Silence! Or how can a group of voices help control urban noise

Posted on May 12, 2015 by betofonseca

(Read the full project paper here)

There is a buddhist proverb that say “the more you have, the more suffering it will cause”, as one will probably worry eternally about losing the possession in question. When I move to my apartment in Sao Paulo, in 2003, I was not aware of that, but loved the silence around: from the seventh floor, I could hear water running on the street at night. Seven years later, a tic-tac-toe of urban problems poorly handled changed my luck.

Sao Paulo always had a good share of traffic, that gets worse every year. By 2009, the former mayor Gilberto Kassab decided to blame trucks driving around the city during the day for the problems and banned their circulation to a very specific night period. That had an immediate effect on the traffic, of course – that took not much time to come back, as more cars occupied the empty spaces left by the trucks. But the side effects could be felt in many parts of the city, during late night: lots of trucks simply started waiting at the restriction “border” until 10PM and, sometimes a little before that, other times a minute after, started making deliveries all night long until 5AM, when they had to leave again. The system may work on industrial areas, but on residential spaces it was the recipe for problems. That was exactly what happened when a company started to erect a building 12 meters from my bedroom window in August 2010.

After some months complaining and calling the cops late hours, I decided to create a blog and try to mobilize neighbors and other citizens suffering the same problem on different neighborhoods. I called it “Obra Barulhenta” – or Noisy Construction. In two years, I posted more than 50 videos – all gathered in a Youtube channel – and other comments about what was happening. Curiously, it irritated the company – from the WordPress stats I could see their PR office sharing links from the posts – and the workers themselves, that curiously managed to find the site and videos and started posting not so polite comments there. But, for a series of reasons, it lacked civic engagement – although it served as an example for a follower to create a different blog and Youtube channel to complain about his own noisy construction. My noisy karma ended up in 2014 – I hope -, but the idea of developing a tool to help people with similar problems kept coming back. And it started to take a new shape after the Civic Media classes.

Not having the knowledge to develop the nuts and bolts of an app, I decided to present the project of Silence! conceptually. Roughly, it is a sound collection app – based on another application, called Soundmeter -, linked to a mapping system and a forum structure. The idea is to allow citizens to measure urban noise, compare the numbers with the limits allowed per region and time of the day and map abuses. The forum structure could allow people from different regions, but with similar problems (the noise source – church, bar, construction etc, e.g.), to exchange ideas on how to deal with the situations.

The idea speaks directly to the concept of public spheres defended by Jurgen Habermas. Noise, at least in Sao Paulo, is a problem that affects lots of individuals, regardless of origin, social class, political view and so forth. A loud jukebox on a noisy bar at one of the city’s favelas can be as annoying as the sound of iron bars being thrown at the future site of a new trendy building on a rich neighborhood. The sound pollution, in its own way, removes social and economical barriers and can serve as a way to gather people to pressure the State for a common cause.

The project can also be related to the personally responsible/dutiful citizen concept, as it deals with values and a current law that regulates noise during the day; the participatory citizen, as several complaints on the same noise source may cause people to organize and discuss/act about it; and the monitorial citizen, since the app would require eventual participation as the noise happens. The justice oriented citizen is not a very strong feature in this case, as Silence! has no direct action in discussing traffic restriction regulations or zoning laws, some of the causes of noise. But the forum system may help citizens to organize online and offline, and that can lead to bigger debates.

A slight dose of hacktivism can be imparted to the project, as I have tried on Obra Barulhenta: it is possible to track owners of noisy places/companies on public records, as well as their addresses – and cross the data on the telephone list, to obtain the land lines on their residences. Wisely used, a call in the middle of the night to “debate” the noise can be as surprising as effective.

