{"id":32586,"date":"2016-09-14T13:40:27","date_gmt":"2016-09-14T16:40:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rioonwatch.org\/?p=32586"},"modified":"2016-11-02T10:42:26","modified_gmt":"2016-11-02T13:42:26","slug":"favela-media-activism-and-its-legacy-for-civic-engagement-in-the-olympic-city-of-rio-de-janeiro","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/?p=32586","title":{"rendered":"Favela Media Activism and Its Legacy for Civic Engagement in the Olympic City of Rio de Janeiro"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

Favela residents, especially youth, have used online and offline media against human rights violations<\/a> for a while now in Rio. Media technologies<\/a> and journalism<\/a> techniques have been increasingly important components\u00a0of the struggles of low-income, peripheral populations. In this article, Dr. Leonardo Cust\u00f3dio shares results of his doctoral research\u00a0on the growth in\u00a0political organizing thanks to\u00a0favela media activists since Rio was announced host to the 2016 Olympic Games.<\/em><\/h4>\n

In the years between the announcement of Rio as the 2016 Olympic host city in October 2009 and the recent Olympics\u00a0Opening Ceremony<\/a> on August 5, there were\u00a0innumerable cases when\u00a0favela residents used media<\/a> as instruments and platforms for exchanging information to publicly organize diverse\u00a0forms of political activities.<\/p>\n

These include the circulation of community newspapers, blog posts, cellphone videos, documentaries, and photographs denouncing the violence of city officials in evictions<\/a>. They also include online discussions and mobilizations after cases of police violence<\/a>. Additionally there were\u00a0mediated debates that aimed at problematizing prejudice<\/a> and discrimination against favela residents<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I refer to these phenomena as favela media activism<\/em>.<\/p>\n

That is, the individual and collective actions of favela residents in, through and about media. These contesting actions derive from and\/or lead to the enactment of citizenship<\/a> among favela residents. By engaging in media activism inside, outside and across favelas, favela residents raise critical awareness among peers, generate public debates, and mobilize actions against or in reaction to consequences of social inequality<\/a> in their everyday lives.<\/p>\n

To understand\u00a0favela media activism we can look at two cases of tragic events and the responses to them before and during preparations for the Rio 2016 Olympics<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"Community<\/a>The first case happened in December 2008 in Baixa do Sapateiro<\/a>, one of the favelas in Complexo da Mar\u00e9<\/a>, in Rio’s North Zone<\/a>. Matheus Rodrigues, an eight-year-old boy, grabbed a coin and rushed to a local bakery. As he opened the gate of his house, a rifle bullet hit his head<\/a>. Immediately after the gunshot, passers-by shouted that a police officer had killed a child. When Matheus\u2019 mother ran outside, she found her son\u2019s dead body by their gate.<\/p>\n

The second case happened in April 2015 in Complexo do Alem\u00e3o<\/a>, also in the North Zone. The favela complex had five\u00a0gunshot victims<\/a> in less than 24 hours, including 10-year-old Eduardo de Jesus Ferreira<\/a> on April 2. As in Complexo da Mar\u00e9, witnesses accused police officers of the shooting.<\/p>\n

In\u00a0the case of Complexo da Mar\u00e9, witnesses to the killing of Matheus Rodrigues immediately called people they thought could be helpful. That included volunteer journalists of the favela-based newspaper O Cidad\u00e3o<\/a><\/em>\u00a0(The Citizen<\/em>). Since its founding in 1999 by local NGO\u00a0CEASM<\/a>, O Cidad\u00e3o<\/em> has become one of the best-known favela-based newspapers<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Seven years later\u00a0in\u00a0Complexo do Alem\u00e3o, witnesses used Facebook to circulate cellphone\u00a0videos<\/a> and photographs<\/a> of Eduardo de Jesus\u2019 body on the narrow staircase. Some witnesses sent the videos and photos as private messages to media collectives like Coletivo Papo Reto<\/a> and #OcupaAlem\u00e3o<\/a>\u00a0or to\u00a0anonymous Facebook pages such as Alem\u00e3o Morro<\/a> (which has since changed name and is no longer anonymous) and Jornal Alem\u00e3o Not\u00edcias<\/a>. Throughout the years these groups have become references of information and mobilization in the region.<\/p>\n

In both cases, engaged residents circulated the witnesses\u2019 versions of the crimes within, across, and beyond\u00a0the favelas. In\u00a0Complexo da Mar\u00e9, some volunteer community journalists immediately went to the crime scene to collect witness statements. Others contacted human rights organizations and progressive politicians. Meanwhile, a volunteer photojournalist, Naldinho Louren\u00e7o<\/a>, documented the crime scene in case the police tampered with it<\/a> before the homicide unit arrived. In\u00a0Complexo do Alem\u00e3o, media collectives first circulated the “breaking news” on Facebook and requested more information from followers who lived in the favela. Then they published angry and emotional<\/a> analyses denouncing the recurrence<\/a> of state-led violence in favelas.<\/p>\n

