Media and the Image of the Nation during Brazil's 2013 Protests

César Jiménez-Martínez

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9783030382377
• eBook ISBN: 9783030382384
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Diplomacy & Treaties
• Index: Social Sciences

This book explores the struggles over the mediated construction and projection of the image of the nation at times of social unrest. Focussing on the June 2013 protests in Brazil, it examines how different actors –authorities, activists, the national media, foreign correspondents– disseminated competing versions of 'what Brazil was' during that pivotal episode. The book offers a fresh conceptual approach, supported by media coverage analysis and original interviews, that demonstrates the potential of digital media to challenge power structures and establish new ways of representing the nation. It also highlights the vulnerability of both 'old' and 'new' media to forms of inequality and disruption due to political interferences, technological constraints, and continuing commercial pressures. Contributing to the study of media and the nation as well as media and social movements, the author throws into sharp relief the profound transformation of mediated nationhood in a digital and global media environment.

© The Author(s) 2020

C. Jiménez-MartínezMedia and the Image of the Nation during Brazil’s 2013 Protestshttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-38238-4_1

Begin Abstract

1. Introduction: The June 2013 Protests and the Image of Brazil

César Jiménez-Martínez¹

(1)

Cardiff University, Cardiff, UK

César Jiménez-Martínez

Email: [email protected]

End Abstract

Nobody saw them coming.

In hindsight, many reasons have been given, including the state of the economy, a pursuit of social justice, a representational crisis in the national political system and media, the development of new communication technologies, the birth of a different kind of social movements and even a fascist conspiracy. However, in every conversation I have had ever since, those who witnessed and/or took part in the series of protests that stormed Brazil in June 2013 told me that they were surprised.

I didn’t see them coming either.

In June 2013, I was preparing for the final examination for my first year of doctoral studies. Up to that point, my research focussed on how the Brazilian authorities and business elites employed nation branding and public diplomacy initiatives to create and make visible a positive image of their nation and achieve political and economic goals. Brazil promised to be an interesting case study, given that, during the timeframe of my PhD, it was going to host both the 2014 FIFA World Cup and the 2016 Olympic Games. Local authorities were hoping to use these events to build on the increasing admiration within financial, journalistic and academic circles for the country’s economic growth, political stability and poverty reduction witnessed during the governments of Fernando Henrique Cardoso and particularly Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. However, just two weeks prior to my examination, national and international news broadcasts began to show completely unexpected images. Whilst Brazil was hosting the FIFA Confederations Cup, an international two-week football tournament that served as a dress rehearsal for the World Cup of the following year, thousands of people were taking to the streets in cities all over the country.

National and foreign news media reported that Brazilians were protesting against the amount of money spent on sporting mega-events, to the detriment of health, education and public transportation. Some demonstrators carried banners with slogans in English such as ‘We don’t need the World Cup’ or ‘We need money for hospitals and education’. Others set up barricades, violently clashed with the police, and occupied streets, squares and even the National Congress in Brasília (Fig. 1.1). I still remember how, whilst watching one of the football matches on television, I heard the protesters’ chants from outside the stadium, followed by the surprise of British television commentators about what was happening. After all, were things not going so well in Brazil, a nation that until recently had been praised for its strong economy and political stability? Was not Brazil one of the most promising members of the BRICS—Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa—the economies that were expected to dominate the twenty-first century? How was it possible that Brazilians were angry and opposing the World Cup, one of the events that I thought they would love the most? Only time showed that the June 2013 protests were a turning point in Brazil’s contemporary history, and a rich opportunity to examine the tensions for and over the mediated construction, projection and contestation of the nation in the current interrelated, transnational and content-intensive media environment.