PEC may be appealing as a dribble, but misses the goal of what is good politics

Posted on April 8, 2015 by betofonseca

Screen captured from the website politicaesporteclube.com

Despite being pulverized by Germany at home during the last World Cup, Brazil champions soccer as the country’s main sport for decades. Among its critics, it is a common saying that “if people discussed politics as much and with such memory and detail as they do with soccer, the situation would be infinitely better than it is nowadays”, as it would provide citizens that are at the same time informed to know how many times a player has been injured since he was hired and could not play – or spent more time than wise at night parties -, organized enough to protest against their clubs’ directors, sometimes violently, and justice-driven to the point of debating the causes of Brazilian soccer downwards spiral over the last years.

That considered, when I saw Política Esporte Clube being presented at our last class as an example of civic engagement, my first thought was that its creators may have hit the jackpot by putting toghether the interest of the sport and politics, an area seen in Brazil as a mixture of despise and lack of interest.The mechanics of the site are pretty much the same of a fantasy soccer competition which have also been booming over the last years, specially with Brazilian teenagers and young adults: gather your real players (in this case, congressmen) based on their characteristics and cheer for their best performance during the following weeks. Instead of measuring results every round, PEC bases its gaming on weekly activities balances on the Congress. Some of the criteria used for comparison are presence during the week, projects presented and expenses with public money (every congressman has a monthly value for sponsoring his or her activities).

A closer look at the idea, however, reminded me of the soccer classes I’m taking at Harvard (The Global Game: Soccer, Politics and Popular Culture). In one occasion we discussed how soccer could be used by authoritarian governments to create hegemony. In other words, a closed system where people can subvert the ruling order and even criticize the state of things, but in the end nothing changes. A weaker team can beat a millionaire and stronger one; a poor boy can become the king of the sport; fans can believe they are changing the result of a game of the policy of their clubs by supporting or protesting. But in the end there are still a majority of clubs living close to bankrupcy, almost all players subsisting with minimum wage or less and a growing violence among hoolingans. Using a soccer metaphor, you can change the coach, the players and even the referee, but the game is still the same.

Transporting this debate to politics and the PEC idea of participatory citizenship, we can see some models debated by M. Schudson in “Changing concepts in Democracy” being reproduced:

– The solid citizenship: based on the virtues of each congressman to create a scale of values between “good” and “bad” ones. Despite thecriteria used, establishing this is very important for Brazilian political debate, as voters have no idea on how to determine if their chosen candidate, when elected, has worked well or not.

– The party citizenship: this particular concept, altough contemplated by the site over the party to party comparisons, is subdued. The main value is on the person itself. And the playing system allows you to be highly ecletical on picking “players” regardless of their affiliation.

– The informed citizenship: although the competitive environment of the fantasy soccer style may stimulate users to go after news mentioningcongressmen, the site itself does not provide any data source to help choosing the “players”. Perhaps a simple associated search on Google linked to each politico would be a good start.

– The rights citizenship: probably the weakest link on the site. Players do not have the opportunity to discuss the political system or the activities of each congressmen regarding their own rights, just rate them based on static criteria.

– The monitorial citizenship: on one hand, PEC provides citizens with the possibility of investing less efforts on following political activity by “slicing” the full amount of congressmen (594 elected ones) in small teams. It also allows the contact with other citizens doing the same with different politicians. On the other hand, however, it requires a bit more than a passive behavior – just reacting when there is a problem -, as ratings are weekly and demand attention more frequently associated with what would be an active monitoring.

It is when we compare PEC to the models os citizenry proposed by Westheimer and Kahne in “What Kind of Citizen? The Politics of Educating for Democracy“, however, that thing get more interesting. Based on their model of what could be a good citizen, they established the following categories:

– Personally responsible citizenship: PEC certainly speaks to this group, as it has a set of rules to be followed and is rooted on individual behavior at first.

– Participatory citizenship: the game requires some degree of organization when selecting players, as well as engaging on frequent monitoring and comparison.

