The Media Revolution Happening in Brazil’s Favelas
The ‘news deserts’ that plague the country’s poorest communities may be turning into oases
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The majority of Brazil’s population is Black and mixed-race. That same population also makes up the majority of the country’s poorest and most excluded communities in the outskirts and favelas of major cities. Black and mixed-race Brazilians are 2.7 times more likely than their White counterparts to be murdered, and they constitute more than three quarters of homicide victims in the country.
A longstanding media crisis only exacerbates such patterns. Nearly two-thirds of all municipalities in Brazil qualify as “news deserts,” areas where there is little to no local coverage. Outlets with national reach end up being a community’s primary sources of news, but rarely address relevant issues in that community — such as the lack of food at a city’s public schools or untenable lines at health care institutions. Instead, national outlets only show up to report on violence, criminalizing, and even blaming residents.
The result is a fun house mirror of sorts, skewing residents’ realities and reflecting back a distorted version of their lives. “News deserts directly affect subjects’ understanding of reality,” says Wellington Hack, a journalist and researcher at Universidade Federal de Santa Maria. “Allied to this issue, we still have socioeconomic problems that a large part of the population — especially in developing countries — faces, such as poverty and difficult access to education.”
Without a local press, adds journalist Mariama Correia, who helped research a local journalism mapping project called Atlas da Notícia (News Atlas), “the population is poorly informed about the actions of local/regional public authorities, and this impacts the citizens’ decision-making capacity.”
Yet, change has begun to take root. A number of initiatives have emerged from these news deserts, seeking to give voice to those who are excluded. Even more, these projects — newspaper O Cidadão (The Citizen), news agencies Voz das Comunidades (Voice of the Communities), Coletivo Papo…
