Activism has a strong tradition in pushing societies to recognize new rights and making pressure in governments to respect citizens. Thus, activism means a method to spread progressive ideas. However, the latest news from Brazil call me to think about possible negative effects of this political practice.

Nowadays, Brazil is living under an economic crisis. I mean the economic growth rates are close to zero. At the same time, there is a big corruption scandal in the state oil company Petrobrás, involving construction companies and politicians (the Justice estimates the stolen amount in R$ 59 million, something like 20 million dollar). Thus, because this investigation in course, some of the most important Brazilian businessmen and politicians are in jail. The Brazilian government is under strong pressure from the political opposition and just 13% of the Brazilian thinks the president Dilma Rousseff is doing a good job.

Brazil faces a crisis scenario. So it’s easy to understand why the public sphere became mostly against the government. This behavior is part of the modern democratic experience. However, some movements call for military intervention or impeachment of president Rousseff (yet without fault for justify his removal according to the Brazilian Constitution).

I would like to talk about the “Revoltados Online” movement, because I believe that this case can help us to think about some situations in which online activism method can work against the best citizen interests. Let’s look closer. This Facebook-based movement has also a blog and a channel at YouTube. There isn’t any formal organization behind the scenes. There is no a positive agenda. The only purpose is put Rousseff away from the power, even if necessary a military intervention. The Facebook page meets 788 thousand people, which is an important amount to the Brazilian Facebook, yet it’s not a huge number. The engagement costs are low. It’s necessary just one click to enjoy. So people can follow and interact with posts.

The “Revoltados Online” finance its operation through the selling of T-shirt. The price range from R$ 50 to R$ 175. However, they don’t offer fiscal invoice, which is crime according the Brazilian legislation. It happens probably because they aren’t a formal organization, so there is no staff to provide this things.

In this context, I think that “Revoltados Online” works against the Brazilian democratic tradition; not just against the current government and its policies. I am not going to proceed a deeply exam of this case, but I’ll address three points:

Misinformation

In extreme political context, protesters need to deal the official version looking for the justice and the truth. However, I think that Revoltados Online promotes misinformation by spreading rumors without any confirmation. For example, they usually say that the government is going to change Brazil in a communist country, but there is no any evidence to support this argument. They just don’t like the social policies made by the left government, thus they create or endorse untruths and conspiracy theories.

Hate speech

In some contents, “Revoltados Online” use hate speech to attack some politicians and government supporters. In a fast search, I found words like: dirty, wino, thief, monkey. In the comments section, it’s easy find people claim against human rights, once it would be a way for the left-government supporters protect criminal people.

Social distrust in state institutions and the law

Across the world we can see examples where people need fight against the government to produce visibility on something wrong. In any place, activists need pressure government or state institutions to recognize citizen rights. This process can produce a lack of confidence in government or institutions. I don’t mean this kind of distrust. “Revoltados Online” support positions against the Brazilian democratic institutions, like the electronic electoral system – recognized one of the most secure and efficient in the world. In his duty against the government, they forget the Brazilian constitution and the democratic game.

The goal of this blog post is just remember that online activism is a political strategic available to people do almost anything. In the most of the situations, online activism can promote justice and better life for citizens, but also can be used to attack the democratic rules.

I don’t mean that Brazilian citizens can’t criticize the government – this is my main activity online in the last weeks. I am just addressing arguments that some kinds of activism work against the democratic institutions, which has been made with great difficulty by the Brazilian society. The medicine can not kill the sick person.

Source: http://viatrolebus.com.br/2013/03/moradores-querem-bonde-de-santa-teresa-de-volta/bonde-santa-tereza/

Rio de Janeiro is probably the most known Brazilian city around the world. The city image is shaped by natural beauties, Bossa Nova, samba, carnival, the big statue of Christ the Redeemer [o Cristo Redentor] and the Pão de Açucar Mountain. (Of course we may not forget some sad things that is also part of the city, like the urban violence and inappropriate housing in favelas). Rio de Janeiro is both one important city for the Brazilian history and for the tourism economy. So the historic heritage should be carefully preserved, right? Yes, but it doesn’t always happen. A historic icon is in danger to be extinct: the electric trolley of Santa Teresa.