– Justice oriented citizenship: that is certainly the biggest problem with the site. It completely lacks any form of debate on what makes a good politician. Participants just have to accept judging their chosen congressmen based on third party criteria. And many of the elements used for that task are highly controversial. For instance, propositions presented: it includes speeches and everyday ordinary communication, not only projects that can become laws and effectively change citizens’ lives. Even if they did, there seems to be no apparent division between complex laws and the ones that simply name streets, airports or create festive days, as the National Pasta Day. By the same logic, presence during votings and expenses during the mandate are not black and white divisions between good and bad, and may not lead to a accurate judgement of good political activity.

The controversy raises the question: what makes a good job over four years in Congress? I do not possess the answer, but I certainly do not rate my elected officials by how many projects they presented, but by the quality of their ideas, being them approved or not. This is another aspect PEC minimizes, as there is no detailing about each proposition or the reasons that led the politician to present it. To get them, it is easier to go to the Congress official website.

For all above, Política Esporte Clube may be a good idea, but today it leaves citizens in the very same position as soccer fans: thinking they can change the game result, but with very little more than that.

The sound of Silence

Posted on March 31, 2015 by betofonseca

A reproduction of Edvard Munch’s The Scream created with Lego tiles and part of The Art of Brick exhibition displayed in Boston last December (Credit: Giovana Girardi/Personal files)

It took me the noise caused by a World Snow Mobile Expo in West Yellowstone, Montana, to remember how annoying can be to live in a high decibel environment. That, however, was not the first time it happened: the construction of a building a few meters from where I lived in Sao Paulo, Brazil, and a clumsy local regulation on trucks deliveries took away countless hours of sleep for three years. Both experiences inspired me with the idea of creating a participatory app to measure urban noise. In the absence of a better name, it would be called Silêncio! (Silence!)

Altough there is not official data available – the City Hall vetoed last year a proposal to develop a noise map -, common sense indicates Sao Paulo is a noisy city. Sources of disturbance are diverse, from construction sites – a city law from 2009 allows trucks to enter the central region only at night -, bars and restaurants to evengelic churches. There are laws regulating noise levels during day and night, but, as expected in many cases in Brazil, the public servers in charge of applying them are reduced – they are part of the Urban Silence Program, or Psiu (Shoosh! in English). According to the last balance published by the City Hall, complaints about urban silence were among the main 3 reasons citizens looked for public assistance in the last trimester of 2014.

Besides the lack of personel to respond to all complaints, the bureaucracy is another issue. The Psiu agent has to go to every source of noise and measure it from the house of the person who called. This creates a “cat and mouse” game, as the construction/bar/church notices the arrival of the public power and reduce the decibels. Some neighborhood associations, as the SOSsego Vila Madalena, tried to create maps of noisy bars in the region to pressure the City Hall, but they provide no concrete evidence besides the complaints themselves.

That is precisely where my proposal could be helpful. If the neighbors of every noise source knew the decibels regulations and how to measure them formally, as Psiu agents would do (the same distance, for instance), they wouldn’t depend on public service only to spot problems. All the measurements would be fed in a database that, in its turn, would be applied to a map, showing the number of people aware of it – the more, the smaller the chance of a biased complaint – and how the sound spreads in each microregion. The map would be a very useful instrument for public agents to orient their service, as it would bring day and hour, in average, where the biggest noise happens.

The precise mapping of noise levels, according to ProAcustica, an association created to debate the problem in Brazil, is also vital for debating issues as new zoning laws and the construction of public transport stations or airports.

The measuring system may be considered a bottleneck to the idea, but according to a research published last year (http://blogs.cdc.gov/niosh-science-blog/2014/04/09/sound-apps/), some smartphones may be close enough of a precision level that, if not works as the “smoking gun” in each case, at least can be used to alert that an official action is needed on a specific place.

Resume

The pros:

– Silence! is directly operated by citizens with a smartphone, stimulating direct participation and awareness about the urban noise debat

– Requires reasonably reduced management and can be paired with Google Maps and GPS to provide precise locatio

– Simple to operate, altough it relies on apps

The problems:

– The need of a smartphone may be a problem in poorer neighborhoods in Brazil

– Depends on paid apps that are more precise than free ones

– Ethical issue: must be based on an anonimity system to avoid stressing even more the neighbor – noise source relation or would that stimulate biased complaints at first?

