{"id":32271,"date":"2016-11-11T08:00:11","date_gmt":"2016-11-11T11:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rioonwatch.org\/?p=32271"},"modified":"2017-02-04T08:38:15","modified_gmt":"2017-02-04T11:38:15","slug":"how-has-o-globos-coverage-of-rocinha-changed-since-2009","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/?p=32271","title":{"rendered":"How Has O Globo’s Coverage of Rocinha Changed Since 2009?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Clique aqui para Portugu\u00eas\"\"<\/em><\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Rio de Janeiro’s favelas are recognized by foreigners and Brazilians alike for an array of unique and often contradicting qualities: highly visible on Rio\u2019s urban landscape, they serve as emblematic reminders of the stark wealth disparities of the Marvelous City. Frequently the subject of media representations<\/a>, favelas are recognized both for their cultural<\/a> contributions to the city, as well\u00a0as for violence<\/a>. Indeed, the drug trafficking organizations that operate within some\u00a0favelas clash periodically with each other, police or militias,\u00a0often garnering media attention. Because of the social stigmatization<\/a> of these favelas as spaces of danger and poverty<\/a>, a rigid conceptual divide<\/a> exists between the asfalto<\/em>, or the formal parts of the city, and the favela, which is both reflected and reinforced by media representations of the violence<\/a> within these communities.<\/p>\n

The 2016 Olympic Games<\/a> in Rio de Janeiro brought a dramatic increase in international media attention<\/a>\u00a0to the city, throwing\u00a0a spotlight on many aspects of the marvelous city, and prompting augmented public scrutiny of many of the city\u2019s problems associated with\u00a0inequality<\/a> and poverty<\/a>. With this scrutiny came increased pressure on the Brazilian government to showcase Rio de Janeiro in a positive light. In particular, during the lead up to the mega-event, numerous international media sources focused increased attention on favelas<\/a>, reporting stories of violence and discussing\u00a0the often negative role of police in these communities.<\/p>\n

In this changing global media landscape, I\u00a0sought to examine whether the Brazilian media\u2019s representations of favelas also changed. My study\u00a0analyzed the prominent Brazilian newspaper O Globo<\/a><\/em>, examining the paper\u2019s coverage of Rocinha<\/a>. Rocinha is one of the largest and most densely populated\u00a0favelas in all of South America, with population estimates ranging from 101,000 to some 300,000. Because of its location in Rio’s wealthy South Zone<\/a>, Rocinha receives\u00a0significant attention from the media, government, and foreigners alike, and is thus an apt\u00a0choice for an analysis of media representations of favelas.<\/p>\n

O Globo<\/em> is known for political conservatism<\/a> and pro-government bias, evidenced by its support of the Brazilian dictatorship of the 1960s-1980s and its continued endorsement of conservative government activities today. Its\u00a0coverage of favelas traditionally reflects certain class prejudices<\/a>\u00a0that endear it to its largely middle and upper class\u00a0reader base. As the principal newspaper of the largest media network\u00a0in the nation, O\u00a0Globo<\/em> is highly influential. For all these reasons it\u00a0thus served as a useful subject for an examination of changes in media representations of favelas<\/a> as a response to the Olympic Games.<\/p>\n

The study selected two sample date ranges for a cross comparison of O\u00a0Globo<\/em>\u2019s representations of Rocinha. The first date range selected, January 2009 to December 2009, established a baseline of O<\/em>\u00a0Globo<\/em>\u2019s coverage of the favela prior to and during the announcement that Rio would host the 2016\u00a0Olympics. The second date range, January 2015 to February 2016, provided a sufficient window for comparison. Within each time period, an average of 18 articles were qualitatively analyzed for their coverage of subjects like violence, favela residents, and favela expansion. These findings were then compared to assess how, if at all, O<\/em>\u00a0Globo<\/em>\u00a0shifted its rhetoric around the favela\u00a0in the pre-Olympic years.<\/p>\n

Period 1: January 2009 – December 2009<\/h3>\n

\"Globo<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Infographic<\/a>Analysis of the first date range of O<\/em>\u00a0Globo<\/em> articles found that the paper emphasized two major discussions: Rocinha\u2019s expansion and the ongoing conflict between drug traffickers<\/a> and police<\/a>. O<\/em>\u00a0Globo<\/em> tended to under represent\u00a0favela residents themselves in its analysis of events in Rocinha, and primarily portrayed the space as a center of problems like violence and poverty. Frequent reports catalogued the sporadic outbreaks of violence between police and traffickers. For example, a police raid of Rocinha in March 2009 generated a cluster of detailed articles on the statistics of the police operation, which involved 300 police officers, the seizure of 200 kilos of gunpowder and 1 ton of marijuana, the arrest of six “bandits,” and the deaths of three “suspects.”\u00a0Graphic images of the operation such as the one above accompany these articles, in which the identity of the body in the photo is not specified. Another article (“Rocinha: pol\u00edcia estoura refinarias do tr\u00e1fico<\/em><\/a>“) put the details of a police operation into an infographic to help explain and highlight key data.<\/p>\n