The electric trolley of Santa Teresa started run in 1896. Therefore, the trolley is almost 120 years old and since 1968 this is the only historic trolley yet in operation in Rio. Who visited Rio de Janeiro during the 20th century or during the first decade of the 21th century probably saw the trolley in operation. Passengers could take the train from the center of Rio to the Santa Teresa neighborhood, so they could cross the famous Arcos da Lapa.

Source: http://www.mjturismo.com.br/news-tour/brasil-imperial-12-a-24-de-maio-2015/attachment/bondinho-no-arco-da-lapa/

After decades of insufficient maintenance by public authorities, the trolleys stopped run in 2011. In this year, a sad accident killed six people and injured more than 50 passengers. Since then, the trolleys have not worked and they are stored in a workshop. The government is building and testing new trolleys, but the service don’t come back yet.

In this carelessness context with the historical heritage, an organization called Meu Rio [My Rio] took action. This is an organization that operates mainly in the city of Rio de Janeiro and its main action is to pressure public officials and other authorities to defend the citizens. For example, they achieve success in ask maintenance for some public schools and opening of GPS data from buses of the public transport system.

Source: http://deguarda.nossascidades.org/

Regarding to the trolley of Santa Teresa, the Meu Rio mobilized people to monitor the fate of the historical trolleys. They are especially concerned about the irregular grant to third parties. So they created a petition to request an inventory of goods from all trolley system. The argument is that some of the historic trolley (as old as 1896) can be recovered and operate together with the new trolleys that are under construction.

Source: http://deguardanobondinho.meurio.org.br/

After the government put the trolleys at a workshop, the Meu Rio created the page called De Guarda no Bondinho [on guard on the trolley]. The idea is basically push towards the trolleys’ preservation instead of being donated or thrown away. They put a camera in front of the workshop to monitor whether someone remove the trains. People who are concerned about this issue can register on the platform and inform his/her phone number. Thus, in case of the need for a flash mobilization, Meu Rio promises to send SMS to everyone. The idea is simple but looks efficient.

Until this week, the site has 2478 people registered, which are called guardians. Meu Rio explains the reasons and the procedure: “If it continues, the cable cars there will be only in the memory. Thus we are on guard! We will prevent the removal of parts until it’s done a rigorous and updated inventory of this heritage. Enlist now: we will send a SMS calling all guardians for the workshop door, if we suspect they removed parts. The city is ours. The trolleys too!”

However, there is no record that there was a mobilization in front of the workshop. This week, the camera is not working. Anyway, my goal is not to evaluate the effectiveness of this project, but discuss how this model can be inspiring for other actions and for our reflection on the exercise of citizenship.

I think this case illustrates the Schudson’s idea on monitorial citizenship. “A monitorial citizen scans (rather than reads) the informational environment in a way so that he or she may be alerted on a very wide variety of issues for a very wide variety of ends and may be mobilized around those issues in a large variety of ways”. The author argues that citizens can be more monitorial than follows the news. This kind of citizenship is based on personal interests and due specialized. As professor Zuckerman said at the class, the big challenge of the monitorial practice is the fight for public attention, once there are a lot of agendas looking for visibility.

The Meu Rio acts as a vigilant that monitors closely what happens with the trolleys. Thus, the citizens don’t need themselves give up their daily activities to monitor this issue. They can just engage if necessary. This model is good and bad at the same time. It doesn’t require too much from the citizens who can engage with a low cognitive and emotional cost. But at the same time this kind of project doesn’t guarantee that people understand the reasons for the trolleys’ support. The citizen takes a political position, but they don’t necessarily learn from this experience.