ClickSeeCallWait versus the Zoning Law Github

Posted on March 10, 2015 by betofonseca

The Github interface of the zoning law debate in Sao Paulo (Screen captured from http://minuta.gestaourbana.prefeitura.sp.gov.br/)

It was curious to research what Sao Paulo, the city I used to live in, has been doing over the last months for improving its relation with the citizens through the Internet. Perhaps the first thing that caught my attention was the lack of uniformity: there are sites with a brutal technological gap and unusual solutions and others with bold and interesting fresh new ideas.

Unfortunately, the first one crossed my way initially. Taking care of the City is a section of Sao Paulo City’s website, the largest metropolis in South America, that, according to the government, “was created to help the citizen fiscalize the public services”. The idea, in theory, goes along with the basics of web 2.0 and government 2.0 defined by Tim O’Reilly, stimulating people’s participation, the collective inteligence, to create a database that, by themselves, public employees would take years to develop – or an eternity.

That, of course, sounds good in theory. Taking as an example street cleaning, one of the easiest public tasks to take care of, as it requires some patience and a comfortable spot by the window of your house. The city site informs the weekday and period when the cleaning of a street should be done. If anything goes wrong, according to the page, it is possible to complain… making a telephone to call a service central. If the person is using a computer or mobile to access the information, the rational outcome would be to allow he/she to continue the process on the same media. Certainly this one walks away from the “design for participation” concept. As a citizen that has used the aforementioned phone service more than once, I can say it usually takes 10 to 15 minutes to complete a complaint.

On the bright side, however, there is a very good example of participative lawmaking that was developed during the final stages of debating the new zoning plan for the city. A version of the project that would be sent to the City Council was put on the internet on the same shape as a Github project, open for participation on every coding line – in this case, represented by every article of the proposal. On the left of the screen, a window allowed the user to compare the project with the existing law, approved in 2004. Again, it finds echo in what O’Reilly visioned as government 2.0: clear rules for cooperation (you can comment on each paragraph and agree or not with the proposal, giving an overview of the region, for instance) with some supervising from the city technical staff.

However, this idea attracted only 1,500 comments, a very small number considering the city has 11,000,000 people that will be affected by the new law. And perhaps this aspect can be considered a symptom of failure in achieving the “true citizen participation”, that, according to O’Reilly, does not rely only in technicians getting inputs from citizens.

Why Habermas should have a mass* – and rate it on Untappd

Posted on March 3, 2015 by betofonseca

The Pub section of Untappd

*a mass is the German definition of a 1-liter glass mug.

My friend is a true believer that the world would be a better place if Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher were still alive – and in charge. He also considers Über a great idea because “it is free from the State regulations and thus, if you want to work 16 hours a day, it’s only up to you”. His future plans include moving to a libertarian community in New Hampshire. From my point of view, his ideas range from highly disagreeable to ridiculous. Our soccer teams, political parties and cities are considered rivals in the Brazilian common sense. Even though, we are friends. I’m risking to say there is only one reason for that: beer. As a journalist, I write about the fermented beverage; as a bar owner, my friend sells it. Most of the time we leave our private concerns off the conversation to exchange visions and opinions about beer via an app called Untappd.

I must admit that one of the first things I researched about Jürgen Habermas was if he was a beer fan or not. If he is, certainly discretion is his motto, as there is not a single reference on a common Google search. Something I consider personally frustrating coming from a Dusseldorf native, the land of Altbier. Not because he may not be a big beer fan, but mostly due to the fact he could not perceive that beer places may be the concrete version of his public sphere concept, or an alcohol fueled model of the coffee houses. Even more with Internet. Germany had a bad moment with beer reunions. But that has not taken away its power as a social gatherer and debate creator.