Fig. 1.1

Protesters occupying the National Congress in Brasília in June 2013 (Photo Rafael Holanda Barroso)

The June Journeys

The June 2013 demonstrations amounted to the largest period of social unrest in Brazil since 1992, when people demanded the impeachment of then-President Fernando Collor de Mello.¹ 20 June 2013 alone saw one million people protesting in 353 cities, including state capitals Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, Belo Horizonte, Porto Alegre and the federal capital Brasília. It is estimated that one in every twenty Brazilians took part at some point in the demonstrations (Branford & Rocha, 2015, p. 33). Local and international academics, journalists and pundits were puzzled by the sheer magnitude and potential implications of the protests, which were called ‘The 20 Cent Demonstrations’, ‘The Demonstrations Cup’, ‘The V-for-Vinegar Movement’, ‘The June Movement’ or simply ‘June’. Ultimately, various analyses converged on one name: the Jornadas de Junho, which has generally been translated into English as the ‘June Journeys’.²

The June Journeys actually began before June 2013. Some authors suggest that the seeds were in the demonstrations against an increase in public transportation fares in the city of Natal, in Northeast Brazil, during August and September 2012. These protests successfully forced local authorities to reduce bus fares. Others propose February 2013 as the starting point, when activist group Bloco de Luta pelo Transporte Público (Fight for Public Transportation Bloc) mobilised people to take to the streets to protest against an increase in public transportation fares in Porto Alegre. Whilst local or regional media covered these earlier protests, they were barely acknowledged by the national or international media.

The demonstrations only became a national concern in June 2013, when the Movimento Passe Livre (MPL, Free Fare Movement), a non-partisan activist collective founded in 2005, which demands free public transportation, called for protests in São Paulo. The objective was to demonstrate against a seven per cent increase in public transportation fares and specifically against a rise of twenty Brazilian reais cents (approximately six British pence sterling at that time). The MPL convened successive demonstrations on 6, 7 and 11 June, attracting around two thousand participants to the first protest and reaching between five thousand and eleven thousand for the third one. The fourth protest held on 13 June drew in between five thousand and twenty thousand people. On that evening, the military police of the State of São Paulo were particularly violent, arresting around two hundred people and injuring an unknown number, including Giuliana Vallone, journalist from the Folha de São Paulo newspaper, who was hit in the eye by a rubber bullet shot by a military policeman.

The violence of the military police against protesters and journalists proved to be a turning point.³ Organisations like Amnesty International and Reporters Without Borders condemned the police actions. The general public became more supportive of the demonstrations, with a survey published at the time claiming that fifty-five per cent of São Paulo inhabitants were in favour of the protests (Gohn, 2014, p. 28). Furthermore, as Chapter 4 details, Brazilian newspapers and television stations, which had originally condemned the protests, became more sympathetic towards them.

Simultaneously, in the city of Brasília, the non-partisan activist network Comitê Popular da Copa (Popular Committee for the World Cup) called for a protest outside the national stadium in Brasília, to coincide with the inaugural match of the Confederations Cup on 15 June. The Committee was set up in 2007 to raise awareness of the forced evictions that the authorities had carried out, particularly in favelas, in preparation for the World Cup and Olympic Games. Only five hundred participants took part in that demonstration, but the clashes with the military police outside the stadium successfully put into the spotlight the disenchantment of many Brazilians with the astronomic costs of organising sporting mega-events. Complaints about the vast sums of money spent on the World Cup and Olympics rather than on public social services became one of the signature characteristics of the June Journeys, for Brazilian and international pundits.

When on 17 June the protests returned to São Paulo, they were not only about public transportation fares. Participants’ demands went in different and sometimes contradictory directions, including LGBTQ discrimination, infrastructure costs for the World Cup and Olympic Games, public health and education deficiencies, corruption among the political class, and even support for a return to a military regime . A whole array of non-partisan organisations took part in the protests and many demonstrators emphasised that they did not belong to political parties, to the point of expelling those carrying parties’ banners or flags. Young demonstrators employing the ‘Black Bloc’ tactic became especially notorious,⁴ and in response, the police increased their belligerence and the number of arrests.

With the intensification of protests in mid-June, authorities all over Brazil agreed to freeze or reduce public transportation fares. As a consequence, on 21 June the MPL stopped calling for more mobilisations. The demonstrations however continued, with po...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. Introduction: The June 2013 Protests and the Image of Brazil
• 2. Theorising the Image of the Nation: Contestation, Media and Visibility
• 3. Before the June Journeys: The Contested Visibility of the ‘New’ Brazil
• 4. The Visible Nation: The Media Coverage of the June Journeys
• 5. Strategies of Mediated Visibility: Replacement, Adjustment and Re-appropriation
• 6. Conditions of Mediated Visibility: Routines, Norms, Technologies and Commercialism
• 7. Conclusion: Beyond the Visible, Beyond the June Journeys
• Back Matter