This kind of project isn’t concerned to create broadly opportunities for the formation of citizens. Through this platform, citizens don’t have the opportunity to understand better the operation, maintenance and financing of the public transport. Likewise, there isn’t explanations on preservation of the trolleys as historical heritage. Anyway, in my opinion, making choice of a much focused political action in the “monitorial” paradigm, Meu Rio don’t teach the idea of the Santa Teresa trolley as a citizen’s rights. Schudson could say that there is a valorization of the monitor citizenship and a devaluation of the rights-conscious citizenship.

The civic media projects need to be able to include everyone who want to engage. However, to translate the theoretical demands for inclusiveness on the real world is really complex. A historical example are the efforts of governments and social organizations to facilitate public access to the Internet. In the United States, there is policies to offer Internet access in public libraries and some cities are planning to offer free high-speed Internet for all citizens. In Brazil there are public spaces [telecentros] specifically designed to provide free internet for the population. The governments are concerned with providing the resources to access the internet, because they believe the digital divide results in damage to the exercise of citizenship.

But this interpretation of the digital divide is simplistic, according to Paul DiMaggio and Eszter Hargittai (2001). The problem would be more challenging than simply provide access to computers and the internet. According to the authors the use of technology can’t be summary in to have or not. The question is the different uses that people actually do. These authors reframe the digital divide: we should talk about digital inequalities. The challenge is not just have access, but have all conditions and skills required for each activity you want to do online.

DiMaggio and Hargittai (2001) talk about technical issues, like hardware, software, connection to internet; autonomy of use, how each user may use or not; skills to do what each one want to do; social support, like motivation and help. Therefore, if someone wants to design a platform is essential to think about the differences between users. The challenge is great, because the platforms need to be understandable and easy to use by everyone.

The good news from Jenkins’ work (2009) is that people can learn how to participate during the Internet use itself. Jenkins specifically studied youth fan communities. He believes that young people can learn how to participate, including in the politics, through the engagement in fan culture. He believes that the participatory pop culture is teaching the next generation how to participate in politics.

However, how to assess the level of inclusiveness in civic media projects? To answer this question, I am going to assess how a case shapes the demands for inclusiveness. I will analyze a Brazilian platform for political discussion called Participa.BR. The federal government created this platform last year to promote discussion between citizens. But the participation rates are low. There are just 6181 members, sorted by 53 communities. It is easy to become member. It is necessary just fill out a form, where is mandatory to inform city, state, profession and possible civil organization of which the person is a member. After a check by mail, the person can start using the platform. For beginners who do not know the platform’s features, there is a small guidebook[1].

After a quick navigation throughout this site, I can say that the platform offers no great difficulties for those who are interested to engage in discussions. But given the low participation rates, I have to ask one question: The Participa.BR is effectively inclusive? If we look at the platform design, we can say yes. However, if we look at the use, the answer is no.

I think to strengthen the Participa.BR environment you need to use the Jenkins advice. The platform needs to be cool. The platform needs to attract people who like the themes in discussion. Jenkins would say fans, we can say activists. You need to develop strategies to encourage the formation of online communities. The user experience must be really inside the community. People have to have respect and admiration for each other. Maybe the Parlio social network could be a good start point to redesign the Participa.BR.

References:

DiMaggio, P., & Hargittai, E. (2001). From the ‘digital divide’to ‘digital inequality’: Studying Internet use as penetration increases. Princeton University Center for Arts and Cultural Policy Studies, Working Paper Series number, 15.

Jenkins, H. (2009). Confronting the challenges of participatory culture: Media education for the 21st century. Mit Press.

[1] http://www.participa.br/ajuda/duvidas-frequentes

First of all, I would like to remember some key points in Benkler’s work. He understands that the collaboration between individuals in the common space (or networked public sphere, in some assumptions) can result in public goods. This is a generous idea, but it is also real and economic-based, as he demonstrated rigorously in his book. The Benkler’s perspective recognizes that human beings generally act motived by capital or material gains, but at same time he believes that human beings act by psychological and sociological gratification.

