CARACAS, Venezuela — Much of Caracas and other cities slowed to a Sunday crawl on Friday as many Venezuelans heeded the opposition’s call for a general strike, a step in its campaign to force a referendum to remove President Nicolás Maduro.

Some stores were closed, traffic was light and students stayed away from private schools and universities. But the strike was a considerably weaker show of strength than the opposition had succeeded in mobilizing on Wednesday, when protesters poured into the streets here in the capital, and other major cities.

Both sides took to social media to try to influence the public’s impression of the 12-hour strike’s effectiveness. Opposition leaders began the day by posting Twitter messages with photographs and video of empty streets and unfilled seats on rush-hour subway trains. “Empty streets like the stomachs of Venezuelans,” Luis Florido, an opposition legislator, said in a message.

The government, for its part, sent out images suggesting a busy workday: scenes of a bicycle factory, a glass plant, children playing chess at school and office workers holding up signs declaring, “I work for the homeland.”