The other topic of frequent coverage\u2013Rocinha\u2019s expansion into the forest\u2013was frequently framed through the lens of either overpopulation or of\u00a0environmental degradation\u00a0around the favela, rather than, for example, the unmet need for housing this expansion represented. Reporters presented concrete details and factual descriptions about the favela\u2019s expansion; for instance, in April 2009, an article titled \u201cAlmost 50 houses bored into the eco-limit of Rocinha\u201d (\u201cQuase 50 casas \u2018furaram\u2019 ecolimite da Rocinha<\/em><\/a>“) describes the \u201cinvasion\u201d of 48 families into the forest surrounding Rocinha, emphasizing it as\u00a0an ecological area that \u201cmust be preserved.\u201d Other times concrete statistics give way to subjectivity; for instance, five different articles use the word\u00a0\u201cdisorderly\u201d<\/a> to describe Rocinha\u2019s expansion.<\/p>\n

Follow-up reports<\/a> on the favela\u2019s growth<\/a>\u00a0chronicle a month-long debate<\/a> over a proposal to build a three-meter high concrete wall (repeatedly referred to as an “eco-limit”) around the perimeter of Rocinha to control the outward expansion of the community, a proposal which was vocally supported by residents of the wealthy neighboring high-rise community S\u00e3o Conrado<\/a>. In May, the president of the S\u00e3o Conrado Neighborhood Association\u00a0published an article<\/a> in the O<\/em>\u00a0Globo<\/em>\u00a0opinion section in which he called the new housing constructions in Rocinha a form of \u201cenvironmental degradation.\u201d When the plans for the wall around Rocinha were eventually changed after protests and resistance by Rocinha residents, an O<\/em>\u00a0Globo<\/em> reporter referred to a meeting among Rocinha\u2019s community leaders opposing the wall as \u201cinflammatory political discourse<\/a>.\u201d In all, reports on Rocinha during 2009 discuss\u00a0the violence, conflict, and controversy in the community during this time, and marginalize the point of view of the favela’s residents in their representations.<\/p>\n

Period 2: January 2015 – February 2016<\/h3>\n

In the second date range, O<\/em>\u00a0Globo<\/em>\u2019s representations of Rocinha underwent a dramatic sanitization from their previously explicit portrayals of the violence and expansion of the favela. With less\u00a0coverage of police raids and population growth, a majority of articles instead focused on human interest stories and community improvement initiatives within Rocinha, bringing in the voices\u00a0of favela residents. Despite their newfound inclusion in the newspaper\u2019s representations of Rocinha, favela residents were tokenized<\/a>\u00a0by O<\/em>\u00a0Globo. <\/em>In the context of the state’s heavily branded Pacifying Police Units (UPP)<\/a> program which had been launched in the community in 2012<\/a>, the stories of encounters with violence, and moreover any negative aspects of favela life, were all but erased from the paper\u2019s representations.<\/p>\n

For example, one February 2016 article profiled a champion tennis player<\/a> from Rocinha who had won a national title and returned to the favela to open a sports school<\/a>. The reporter includes a quote from the athlete, who says that tennis \u201chelped [him] to have discipline and education, and to stay far away from violence,\u201d and notes that the school provides \u201can opportunity for Rocinha to create athletes and citizens.\u201d The last sentence of the article includes a brief reference to a conversation between the tennis instructor and police officers from the Rocinha UPP.<\/p>\n

\"Globo<\/a><\/p>\n

Another O<\/em>\u00a0Globo<\/em> article published in February 2015 discussed the youth population<\/a> in Rocinha, including testimonials from residents about the future of the education<\/a> and health<\/a> systems in their community. Clearly taken from within the favela, the accompanying photograph shows the interview subjects head-on, with the rooftops of Rocinha rising up behind them into the distant background. Photos like the one above, with the faces and names of favela residents transparently presented to the O<\/em>\u00a0Globo<\/em> readership, have no equivalents in the 2009 date range.<\/p>\n

