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Social media logics: Visibility and mediation in the 2013 Brazilian protests Nina Santos full chapter instant download
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Social media logics
Visibility and mediation in
the 2013 Brazilian
protests
Nina Santos
Social media logics
Nina Santos
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer
Nature Switzerland AG 2022
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of
translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval,
electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now
known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information
in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the
publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect
to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The
publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and
institutional affiliations.
This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature
Switzerland AG.
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
To my mom and my daughter, Anas, who give sense and
brightness to my life.
Acknowledgments
vii
Contents
1 Introduction 1
Theoretical Assumptions and Problematic 3
Contributions of This Book 8
Part I13
2 A
Meaningful Starting Point: The Experience of
Managing Lula’s Facebook Page 15
3 Protests
and Digital Communication: Issues on New
Forms of Political Action 25
The Emergence of a New Sociability 27
Individual X Collective Actions 28
Temporality and Spatiality of the Movements 31
Online and Offline Overlaps 33
4 What
Did 2013 Tell Us? 39
Recent Political Developments in Brazil and Links with
the 2013 Protests 40
From a Non-partisan Movement to the 2018 Elections 44
The Phenomenon of Fake News 48
The Unmediated Leader 54
Janaína Lima and the Cabinet 24/7 55
ix
x Contents
Part II61
6 Mediation
and Gatekeeping Challenges in a Social
Media Environment 77
Journalists and Social Media: Displacing the Value of
Professional Mediation 82
The Utopia of the Disintermediated: The Live, the Unedited,
the Real 87
7 New
Visibility Dynamics: Who and What Is Really
Gaining Attention101
Retweeting as a Practice of Visibility 106
Hyperlinks: Where to and Where From: Twitter in a Hybrid
Media System 123
Twitter’s Visibility Dynamics: What and Who Does It Favor? 140
8 Conclusion145
Mainstream Media Continue to Be Important Drivers of
Conversation Yet Not as Before 145
Twitter Is a New Space of Contestation of the Established
Media System 147
New Social Actors on the Streets and on Digital Networks 148
With Social Media, Mediation Processes Have More
Dimensions Rather Than Less 148
Sociability Is Building a New Information Path to Visibility 152
Final Remarks 153
References155
Index165
List of Figures
Fig. 2.1 Lula’s first post on Facebook about the 2013 protests.
Screenshot done on February 14, 2019. Source: Lula’s
Facebook page17
Fig. 4.1 Printscreen of Eva, the digital employee of Janaína Lima’s
mandate58
Fig. 6.1 Dilma Bolada’s Facebook page. Image captured on August
22, 2018 94
Fig. 7.1 Examples of images posted on Twitpic 126
Fig. 7.2 Print screen (print screen done on January 9, 2019) of the
PasteBin post 127
Fig. 7.3 Print screen (print screen done on January 10, 2019) of two
examples of the most used links pointing to Twitter with
humoristic tone 132
Fig. 7.4 Print screens (print screen done on January 10, 2019)
of tweets from the Public Defender’s office 133
Fig. 7.5 Photos of the protests from the most shared links pointing
to Twitter 134
Fig. 7.6 Memes of the protests from the most shared links pointing
to Twitter 135
xi
List of Tables
Table 4.1 Number and percentage of active and inactive profiles per year 46
Table 4.2 Position taken toward Bolsonaro’s election by the most
retweeted profiles of 2013, by category 48
Table 5.1 Total tweets per month 75
Table 7.1 Categorization of the users of the most retweeted tweets 109
Table 7.2 Number of tweets among the most retweeted for individual
profiles110
Table 7.3 Number of tweets among the most retweeted for organization 112
Table 7.4 Number of tweets among the most retweeted for public
figure profiles 113
Table 7.5 Number of tweets among the most retweeted for alternative
media115
Table 7.6 Number of tweets among the most retweeted for
mainstream media 116
Table 7.7 Number of tweets among the most retweeted for
humoristic profiles 116
Table 7.8 Number of tweets among the most retweeted for
politicians/political parties 117
Table 7.9 Average number of followers per category 118
Table 7.10 Ranges of number of followers per category 120
Table 7.11 Number of followers of the ten profiles with most tweets
among the most retweeted 121
Table 7.12 Number of tweets among the most retweeted of the ten
profiles with most followers 121
xiii
xiv List of Tables
Introduction
1
According to this concept, social media is different from social network. This last one
would be the actual network of relations between people, which do not depend on digital
platforms to take place. Social networks are not a new phenomenon; they just gain new forms
and possibilities with social media.
