Volume 2 issue 2 December 2014
Inverse Surveillance, Activist Journalism and the Brazilian Protests: The Mídia NINJA Case
Raphael Ramos Monteiro de Souza
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The aim of this paper is to examine the role played by the independent press group Mídia NINJA—an acronym in Portuguese for ‘Independent Narratives, Journalism and Action’—in the huge and unprecedented protests in Brazil. Its live-streamed coverage on the internet that showed police misconduct, among other things, spread nationally and abroad and acted as a mechanism that fuelled social movements. More specifically, this information acted as an alternative source of information that helped to foster accountability, mobilisation and resistance. This study adopts an interdisciplinary approach, focusing on the practice of inverse surveillance in light of works by Castells on network auto-communication and counter-power. Furthermore, this research uses as key references Bauman and Lyon’s analyses of surveillance in a post-panoptical age. Subsequently, this paper investigated situations of social accountability, due to the fast diffusion of clashes and arbitrary arrest reports. It is argued that the action of horizontal players caused changes to police strategies and influenced the traditional media coverage, as well as the enforcement of surveillance over activist groups. In conclusion, it is suggested that this specific practice of watching the watchers has strengthened popular mobilisation.
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