Benkler identifies some criticisms addressed to collaboration in online platforms, but he argues that the Internet is revolutionary compared to mass media. There is some limitations in the internet landscape, but this media is the most open ever. Anyone can engage in complex and huge projects, with small or big contributions according to skills and motivation, which can result in meaningful goods to everyone.

Remembering the collaboration conception in this terms is important, because this approach is more demanding than collaboration in private workplace. In this view, collaboration is more than to do something with someone, it is do something with someone else oriented to common interest.

Colab – https://colab.interlegis.leg.br/ci/

Once we quote some important topics of the Benkler’s view, I would like to report two cases of collaboration which are trying to address challenges inside the public sector. First, Colab is a platform to Brazilian public servants discuss common problems and exchange codes. The platform is open and everyone may participate. Using this platform to exchange solutions, the governmental team spends less time and money, as strongly recommended by Tim O’Reilly.

But the collaboration inside the government is not just a good strategy because it save resources, but also because diversity of skills and perspective improve the quality of the web pages and others applications. Notwithstanding the platform be used by Brazilian coders, Colab is open to everyone everywhere. Who wants to create something like the Brazilian projects may uses the codes for free.

Secondly, I want to talk about Poplus, a platform founded by MySociety and CiudadanoInteligente.org, define themselves as “an international community of activists, citizens and developers” that intend to create “standardized, internationalized, interoperable, open-source components, to make it easier to build websites that empower citizens, no matter where you are based”.

Poplus – http://poplus.org/

The simple and helpful idea is to offer codes of applications that can be used by governs to engage citizens. Once civic media has frequently the same functions, they created at least five modules which may be adapted to specific needs (see here). So everyone may reuse codes written by someone else, thus resources have been saved. The access to code is open and everyone may join the Poplus Google Group to ask informations and report its experience.

To conclude this post, I want to remember some O’Reilly tips: open standards and open development of solutions have an extraordinary power to engage citizens in searching solutions to public problems. People worldwide can work together collaboratively to help to strengthen the relation between governments and citizens.

[idea in progress]

How can we do a strong online public sphere? How can we create a space to citizens discuss with others and to influence the police making process, both parliamentary and governmental? This is a really important and hard question. Probably there is no an effective prescription for all contexts. Actually, since the first steps of the internet, scholars and activists are trying to figure out how to use this technology to enhance the democratic experience.

On the web landscape, citizens, civil organizations, companies and governments have invested resources in projects to strengthen the public sphere. It’s true that each actor has a specific understanding about the concept of public sphere, its problems and possible solutions. However, I am going to draw a model to try to explain the functions of civic media in the public sphere.

First of all, I am going to describe how, after read Junger Habermas and Nancy Fraser, I understand these three elements: society, public sphere and state. Society is basically composed of all citizens, its activities and interests. The members of society – citizens – shape the public sphere when they are engaged in public discussions. So, the public sphere is different from society because its purposes and moment-space, but it is composed with people who live inside the society. Finally, the state is basically composted by government, legislative and the legal system. I know that these three elements are really complex and it is not as simple as showed in the picture, but it is just an exercise to help us think about the function of civic media in the public sphere.

As you can see in the picture, I think it is possible to identify at least three types of civic media functions in the public sphere landscape. First, the red vector indicates the relationship between society and public sphere. Citizens can create civic media to strengthen the public sphere and, vice versa, the public sphere – actually, citizens organized as public sphere – can work to motivate others to engage in the public sphere. In my opinion, the purpose of the both red vectors (society-public sphere or public sphere-society) are the same: support the citizenship participation in the public sphere.

