New Media and the Disillusion of Brazil’s Radical Left

• DOI: 10.1177/0094582X18760520
• Date: 01 May 2018
• Published date: 01 May 2018
• Author: Catherine Morgans
• Subject Matter: Articles

LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES, Issue 220, Vol. 45 No. 3, May 2018, 250–265

DOI: 10.1177/0094582X18760520

© 2018 Latin American Perspectives

250

New Media and the Disillusion of Brazil’s Radical Left

by

Catherine Morgans

In contrast to recent waves of ad hoc social-media-fueled protest, Brazil’s leftist social

movements consider new media unreliable, supplementary, and dominated by hegemonic

actors. Owing to a shift in power relations online, these virtual spaces pose an approxima-

tion to their capitalist adversaries, a degree of institutionalization, and a breach of tradi-

tional trenches of resistance, leading anticapitalist movements to restrict their use of new

media. Their wariness counters resurgent cyberoptimism that regards the Internet as a

politically neutral or autonomous space favored by marginalized and alternative political

actors.

Em contraste com a onda recente de protestos impulsionados pelas redes sociais, os

movimentos sociais de esquerda no Brasil consideram a nova mídia inconfiável, subservi-

ente e dominada por atores hegemônicos. Devido a mudanças nas relações de poder na

Internet, esses espaços virtuais apresentam-se como forma de aproximação de seus

adversários capitalistas, um grau de institucionalização e um rompimento com as trin-

cheiras tradicionais de resistência. Consequetemente, os movimentos anticapitalistas

restringem e vigiam o uso da nova midia. Essa percepção oferece um contraponto ao otim-

ismo cibernético ressurgente, o qual enxerga a Internet como espaço autônomo, politica-

mente neutro e preferido por atores políticos marginalizados e alternativos.

Keywords: Social movements, Brazil, Internet, Protest, Democracy

June 2013 marked an unforgettable and uncharacteristic period in Brazilian

history. With over a million citizens taking to the streets across the country and

even symbolically mounting the Palácio Planalto, Brazilians surprised the

world, shedding their reputation for political ambivalence and relative stabil-

ity. While it seemed that almost every Brazilian was voicing a different discon-

tent, it was widely acknowledged that the protesters had all been organized by

way of the same tool: new media. The instrumental role of social media and

new media in general in fueling the Jornadas de Junho evidenced the reach of

such platforms in Brazil. It also served as Latin America’s contribution to a

recent resurgence of cyberoptimism that has followed a wave of Internet-

organized civilian actions in fragile democracies and dictatorships internation-

ally. Collectively, these events have showcased new media’s democratic

potential in this accessible age.

The Brazilian protests, like those elsewhere before them, displayed the

capacity of social media for organizing public collective action. Nevertheless,

Catherine Morgans is a Latin America regional research specialist. She holds a Master of Arts by

Research with distinction from the University of Leeds.

760520LAPXXX10.1177/0094582X18760520Latin American PerspectivesMorgans / New Media and the Left in Brazil

research-article2018

Morgans / NEW MEDIA AND THE LEFT IN BRAZIL 251

at least in the Brazilian context few have critically analyzed the relationship

between new media,1 including social networks, and the most prominent driv-

ers of such collective actions, social movements. Focusing on the Brazilian

radical left through two of the country’s most prominent social movements, the

Movimento dos Trabalhadores Sem Terra (Landless Workers’ Movement—

MST) and the Movimento Passe Livre (Free-Pass Movement—MPL), this paper

argues that the relationship between new media and anticapitalist entities is far

more uneasy than that experienced by ad hoc and diverse collective actions

such as those formed during the June 2013 protests. This argument is sup-

ported throughout by the work of new-social-movement theorists such as

Manuel Castells and Alain Touraine, who emphasize the importance of identity

to social movements today. This paper shows that for the radical left it is these

identities and the movements’ fierce defense of them that is shaping their cau-

tious treatment of new media.

As exemplified by the recent waves of protest in Brazil, increased physical

access to participatory media platforms has aided the democratization of

Brazilian communication channels. Consequently, it can be argued that the

once pertinent issues of access highlighted by Pippa Norris (2001) are out-

dated—that the issues that are influencing and impeding the appropriation of

such platforms are gross power imbalances online and cultural inaccessibility.

Despite the favorable conditions for new media use in Brazil created by unrep-

resentative mainstream media and widespread Internet use, groups on Brazil’s

radical left demonstrate a marked detachment from and skepticism toward

new communication technologies. This conclusion emerged from a detailed

study of the movements’ online participation, including web site and social

media usage, prior to September 2014, supplemented by a synthesis of work on

movement culture and a targeted e-mail interview with the MST’s communica-

tions head. The MPL declined participation in this study, saying that questions

regarding the relationship between social media and their internal culture

would be too intrusive (e-mail interview, June 26, 2014). With its encourage-

ment, interview material gathered by Carlotto (2013) was used instead.

From this study it was apparent that radical social movements face consider-

able difficulty in engaging with cyberspace in a contested public arena that is

increasingly the subject of capitalist influence, surveillance, and concentrated

ownership. Thus this paper highlights the way the dominant capitalist culture

and power concentration online are restricting the use of new media by certain

political groups and thereby diminishing their presumed democratic value.

These findings nuance the sensationalism that followed recent bouts of Internet-

fueled mass protest in Brazil and elsewhere and call into question new media

platforms’ being “the spheres of autonomy” that theorists and journalists have

called them (Castells, 2012: 10).

Since the 2011 Arab Spring and the subsequent political protests in the

United States, Spain, and Turkey, commentators have exaggerated the role of

new media, labeling the year’s political unrest a “Facebook revolution” or

“Twitter protests” (Gerbaudo, 2012: 3–6). International press coverage of the

2013 demonstrations in Brazil greatly emphasized the role of new media in the

events, often stating that social media had “enabled” them (Conway, 2013;

Stauffer, 2013). Gerbaudo found that the impact of social media had been “far