\""My<\/a>
“My God, a ten-year-old child shot in the head. HELP HERE!!!!!” Community Facebook page reporting the killing of Eduardo de Jesus Ferreira<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

These immediate reactions represent the instrumentalization of media and journalism for human rights<\/a> and justice. These resident journalists\u00a0make no pretense of neutrality. In favelas, crimes against individuals are seen as\u00a0acts against all residents. One example of this sense of unity is the phrase \u201cn\u00f3s por n\u00f3s<\/a>,” which translates to “it is us for ourselves,” and which activists in favelas have often used to highlight their commitment to the causes of favelas as their main social goal.<\/p>\n

After the killings of the boys, volunteer journalists in Complexo da Mar\u00e9 and members of collectives in Complexo do Alem\u00e3o engaged in\u00a0simultaneous forms of activism in, about, and through the media.<\/p>\n

Activism in the media<\/h3>\n

In the media, the volunteer journalists of O Cidad\u00e3o<\/em>\u2014at that time lacking most of the digital devices available today\u2014produced a written report<\/a> and distributed it to human rights organizations’ websites, activists’ blogs, other alternative media and\u00a0also mainstream private outlets. They also used their personal networks to inform mainstream media journalists of the residents\u2019 version of the story, which contradicted with official police statements that the boy was killed in crossfire. A couple of weeks later, they also published an editorial and special report on the crime in the\u00a0O Cidad\u00e3o<\/em> newspaper\u2019s print version.<\/p>\n

In\u00a0Complexo do Alem\u00e3o, members of collectives circulated information, commented on the cases, and interacted with their extensive base of online followers. One important action of the collectives and anonymous pages was to deny rumors that 10-year-old Eduardo de Jesus was involved in the drug trade. In addition, one member of Coletivo Papo Reto working for\u00a0Brazil\u2019s biggest media conglomerate, Globo, managed to report\u00a0on the crime<\/a> on Globo News<\/em>, Globo\u2019s all-news cable channel.<\/p>\n

Activism about the media<\/h3>\n

Favela resident activism about the media has emerged from\u00a0the contrast<\/a> between the discourses of favela activists and those from the mainstream media<\/a>.\u00a0In general, when mainstream media outlets cover crimes in favelas, they tend to rely on official sources for explanations while the voices of residents appear as a dramatic element with more emotional than informational value. This is problematic when the main official sources, the police and the government, are directly or indirectly responsible for crimes.<\/p>\n

In\u00a0Complexo da Mar\u00e9,\u00a0for example,\u00a0mainstream media outlets reported the crime by focusing on its brutality and that residents responded to\u00a0the crime by blocking roads. They also reported residents’ accusations against the police, but the explanations of the crime\u00a0itself\u00a0mainly relied on protocol statements (e.g. \u201cwe will investigate\u2026\u201d) by senior police officials.<\/p>\n

Similar coverage was seen with the case in\u00a0Complexo do Alem\u00e3o. While Eduardo\u2019s parents appeared in tears on various channels accusing police officers of killing their son, the explanations for what happened relied on official government statements. Therefore, mainstream media coverage of crime in favelas tends to concentrate on specific crimes and the immediate reactions of angry residents and bureaucratic officials, as if the questions merely revolved around what happened at a specific moment and why it happened.<\/p>\n

By contrast, the core questions in the work\u00a0of volunteer journalists in Complexo da Mar\u00e9 and members of collectives and anonymous pages in Complexo do Alem\u00e3o were more structural<\/a> in nature: why do police crimes constantly occur? Why is there always impunity?<\/p>\n

Activism through the media<\/h3>\n

Activism through media appeared in the organization and mobilization of demonstrations against police violence in favelas. At the time of Matheus\u2019 death, the volunteer journalists of O Cidad\u00e3o<\/em> helped organize walkouts that blocked Avenida Brasil, one of Rio de Janeiro\u2019s busiest expressways. They also participated in a demonstration in front of the State Legislative Assembly (Alerj) building days after the crime.<\/p>\n

In\u00a0Complexo do Alem\u00e3o, the online-offline actions of members of collectives and anonymous pages in articulating demonstrations<\/a> were even more visible. Following\u00a0successful mobilization\u00a0on Facebook, demonstrations took over the streets of Complexo do Alem\u00e3o<\/a> after Eduardo\u2019s death. The first one was on April 3 with a couple hundred residents (including children) marching peacefully on the main road of the favela. However, that walkout ended when police officers used pepper spray and smoke bombs to disperse the crowd. On April 4, individuals, media collectives, Neighborhood\u00a0Associations as well as civil society and human rights organizations organized another demonstration<\/a> that included residents\u00a0of other favelas and from outside the favelas.<\/p>\n