In fact, there is a lot of software and platform to support citizens interact with others about public issues. These can be appropriated by users to public debate (like Facebook, Twitter or YouTube) or it can be drawn already to host the public debate (DemocracyOS, Participa.br [Brazil]). In common, the goal is to facilitate the communication flow between citizens. These type of civic media wants improve the variety of information available inside the public sphere and support public discussion. The democratic relevance of these projects comes from the capacity to support a rational, open and equalitarian discussion between citizens.

Second, the green vector indicates the relationship between public sphere and state, specifically the civic media created by citizens to push the government toward citizen’s interests. This relationship is a big challenge, because public sphere and the state agencies are circumstantially away. In modern democracies, citizens can chose the most important officials inside the state, but there is few opportunities to address questions. As described by Habermas, the public sphere challenge is to mediate citizenship interests and state agencies.

To support the public sphere in its pressure job the agencies and officials inside the state, a large number of civic media has been created. As an example, we can cite Avaaz.org, but also some cases of citizen journalism and online activism that want attention and action from state agencies. At the same time, there is some initiatives created by govern to receive inputs from citizens (like We the People, Regulations.org). The democratic value of these initiatives comes from the impact in the public policies. I don’t mean that all demands from public sphere have to become policies, but that should exist channel and mechanisms to hearing (and to rationalize) what people think about public issues. This connection recognize the public sphere importance, namely to produce the public opinion and address to administrative power.

Third, the blue vector indicates the communicative flow from state to public sphere, namely initiatives created by state to inform citizens. Specially, in the last years, there is a lot of initiatives to keep citizens better informed about public resources and what the government are doing. Someone says that this a good way to improve citizen control over government (accountability, transparency) and, thus, increase the public confidence, but this is a controversial topic as we saw in the third week of this class. As an example, we can cite initiatives to open data (Data.gov).

***

Finally, I recognize that this first model is not enough accurate. It is mandatory to think, from the perspective of the real practice, how we can refine the understanding of relations between civic media and public sphere.

I would like to talk about one of the most complex problems in modern democracies: the crisis of representation. There is no consensus about causes, consequences and solutions to this crisis, but every citizen in modern democracies strives for more and better political representation. Everyone wants to see members of parliament discuss the issues they consider most important.

I am not going to ask if representative democracy is the best option. This is an important question, I am sure, but I want to talk about possible initiatives to improve the representative system once this is the reality in the most of the democracies today.

On one hand, we have to admit that fighting for better representation is part of the democratic life. It’s a crisis, of course, but it’s necessary for the system to work well. New identities, new agendas, new problems always compete for public attention and for representation in the political system. This starting point is necessary to avoid overly pessimistic perspectives.

On the other hand, I think that something should be done to improve the political experience between citizens and their elected representatives. The first challenge is to understand what representatives can do and what they actually do in congress. If we look to mainstream media landscape, it’s hard to find news about representatives if he/she isn`t in a high position in the congress hierarchy.

To address this problem, some Brazilian researchers from Pontifical Catholic University-Rio de Janeiro (led by Professor Arthur Ituassu) created a webpage to organize information about federal deputies [representatives in the Brazilian lower house: Câmara dos Deputados or Chamber of Deputies].

Named O que fez seu Deputado [What has your deputy done], the webpage is simple, but fast and easy to use. On the site, you can find a short bio of the deputy, what bills he/she voted for or against, attendance, speeches, bills drafted and parliamentary committees that the deputy is engaged in. The project covers only deputies from Rio de Janeiro.

Although the data available on this website is already public in other places, this is a particularly helpful tool because citizens can access a variety of information about what deputies are doing in a single page. So they can compare the deputies’ activities. Everyone knows that having good sources of information to make decisions is fundamental for a healthy democracy. So, during elections, this project can help people evaluate what is the best choice, if the deputies who she/he voted for in the past did a good job or if it’s better chose someone else.

