention of the two People’s List delegates that were detained at the Plaza de Armas in Santiago.

The words mentioned the most frequency on the tweets were “chile”, “derecha” (right wing) and “mesa” (table). The map also showed words related to other concepts associated with the week’s events, such as “reglamento” (regulations), “comisión” (commission), “comisiones” (commissions), “funcionamiento” (working hours), “baradit”, “proceso” (process), “normas” (norms) and “prensa” (press). The word “rechazo” (rejection) appeared again in the cloud, and the delegates mentioned the most frequently besides Baradit were Teresa Marinovic and Elisa Loncón.

The most repeated hashtags in the tweets were related to television programs, similar to what happened in other analysis. The hashtags used the most were #mentirasverdaderas, #disputaconvencionalmv, #contigochv, #debatechilevamos and #hagamoslapega.

The community map constructed using the accounts and their connections shows a clear dispersion between the left- and right-wing communities. The most influential accounts in this analysis were Teresa Marinovic, the vice president of the table, Jaime Bassa, and the president, Elisa Loncón. The accounts of members of the table have remained influential in many analyses of the Digital Debate.

Methodological Note:

The search was carried out through the platform Trendsmap using the following query: (constituyente OR constituyentes OR constitucional OR constitución OR constitucion OR convencion OR convención OR convencionales OR convencional) OR ( #convencionconstituyente OR #convenciónconstituyente OR #convencionconstitucional OR #convenciónconstitucional OR #convencion OR #convención).

* The Digital Democracy Room is a project of FGV DAPP in Brazil in partnership with Chequeado, Espacio Público, Linterna Verde and Ojo Público. It’s goal is to monitor and analyze the digital conversations regarding the electoral context.

The analysis is available the website of Espacio Público here.