4 N. SANTOS
2
We adopt here the definition of alternative media as a media that has dissident origins or
approaches in regard to mainstream media. Our aim with this very broad conceptualization
is to characterize all media experiences that offer alternatives (in terms of the actors that
produce them or the editorial line of the content they produce) to the Brazilian mainstream
media. This last is mostly formed by all the major press and broadcast media groups. So, our
option is not to have a more specific and universal concept of alternative media—that is why
do not attach them necessarily to militantism (Cardon & Granjon, 2010) or to social strug-
gles (Suzina, 2018)—but rather to construct the category always in opposition to the con-
crete reality of Brazilian mainstream media.
1 INTRODUCTION 5
limited to investigating the use of the media in itself, but rather interested
in the relations between different media and actors present in this net-
work. The work tries to integrate the analysis of “new” and “old” media
as interacting elements, rather than separate ones. It is also in the sense of
broadening the understanding of the media use that we also made inter-
views with key actors from the activist, communicational and political are-
nas about their media practices. So, it is both from our understanding of
the phenomena of social media and from the clues given by the literature
that emerges this first perception that structures our research.
A second central point is our comprehension of the role of technology
in this process. In this work, we try to avoid simplistic approaches to tech-
nology—and social media in particular—that see it just as tools of com-
munication or accessories to already existing structures. As expressed by
Della Porta (2013), there is a gap in the studies in digital media and
democracy that makes them generally not able to properly access the role
of technology. As a result “the debate on the Web tends to be highly nor-
mative or rather technical, with even some nuances of technological deter-
minism” (p. 27).
In order to avoid that, we try to refrain from two misreadings of the
phenomenon: the perception of complete novelty and that of an essential
characteristic of technology, which would intrinsically favor or disfavor
democracy. Our understanding is that the use of these new technologies
creates specific practices, sociability logics and information flows that need
to be understood.
We believe that communicative dynamics and practices that take place
on social media will reproduce certain existing practices as well as present-
ing new ones. The novelty comes not only from the new communicative
possibilities they open, but also from the new forms of constant interac-
tion between formats that these spaces will entail (Chadwick, 2013). In
that sense, even if what we propose here is not a comparative study, it is
important to have in mind what were the dynamics and logics before the
existence of social media in order to access with greater more precision
what has really changed and what are the practices that already existed and
just changed to adapt to a new environment (Clavert et al., 2018). That
approach helps us to avoid the “technological fascination bias” (Mattoni
& Treré, 2015, p. 4) of perceiving all technological features as completely
new and disconnected from previous practices.
The second misreading we want to overcome regarding technology is
the essentialist vision of it. Our study is not about social media, it is about
6 N. SANTOS
their use. To our understanding, the social value of technic comes from
the use that is done of them (Santos, 2000), technic and use being imbri-
cated parts of the social reality. As explained by Jouët (1993), both social
and technical determinism should be avoided. Following her argument,
we do not see communication practices neither as products of the trans-
formations in the communication technologies nor as completely detached
from these technologies and only dependent on social action.
The conception and design of social media platforms may not be seen
as exterior to their use. They are rather conceived and transformed by the
use, at the same time as they impact and modify the uses they entail (Jouët,
1993). As proposed by Jouët, there would be a double mediation effect at
the same time technical and social that is produced “in the encounter of
the technical evolutions and social change” (p. 101). In this perspective,
communication practices are “a privileged field of observation to approach
the construction of this convergence” (p. 101).
