The Internet, Politics, and Inequality in Contemporary Brazil: Peripheral Media offers a new understanding of the digital media produced from the favelas, urban occupations, and in the countryside of Brazil, focusing on the discourse of this broad periphery in the late 2010s. After a decade of political stabilization and economic growth, the contemporary periphery has the ability to employ digital media to politicize old demands for social justice and better public services, and to denaturalize inequality overall. The Internet, Politics, and Inequality in Contemporary Brazil presents interviews conducted with producers acting in the cities’ outskirts, in favelas, and in the countryside, showing how a myriad of websites and social media pages can launch specific challenges against hegemonic mass media outlets, the state, and society. A vast body of research reveals producers’ strategies to garner publicity for marginalized neighborhoods and individuals, providing an essential background for scholars of Latin American studies, journalism, and communication.

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.

This book examines the emergence of alternative forms of news reporting in Brazil with a focus on progressive not-for-profit initiatives. In combining different genres of non-commercial journalism, this study allows us to better understand the potential of alternative news producers in times of continuing technological shifts and their efforts to diversify the news production. Sarmento explores a range of significant questions, including: what does it mean to practice “alternative” journalism? To what extent do non-mainstream practices subvert the taxonomy of news values? Do alternative journalists adhere to or reject journalism’s core values? And, more specifically, as more and more journalists or media producers are collecting, disseminating and interpreting news without being employed by large media groups, what insights can they provide in relation to the economics of digital journalism? Using the turbulent political landscape of Brazil as a case study, Sarmento asks us to reflect on what the erosion of traditional journalism really means. The resulting conclusions will be of value to all those who study or practice journalism around the world, in addition to media researchers and activists.

An extensive and inclusive account of the media environments of 45 countries worldwide In Media Compass: A Companion to International Media Landscapes, an international team of prominent scholars examines both long-term media systems and fluctuating trends in media usage around the world. Integrating country-specific summaries and cross-cutting studies of geopolitical regions, this interdisciplinary reference work describes key elements in the political, social, demographic, cultural, and economic conditions of media infrastructures and public communication. Enabling the mapping of media landscapes internationally, Media Compass contains up-to-date empirical surveys of individual countries and regions, as well as cross-country comparisons of particular areas of public communication. 45 entries, each guiding readers from a general summary to a more in-depth discussion of a country’s specific media landscape, address formative conditions and circumstances, historical background and development, current issues and challenges, and more. Designed to facilitate quick lookup of individual entries, as well as comparative readings of a country’s position in the wider media environment, Media Compass: A Companion to International Media Landscapes is an invaluable addition to libraries and institutions of higher education, and a must-read volume for students, educators, scholars, and practitioners working in communication and media studies, journalism, and media production.

Has a global queer popular culture emerged at the expense of local queer artists? In this book, Helton Levy argues that global queer culture is indebted to specific, local references that artists carry from their early experiences in life, which then become homogenized by contemporary media markets. The assumption that queer publics live and consume only through a global set of references, including gay parades and rainbow flags, for example, erases many personal complexities. Levy revisits media characters that have caught the attention of the broader public – such as Calamity Jane (1953), the Daffyd Thomas character from the BBC comedy Little Britain (2003-2007), Brazilian drag queen Pabblo Vittar, French singer Christine and the Queens, and the Italian-Egyptian rapper Mahmood – and argues that they have gradually blended in the public's perception. This has often obscured the individual struggles faced by these characters, such as immigration, homophobia, poverty and societal exclusion. Levy also questions what happens when global media flows take queer culture to regions wherein the notion of LGBTQ+ rights are not entirely acceptable. Utilizing insights from media reports published across the world's ten biggest media markets, Levy argues that there are a series of conditions which artists and cultural actors negotiate once they achieve any kind of success in mainstream media, while local queer references remain unseen in the wider media world. For that reason, he argues for stronger incentives for communities to accept and acknowledge the work of queer people before and after commoditization.

Latin America is an increasingly important geopolitical entity and its nations are emerging as some of the most influential and radical states in the modern world. The media conglomerates which control the television and radio platforms in these countries, such as the Globo organization in Brazil and the Mercurial S.P.A. media corporation in Chile, have great political influence across the region. Here, Carolina Matos contrasts public service broadcasting in Latin America to that in Europe and the UK, engaging with current debates on globalisation and theories of cultural imperialism. She examines the role public media has played in the processes of national development, democratisation and international dialogue across South and Central America, arguing that it can be a powerful tool for political and social inclusion. This book will be essential reading for students and scholars of Media, Politics and Cultural Studies, as well as those with an interest in Latin American culture. As key polities, such as Brazil and Mexico, begin to flex their economic and demographic muscle, Media and Politics in Latin America is a timely examination of society and politics in the region.