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

Favela media activism as an enactment of citizenship<\/h3>\n

In a broader political sense, favela media activism represents the contesting enactment of citizenship against or in reaction to the material or symbolic consequences of social inequality.<\/p>\n

This claim directly relates to the\u00a0use of \u201cfavela\u201d as a prefix to media activism. By using favela as a prefix, I do not simply mean to talk about favelas as urban environments. Instead, I mean to highlight the political and ideological characteristics that separate the\u00a0actions of media activism in favelas from media activism actions in non-favela environments. Even though there is a lot of collaboration and solidarity among favela and non-favela activists, the conditions and motivations for their struggles are essentially different and irreconcilable.<\/p>\n

Non-favela activists defend human and civil rights based on ideals and values. But at the end of the day, many of them\u00a0enjoy comfort, life stability, and security. By contrast, activists from favelas act against concrete, urgent, and in many ways life-threatening experiences.<\/p>\n

So when favela residents react to the killing of children in favelas, they do not do so only because of the belief that what happened is unacceptable according to human values. They do so primarily because the next victim could be them, their family members or friends. They could be the next to be evicted for whatever urban development policymakers decide to promote. It is they who may be discriminated against merely for being favela residents.<\/p>\n

My point in highlighting these irreconcilable differences between favela and non-favela activists is not to say that the activism of one is more genuine than that of the other, but merely to indicate that there is a difference. And this difference is not intentional, but structural and cultural.<\/p>\n

Engaging in favela media activism represents three forms of contesting citizenship: in relation to the State, to society, and to favela residents in general.<\/p>\n

From the State, activists from favelas demand dignified treatment instead of police repression and the general disregard for the welfare of favela residents. In relation to society, they act towards denouncing and deconstructing the general prejudices and discrimination they suffer<\/a>. Finally, activists from favelas act to challenge their neighbors\u00a0to see themselves as full citizens. Some favela residents share the prejudices<\/a> and suspicions against other residents that many people attribute\u00a0mainly to non-favela populations. For this reason, mobilizing other favela residents can be challenging. It\u2019s not rare that politically engaged residents express their disappointment with the little support they receive within their own communities.<\/p>\n

Despite the challenges, there is nothing more promising in terms of citizens\u2019 actions against human rights violations and social inequalities in Brazil than the media activism of low-income, peripheral youth. While it is questionable whether Rio will have the social legacies it promised in its bid<\/a> to host the 2016 Olympics, it is guaranteed that media activism which has grown during this period will lead to important changes in the currently unequal and unjust city of Rio de Janeiro<\/a>. The most important of these changes is the political attitude and culture of civic engagement already spreading across favelas and other low-income areas of metropolitan Rio de Janeiro.<\/p>\n

*Dr. Leonardo Cust\u00f3dio is a researcher at the University of Tampere, Finland and originally from Mag\u00e9, a municipality in metropolitan Rio de Janeiro.\u00a0A longer version of this article is available in his doctoral dissertation entitled \u201cFavela media activism: Political trajectories of low-income Brazilian youth<\/a>” (click the “Avaa tiedosto”\u00a0link to download).<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Clique aqui para Portugu\u00eas Favela residents, especially youth, have used online and offline media against human rights violations for a while now in Rio. Media technologies and journalism techniques have been increasingly important components\u00a0of the […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":32625,"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":[1294,1288,1290,1282],"tags":[255,2069,24,1552,498,1606,1653,280,32,1399,23,1681,1900,1366,37,17,18,1402,796,128],"writer":[1358],"translator":[],"illustrator":[],"photographer":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-32586","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-communitymedia","8":"category-highlight","9":"category-civilsociety","10":"category-research-analysis","11":"tag-activism","12":"tag-alerj","13":"tag-alternative-media","14":"tag-avenida-brasil","15":"tag-citizenship","16":"tag-coletivo-papo-reto","17":"tag-community-media","18":"tag-complexo-da-mare","19":"tag-complexo-do-alemao","20":"tag-jornal-o-cidadao","21":"tag-mass-media","22":"tag-media-collective","23":"tag-media-narrative","24":"tag-analyzing-media-portrayal-of-favelas","25":"tag-north-zone","26":"tag-police-brutality","27":"tag-protest","28":"tag-legacy","29":"tag-social-media","30":"tag-technology","31":"writer-leo-custodio"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32586","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=32586"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32586\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/32625"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=32586"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=32586"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=32586"},{"taxonomy":"writer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fwriter&post=32586"},{"taxonomy":"translator","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftranslator&post=32586"},{"taxonomy":"illustrator","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fillustrator&post=32586"},{"taxonomy":"photographer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fphotographer&post=32586"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}