Beer has gone from the drink of nobility to beverage of the people and through its history, and then back to the upper class in the last years with craft beer. Internet has helped to create spaces to debate the beer itself, and indirectly has worked also as a common place where people with the same interest can meet and debate. Perhaps the best example of it is Untappd, an app that, at first sight, consists only in rating beers from 1 to 5 stars. However, one can see, after some time, Habermas’ concepts applied on it in a new shape.

The first one: the coffee house gives room for The Pub section. This is the place to meet both friends and strangers to discuss the same theme. Social, gender and geographical differences are put aside, and a language common to the users is adopted. Colors, foam types, aromas, tastes, mouthfeel and bitterness have their own words and terms – SRMs, IBUs, ABVs, hoppy, malty, sour, Brett. As the coffee house had the purpose of creating a sort of debate space, a think tank, to make itself be heard by the State, Untappd allows beer fans to create their own image of each beer and show the breweries – in this case representing the State – if they approved or not their actions. Technically the pub space is free from the brewers’ interventions, at least directly.

It is hard to believe, however, that it would be free from outside pressures, specially from the economy or mass communication. At the same time apps like Untappd create a free space for debate and ideas (ratings) exchange, they have a big influential power, that can make newcomers lean toward the most experienced users’ opinions. Economy – represented by producers with a good marketing budget – may also have some strength in this medium, in some cases. The unwritten rule, however, is that Untappd users have a certain despise for big breweries, usually the ones with the biggest marketing budgets.

Nancy Fraser’s critique to Habermas’ theory can also be seen applied to beer. As I have mentioned, Untappd and the craft beer community in general is formed by middle to upper class fans, a select part of a society that, in its vast majority, recognizes beer as that golden, cold and somehow tasteless liquid that should be drunk, not “fussed over”. Female participation is also minimal when it comes to craft beer, what brought me to mind the gender issues Fraser pointed out. Curiously, women that are fond of craft beer also created what she would consider a subaltern counter public: The Pink Boots Society, a group that reunites brewsters, sommelières and fans in general, to create an isolated environment where women can have their beers apart from the male context.

If the coffee can be considered a symbol of sobriety, history and technology have helped beer to get a place in the table when serious discussions are involved. From the early days, as a field workers’ beverage, beer had low alcohol percentages; its use was mainly as a safe substitute for water, but without letting anyone incapable of working countless hours with the crops. Today, session beers and even low alcohol ones are coming back to fashion. If that is not enough, creative brewers were also able to blend malt, hops, yeast and coffee on the same glass. Would the recipe make the coffee house a little more open minded?

Nine good Brazilian civic engagement projects that aren’t still there and one that made it

Posted on February 25, 2015 by betofonseca

After the nationwide protests in 2013 that started after the elevation of transportation fares, the optimistic political analysis pointed out young Brazilians have left their comfort zones and flocked to the streets to become more active and interested in what was being decided on their behalf. The 2014 presidential election, however, was a statistic cold shower: the total of registered voters between 16 and 17 years old – which are not forced by law to participate, but are able to – had a massive drop. In 2010, they were 2,39 million, or 1,7% of the total. Four years later, 1,64 million, or 1,15%.
In-depth researches made by Ibope and Box1824 institutes between the two facts have shown that, despite engaging somehow in the protests, youngsters were not feeling represented by formal politics, and a small percentage of the more active ones were following and debating the theme on a daily basis, specially on social media – Facebook, to be more specific. This group is probably the main focus of a number of initiatives that have appeared in the last years, trying to “explain” civics to a larger crowd or even bringing real life politics to the common citizen. Here are some of them:

10. Beabá do Cidadão / Citizen ABC
Created in 1998 by a group of university students, this NGO has a focus in developing autonomy and critical conscience in citizens.
Strong point: has a qualified group of volunteers coming from university and focuses on basic civis, as teaching how to obtain personal documents.
Weakness: very little interactivity on the website – most of the works are digital versions of PDFs or personal group activities, limiting the sharing of knowledge.