This book is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license. This edited volume examines how economic processes have worked upon social lives and social realities in Latin America during the past decades. Through tracing the effects of the neoliberal epoch into the era of the so-called pink tide, the book seeks to understand to what extent the turn to the left at the start of the millennium managed to challenge historically constituted configurations of inequality. A central argument in the book is that in spite of economic reforms and social advances on a range of arenas, the fundamental tenants of socio-economic inequalities have not been challenged substantially. As several countries are now experiencing a return to right-wing politics, this collection helps us better understand why inequalities are so entrenched in the Latin American continent, but also the complex and creative ways that it is continuously contested. The book directs itself to students, scholars and anyone interested in Latin America, economic anthropology, political anthropology, left-wing politics, poverty and socio-economic inequalities.

Race and Democracy in the Americas examines dimensions of the comparative dynamics of race and ethnicity, with a directed focus on the Americas, most particularly Brazil and the United States. Brazil and the United States are two countries in the Americas that have been major hosts for the African diaspora. Both countries experienced prolonged enslavement of Africans and both now claim to be beacons of democracy for much of the developing world. Both Afro-Brazilians and African Americans have fielded major liberation movements against racism and oppression yet both groups continue to experience considerable residual racial discrimination and displacement. Brazil and the U.S. remain racialized societies though both officially purport to be otherwise. The chapters of this volume illuminate a common search for understanding how race operates in societies generally, and how shapes life opportunities for African Americans and Afro-Brazilians, both oppressed by this most detrimental social construction. The project that fueled this volume represented a rare opportunity for collaboration between Afro-Brazilian scholars and their African American counterparts. This volume offers a passionate conversation between colleagues who have endured common sociopolitical and cultural struggles, but who have only belatedly been able to meet and connect as individuals. Both groups share identities as scholars and activists, for neither identity alone is sufficient to nourish the longings of their hearts nor of their consciences. This volume also represents an all too rare opportunity to give voice and expression to the work of Afro-Brazilian scholars. Volume 9 of the National Political Science Review also carries a special tribute to Mack Henry Jones, a senior black political scientist retiring from Atlanta University and honors Jones's legacy and continues his quest for understanding the nature and intricacies of oppression and possible paths to liberation. This essential work will be of particular interest to ethnic studies specialists, African American studies scholars, political scientists, historians, and sociologists. Georgia A. Persons is professor of political science in the School of Public Policy at Georgia Institute of Technology where she also directs the Center for the Study of Social Change.

Youth are, by definition, the future. This book brings initial analyses to bear on youth in the five BRICS countries: Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, which are home to nearly half of the world's youth. Very little is known about these youth outside of their own countries since the mainstream views on 'youth' and 'youth culture' are derived from the available literature on youth in the industrialized West, which is home to a small part of the world's youth. This book aims to help fill in this gap.The handbook examines the state of youth, their past, present and permits the development of insights about future. The BRICS countries have all engaged in development processes and some remarkable improvements in young people's lives over recent decades are documented. However, the chapters also show that these gains can be undermined by instabilities, poor decisions and external factors in those countries. Periods of economic growth, political progress, cultural opening up and subsequent reversals rearticulate differently in each society. The future of youth is sharply impacted by recent transformations of economic, political and social realities. As new opportunities emerge and the influence of tradition on youth's lifestyles weakens and as their norms and values change, the youth enter into conflict with dominant expectations and power structures.The topics covered in the book include politics, education, health, employment, leisure, Internet, identities, inequalities and demographics. The chapters provide original insights into the development of the BRICS countries, and place the varied mechanisms of youth development in context. This handbook serves as a reference to those who are interested in having a better understanding of today's youth. Readers will become acquainted with many issues that are faced today by young people and understand that through fertile dialogues and cooperation, youth can play a role in shaping the future of the world.

Brazil has undertaken affirmative action in its universities on an unprecedented scale. An expert group of international scholars puts the new policies in historical, political, and legal context; evaluates their outcomes for students and universities; and demonstrates that the policies have been successful in addressing racial inequality.