Favela residents were also\u00a0quoted in\u00a0coverage of subjects\u00a0indirectly related to Rocinha. For example, in a February 2015 article on the extension of Rio\u2019s metro line<\/a>, the reporter mentioned 20 Rocinha residents who were invited to visit the project site alongside the State Transport Secretary. The article highlighted the benefits residents would receive from the project due to their close proximity to the metro line and their new access to the city. In contrast, it was rare to see articles during the 2009 date range that included Rocinha residents’ voices in broader discussions beyond the boundaries of their community.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, coverage of violence all but disappeared from O<\/em>\u00a0Globo<\/em>\u2019s representations of Rocinha. Only one article<\/a> in the second period\u00a0analyzed mentioned an act of violence perpetrated in the favela. Others discussed the UPP\u00a0that was installed in the favela in 2012<\/a>, but only in general terms. A typical description of the UPP portrayed the new police forces<\/a> as \u201canswering the community\u2019s demand\u201d and \u201cretaking the territory\u201d that had been the subject of \u201cdecades of abandonment.\u201d In July 2015, an O<\/em>\u00a0Globo<\/em> article on UPPs across the city<\/a> said\u00a0the police forces were\u00a0responsible for saving almost 1,000 lives, lowering homicide rates by 65%, reducing\u00a0deaths resulting from police action by 85%, and winning the support of community members that they protected. No testimonial from a resident was invoked to support this claim.<\/p>\n

Comparing 2009 and\u00a02015\/16<\/h3>\n

Between the two date ranges, O<\/em>\u00a0Globo<\/em> moved from in-depth reporting on the conflict between drug traffickers and the State and the expansion of the favela to a much more light hearted\u00a0discourse, reducing its coverage of violence and supplanting this news with softer coverage of human interest stories and community improvement programs that highlighted\u00a0Rocinha as a safe community. This shift affected its representations of Rocinha\u00a0residents, who were previously excluded from mention by the paper but in 2015 gained a presence when their words and activities were used to bolster government policies. At the same time, the\u00a0drug trafficking groups that\u00a0continued to operate within the favela and clash with police<\/a>\u00a0received relatively little coverage in the second period. By excluding these stories from its representation of Rocinha, the paper failed to holistically portray the realities of life for many favela residents, who continue\u00a0caught in the midst of a power struggle between the two conflicting forces in their community.<\/p>\n

In the place of its previous critiques and sensationalism of violence and expansion in Rocinha, O\u00a0Globo<\/em> pivoted its approach to instead focus on the positive gains made by residents and government programs in the community. What could have accounted for these changes in discourse? The need to show off the city’s attributes with the approaching Olympics? Marketing of the UPP policing program<\/a>? Or perhaps a combination?<\/p>\n

Regardless of the reason for shifts\u00a0in the discourse around Rocinha, these alterations reflect a new conceptualization of favelas in the eyes of both the Brazilian media and its readership. If the 2016 Olympic Games did indeed condition a change in the discourse<\/a> around these communities, what will happen to the public image of informal settlements like Rocinha now that the Games are over and\u00a0the world’s attention is no longer on Rio?<\/p>\n

Suzanne Caflisch holds a Bachelor of Arts in Peace and Conflict Studies from the University of California, Berkeley. Upon graduation she was awarded the University of California Human Rights Center Fellowship, and is currently working in partnership with the Brazilian non-profit organization Instituto Promundo on researching social norms around the practice of sexual exploitation of children and adolescents in Rio de Janeiro.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Clique aqui para Portugu\u00eas Rio de Janeiro’s favelas are recognized by foreigners and Brazilians alike for an array of unique and often contradicting qualities: highly visible on Rio\u2019s urban landscape, they serve as emblematic reminders […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":32745,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1736,1463,1282,1329],"tags":[390,23,1845,1900,1366,5,15,740,12,156,453,1385],"writer":[2202],"translator":[],"illustrator":[],"photographer":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-32271","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-1736","8":"category-perceptions","9":"category-research-analysis","10":"category-by-international-observers","11":"tag-globo","12":"tag-mass-media","13":"tag-media","14":"tag-media-narrative","15":"tag-analyzing-media-portrayal-of-favelas","16":"tag-olympics","17":"tag-pacifying-police-unit","18":"tag-research-findings","19":"tag-rocinha","20":"tag-south-zone","21":"tag-stigma","22":"tag-violence","23":"writer-suzanne-caflisch"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32271","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=32271"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32271\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/32745"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=32271"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=32271"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=32271"},{"taxonomy":"writer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fwriter&post=32271"},{"taxonomy":"translator","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftranslator&post=32271"},{"taxonomy":"illustrator","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fillustrator&post=32271"},{"taxonomy":"photographer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fphotographer&post=32271"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}