9. Politeia Project
A partnership between Brasilia University and the Brazilian Congress, it makes students assume the role of elected representatives, presenting projects, debating and voting them.
Strong point: the material seems very realistic, following the same principles of the Congress (electing president, presenting projects and so forth), giving students a goos basis even for trying the political career.
Weakness: It is only for university students, which narrows a lot its reach, to a group that would not necessarily need this much help as others that have no access to this degree of education.

One of the Congress Radar displays (Captured from http://radarparlamentar.polignu.org/)

8. Congress Radar
Created in 2012 based on the Congress open source system, it allows the visualization of how each congressmen has voted during the years.
Strong point: Interesting forms of visualization, following the radar model.
Weakness: Demands a considerable previous knowlegdge of politics to understand it; very little didatic content.

7. Projeto Politiquê / Politiwhat Project
Aims at youngsters and on the transmission of an impartial political knowledge.
Strong point: as Turbovote, focuses on taking students to register as voters.
Weakness: weak internet interface – Facebook only, and mainly based on news -, which weakens the spread of the experience.

6. Hacker Bus
Created in 2011 after a sucessful crowdfunding to buy and equip a bus, this project has focuses ranging from city and problems digital mapping to cultural presentations.
Strong point: mobile digital structure can reach various places.
Weakness: very outdated internet activity limits the reach of the project

5. Política de Boteco/Pub Politics
Mobile interface of Votenaweb project, it is designed to bring the politics to happy hour. Allows to search and agree or not with projects being analyzed by the Congress.
Strong point: Does not require previous politics and civics knowledge of the user; focus on mobile allows easy access.
Weakness: Has bugs for earlier Android versions, a factor that can exclude older smartphones users.

4. Cidade Democrática / Democratic City
A platform that allows people to present problems and ideas to solve them, as well as third parties to analyze and add suggestions to each one of them.
Strong point: High degree of participation, even without prior knowledge of civics
Weakness: Website a little confusing and with difficulties to find proposals.

3. E eu com isso? What do I have to do with that?
A series of Youtube videos about very basic civics, as duties division among Executive, Legislative and Justice Powers in the country, States and cities.
Strong point: Good animation, easy to grasp the basic principles of politics.
Weakness: It has only four videos; Youtube may not be the ideal platform to reach people needing the most basic content on civics.

2. Show do Rafucko / Rafucko’s Show
A series of Youtube programs featuring the comediant Rafael Puetter, it has gathered more than a million viewers.
Strong point: Humor, politics and human rights. And a cast of interesting interviewees, from TV stars to congressmen.
Weakness: It is explicitly left oriented; spectators with different views need to look for other alternatives.

Some of Votenaweb’s projects (Captured from http://www.votenaweb.com.br/)

1. Votenaweb
A site that presents more than 4,500 projects being analyzed by the Congress to citizen’s evaluation.
Strong point: Comprehensible texts about the projects, easy decisions – support or not – and the possibility to follow its path along the bureaucracy. Also presents a rank of poticians based on projects presented and popular agreement or disagreement with each one. So far this one is the best executed idea on Brazilian civics engagement.

Is Ninja Media a part of the solution for civic journalism?

Posted on February 17, 2015 by betofonseca

The beginning of 2013 was a bad moment for newspapers in Sao Paulo, Brazil`s largest city. Big media groups were promoting large layoffs – that lead, for instance, to the closing of 46 year old Jornal da Tarde, where I used to work. Besides that, there was a bad vibe in the newsrooms, where the amount of work had increased for the remaining journalists, already tired of exhausting shifts and afraid of the next cuts. Smaller teams had greater difficulties on going to the street. That background can explain, partially, the way legacy media has faced the first street protests in the middle of the year, first about the raise on the bus fares. The initial reaction on the opinion section of the main two newspapers in Sao Paulo was to treat the movement as a distress to drivers, due to the closure of streets and avenues and the traffic generated. Worse than that, the same op-eds asked for a firm police intervention to clear the streets. By then, the logic was of the “groups of youngsters causing havoc that would be relegated to a footnote and soon be dispersed by the police”.