This theoretical assumption is also based on our perception of the need
to counter certain popular discourses about the political use of technology
in Brazil. At the beginning of the year 2000, including the moment of the
2013 protests, as in many other protest movements around the world at
that moment, there was a clear positive discourse about the role of these
technologies in democracies (Morozov, 2011). Social media were fre-
quently presented in academic texts as being able to strengthen political
participation and open space to marginalized social voices (Castells, 2013).
Years later, with the election of Donald Trump, the Brexit campaign and,
in the Brazilian case, the strong social mobilization that demanded the
destitution of President Dilma Rousseff (2016) and after with the wide
spread of fake news and the election of the first far-right Brazilian President,
Jair Bolsonaro (2018), the narrative was inversed (Benkler et al., 2018;
Chadwick et al., 2018). Social media became a target to blame concerning
the degeneration of Brazilian democracy. We consider that none of these
visions accounts for the complexity of the phenomena because both of
them picture technology as the changing vector of social change and not
the social practices that they may entail. Only by accessing the specificities
of the use of these communicative spaces, which are constantly changing
over time, we can better apprehend their consequences.
A third assumption that guides the research we present here is that the
communication systems and the information flows are essential to under-
standing democratic systems. Donatella della Porta (2013) points to the
dissociation of studies in social movements and media from an analytical
1 INTRODUCTION 7
look back in a predictive sense as if all that would come after could be
predicted by elements that were already there, but rather to understand
that the current situation has deeper roots and historical explanations.
Only 1 year after the 2013 protests, Brazil had a presidential election in
which President Dilma Rousseff, from the Workers’ Party (PT),3 won with
a very tight result. As the political climate in the country was already
becoming very polarized, the supporters of Aécio Neves—her defeated
opponent, from the Brazilian Social Democracy Party (PSDB)4—did not
accept the election results and immediately started to question her right to
be president.5 That campaign grew in strength with the outbreak of a
major corruption scandal involving the Brazilian semi-public petroleum
company Petrobras.6 Rapidly, the movement turned into a huge wave of
protests demanding her impeachment. With an eroded parliamentary
basis, no support on the media and the inaction of the justice system,
Rousseff’s government withdrew from office.
The almost 2 years and a half during which Vice President Michel
Temer, from the Brazilian Democratic Movement (MDB),7 took office
were marked by the inversion of all priorities of the PT governments, with
3
The Partido dos Trabalhadores, or PT (Workers’ Party), was founded in 1980 and is the
biggest left-wing party in Latin America. Its foundation is closely related to the trade union
movements and to a progressive branch of the Catholic Church called Teologia da Libertação
(Liberation Theology). The main leader of the party, from its foundation until today, is Luiz
Inácio Lula da Silva, who was president for two terms, from 2003 to 2010.
4
The Partido da Social Democracia Brasileira—PSDB (Brazilian Social Democracy Party)
was founded in 1988 and can be identified as a center-right-wing liberal party. It has been the
main opponent to PT since the 1990s.
5
Aécio Neves not only criticized her election, accusing her of electoral fraud for announc-
ing measures after the election that were different from what she had promised in the cam-
paign, but also put the Brazilian electoral system in doubt by questioning the reliability of the
electronic voting machines. He also registered a formal claim in the electoral justice against
the elected president.
6
The Lava Jato (Car Wash) operation was launched in 2014 and is still running in 2019.
It is leaded by the Brazilian Federal Police and aims to disclose corruption scandals related to
Petrobras and political authorities. According to the judge Sérgio Moro, who became known
as the most important judge of this operation and is now the Justice Minister of the Bolsonaro
government, the operation is inspired on the Italian Mani Pulite (Clean hands). The opera-
tion succeeded to disclose many levels of corruption in national and regional levels, but is
highly criticized by its polarization and by its lack of respect to essential guarantees of the
Brazilian constitution such as the proper right of defense and the presumption of innocence.
7
The Movimento Democrático Brasileiro, or MDB (Brazilian Democratic Movement), is a
centrist party founded in 1965 and that has participated in all Brazilian federal governments
since the redemocratization of the country, in the 1980s.