Having more information about what deputies did isn’t groundbreaking, but I think this is the first step. If citizens know what exactly their representatives have done, they can chose better during elections and express their opinions in the public sphere or directly to their representatives. The next step is create additional ways for individuals or groups (social lobby) to pressure representatives and governments – there is already some innovative tools with we can do it (Avaaz.com).

I know that O que fez seu Deputado isn`t the solution, but I am sure this is a simple and effective tool that can help people learn more about their representatives. The challenge is to improve the relationship between political systems and citizens as this is a fundamental pillar of modern democracies.

People with different backgrounds has talked about citizen journalism. There is a lot of conceptions and practical applications. From reader’s comments in mainstream newspapers to independent blogs have claimed to themselves the umbrella of citizen journalism. However, what is the fundamental element in this concept? The most common and simpler answer is: “citizen journalism is the journalism made by the citizens”. This is true, but is this a satisfactory answer?

Citizen journalism is not only about procedure – who write the news, but also about the values that guide the journalistic work. It’s not just the journalism made by citizen, but the journalism guided by citizenship values. In fact, citizen journalism should be oriented to defend the citizenship, without other political or economic commitments. The most important is the freedom to produce news outside the market needs and to cover topics with frames from citizenship view.

I recognize that this is a demanding concept, but this is the only way to valorize the ‘citizen’ element. And, with this differentiation, we can understand and criticize better some initiatives made by citizens but sometimes against citizens’ interest.

Furthermore, citizen journalism is always an activity politically engaged. Each citizen journalism initiative has always a cultural challenge. There is at least two ways trough which this challenge happens. First, the citizen journalism usually needs to build news frames about objects already known. Some topics are always covered with the same frame by the mainstream journalism and citizen journalism has tried to show other perspectives. Second, to produce visibility to issues without public attention. Some topics are never covered by the mainstream journalism, but they are important to citizenship and citizen journalism is trying to draw attention to them.

For example, I can cite the remarkable Brazilian case Voz das Comunidades [Community’s Voice], founded by a teenager called Rene Silva in 2005. This initiative was founded as a print newspaper to talk about community issues from favela Morro do Alemão, Rio de Janeiro (Brazil). The printing was done in a photocopy machine and delivered in the streets. Over time, Voz das Comunidades created an account on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, besides a website. At this moment, there are about 175K followers in Twitter, 36K likers in Facebook.

Voz das Comunidades became known in 2010 when police forces raided Morro do Alemão to expel drug dealers who controlled the region. Rene Silva covered all police operations through Twitter. He was the only source inside the community, exception the police that not always inform correctly on their own actions.

Now, about 20 people are engaged in the project and his founder, Rene Silva, is planning expand it to other favelas in Rio de Janeiro and also other cities. He is an ambassador for more positive favela representation and, because of that, he has worked as consulter to TV shows and one telenovela that talk about the way of life of the favelas’ residents. Rene was also one of four Brazilians that carried the Olympic torch in London.

As Rene Silva said to O Globo newspaper, “there was need to a local newspaper, because the people feared the mainstream media, which was only going to favela when happened shootings and deaths. News about us was always about bad things, news about violence. The normal daily routine was ignored”.

Photo: Laura Marques, Extra

In my point-of-view, the cultural challenges of Voz das Comunidades are, at same time, reframe the issue of violence and to show positive aspects from their neighborhood. Urban violence is over covered and, generally, from the police perspective. People that suffer with violence consequences generally doesn’t have opportunity to explain consequences to their life, what they have to do to keep themselves alive, worries, fears. Voz das Comunidades wants to cover this topic from an inside perspective, from who is living this urban tragedy (see example). They also want to show some positive things that are never covered by the mainstream media, especially positive examples that can inspire others (see history about a popular writer and about a quadriplegic painter).

Finally, Voz das Comunidades is about change minds, is about change the public perception about the life inside the favelas. Sometimes this cultural challenge needs add other perspectives about topics over covered, sometimes it needs to publicize the human richness that grow up in this hard context.