Facts proved them wrong, and a series of small protests soon became the country`s largest popular movement since president Fernando Collor de Mello`s impeachment in the 90s. Police`s violent reaction also hit journalists. Big media then started to change its focus on the movement. However, it had already lost ground to a new form of communication. Using their mobile cameras plugged to laptops` batteries, a simple app – the Chinese Twitcasting, that allows livefeed on Twitter or Facebook easily – and a shopping cart with a computer providing wi-fi, Midia Ninja (or Ninja Media) provided a new and intense view of the protests, from the insider`s point of view. The nonstop and shaky camera was close to police bombs` explosions, the reaction of protesters and gathered thousands of viewers. One of the most symbolic images of this period was the one of legacy media reporters transmitting on the top of buildings whil Ninja Media had its feet on the ground and side by side with protesters. Could they be what is expected as civic journalism?

Ninja stands for Independent Narratives Journalism and Action. It has emerged during the 2013 protests, but it is linked to an older cultural collective called Fora do Eixo (Out of the Axis). Its home page indicates their objective: “New technologies and new forms of using technology have opened the way for new sharing spaces, in which people do not only passive absorb information, people produce and exchange information. In this new context, of networks connected to streets, multimedia citizens emerge with the capacity of make its own opinions and share it in the virtual world.” The group includes some journalists, but also many activists. It works on an open participation basis – anyone interested can join in, previously providing personal data, skills and resources – and also on the concept of collective authorship, where many texts are signed not by a person, but by the group.

They soon called legacy media attention. The first reactions, however, were harsh. Many of my journalist friends on social media were diminishing Ninja Media’s role, classifying them as “a bunch of guys living with their parents that take journalism for just going out in the streets with their cameras on”. Some other bureaus went after Out of the Axis, digging accusations of fraud. The group also had a drawback when granted access to interview Rio de Janeiro`s mayor Eduardo Campos – in which they were considered underprepared, with no previous research to contradict numbers presented by the politician. This, for some time, was the argument used by legacy media to try to reassure its importance in the digital ecosystem, as well the the defence of an alleged impartiality that is, in theory, inherent to the profession.

Ninja Media takes sides on the stories, as Bruno Torturra, one of its creators, made clear. “Our main role is to reclaim for journalism and communications their activist role as the public’s eyes and to offer information that is increasingly qualified to defend democracy,” he said in a 2013 interview. This engagement he defends can be seen as one of the basis of civic journalism. From a point of view, traditional journalism can also be considered based on opinions and sides – of what subject gets in and which ones are out, what goes to the headlines and whats is drowned in the footnotes, which side goes to the lead and so forth. That is not the only problem Ninja Media and legacy media share. In that same interview, when asked about fact checking, Torturra answered accountability could be exercised by their followers on the web. Personally, and as a journalist, the “publish first and check later” policy that has also taken part of the media in the digital age seems more a problem than a solution, or a losing game, as it adds very little in terms of meaningful information.

Problems apart, Ninja Media left their mark on traditional journalism, which, after being “shaken” technologically, returned to the streets more camera savvy and vibrant. A formal change that may not be able to solve the activity`s bigger problems, but at least showed some need to go after new formats and ways to tell a story. Ninja Media also tried to approach new journalistic enterprises, as Ponte, a collective of reporters dedicated to cover human rights and security issues. There is also, however, the financial problem of backing up new media enterprises, as points out Elizabeth Lorenzotti, researcher from Sao Paulo University (USP). “I think it breaks up with a (journalism) model that`s been suffering for a long time, but the way of financing these collectives is still under experimentation and needs better structuring.”

Introduction to Civic Media

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