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being and he a god.” he kanaka oe, a he akua kela.” I
Kamalalawalu made answer: aku o Kamalalawalu: “Ka! Ua
“Kauhiakama says Kohala is olelo mai o Kauhiakama, he leiwi
depopulated; the people are only wale no Kohala, eia i ka nuku na
at the beach.” To this remark of kanaka.” A no keia olelo ana aku
Kamalalawalu, Lanikaula replied: o Kamalalawalu pela ia
“You sent your son Kauhiakama Lanikaula, olelo aku la o
to investigate as to how many Lanikaula: “Hoouna aku nei oe i
people there were on Hawaii. He ko keiki (Kauhiakama) e hele e
returned and made his report to makaikai i ka nui o na kanaka o
you that there were not many Hawaii, a hoi mai la, a hai mai la
people there, but Kauhiakama ia oe, aole he nui o na kanaka o
did not see the number of people Hawaii. Aka, ike ole aku la o
in Kohala because he traveled Kauhiakama i ka nui o na
on the seashore, reaching Kona kanaka o Kohala, no ka mea, ma
from Kawaihae and arrived on kahakai ka hele ana; a hele aku
the heights of Huehue. He could la a hiki i Kona, hele aku la mai
not have seen the people of that Kawaihae aku a hoea iluna o
locality because there were only Huehue, aole no e ike i na
clinkers there, having proceeded kanaka olaila, no ka mea he a-a
along by way of Kona until he wale no; aka, hele aku la ma
arrived at Kau. If he had traveled Kona loa a hiki i Kau, ina i ke
along the Kona route in the early kakahiaka nui ka hele ana ma
morning he could not have met Kona, aole e loaa kanaka ia wa,
people at that time because the no ka mea, ua pau na kanaka o
inhabitants of that section had ia wahi iuka a o kekahi poe, ua
gone to the uplands and some pau i ka lawaia, a o ka poe koe
had gone fishing; those iho he poe palupalu; a nolaila ka
remaining home were only the loaa ole o na kanaka o Kona ia
feeble and sick, therefore the Kauhiakama ma ia hele ana.
people of Kona could not have Aka, ina ma ke ahiahi ka hele
been seen by Kauhiakama on ana, ina ua ike i ka nui o na
his tour. Had he gone during the
evening he would surely have kanaka o Kona, no ka mea, o ka
seen the large population of okana nui hookahi ia o Hawaii.”
Kona because it is the largest
district of Hawaii.”
The red koae! The white koae! 68 Koae ula ke koae kea,
The koae that flies steadily on, Koae lele pauma ana;
Mounting up like the stars. Kiekie iluna ka hoku,
To me the moon is low. 69 Haahaa i au ka malama.
It is a god, He akua ko akua o Lono,
Your god, Lono; He akua e ulu e lama ana;
A god that grows and shines. Puuiki, Puunui,
Puuiki, Puunui. I Puuloa, i Puupoko,
At Puuloa, at Puupoko; I Puukahanahana,
At Puukahanahana, I ka hana a ke akua o Lono;
At the doings of the god of Lono. O Lono ka ipu iki,
Lono the small container, O Lono ka ipu nui,
Lono the large container. O Puunahe iki,
Puunahe the small, O Puunahe nui,
Puunahe the large. Na Hana au aku,
By Hana, you swim out, Na Moe au mai,
By Moe you swim in. Na’u no ka’u popolo,
My popolo 70 is mine own, He popolo ku kapa alanui;
The popolo that grows by the I aho’ hia e Kaiokane
wayside I hakaia e Kaiowahine;
Is plucked by Kaiokane, O kaua i Kahulikini-e,
Is watched over by Kaiowahine. He ki-ni,
We two to Kahulikini, He kini, he lehu, he mano,
Numberless, Kaua, e Kama-e
Vast, without number, countless I Anaehoomalu kaua
Are we, O Kama. E kuu alii hoi-e.
Let us two to Anaehoomalu,
O my chief.