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Citizen Sousveillance: the Use of Sousveillance in Protests Citizen Sousveillance: The Use of Sousveillance in Protests. The Case of Mídia NINJA Vinicius Teixeira A Thesis in The Department of Sociology and Anthropology Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts (Sociology) at Concordia University Montreal, Quebec, Canada April 2020 © Vinicius Teixeira, 2020 CONCORDIA UNIVERSITY School of Graduate Studies This is to certify that the thesis prepared By: Vinicius Teixeira Entitled: Citizen Sousveillance: The Use of Sousveillance in Protests. The Case of Mídia NINJA and submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts (Sociology) complies with the regulations of the University and meets the accepted standards with respect to originality and quality. Signed by the final Examining Committee: _____________________________________ Chair Prof. Dr. Amy Swiffen _________________________________ Examiner Prof. Dr. Katja Grötzner Neves, Department of Sociology and Anthropology __________________________________ Examiner Prof. Dr. Bart Simon, Department of Sociology and Anthropology _________________________________Supervisor Prof. Dr. Martin French, Department of Sociology and Anthropology Approved by _________________________________________ Prof. Dr. Kregg Hetherington - Graduate Program Director __________________________________________ Prof. Dr. Pascale Sicotte – Dean, Faculty of Arts and Science Date __________________________________________ ABSTRACT Citizen Sousveillance: The Use of Sousveillance in Protests. The Case of Mídia NINJA Vinicius Teixeira The power dynamics of the gaze have been examined from different perspectives, from the use of surveillance for safety purposes and the monitoring of citizens, to concepts that study how alternative gazes impact in society and its actors. One of these alternative gazes has been described as sousveillance (Mann, 1998). While surveillance refers to watching from above, sousveillance is its direct opposite, watching from below. Based on this dynamic, and using a Brazilian group of activists that practices sousveillance as a case study, this thesis proposes a new term called Citizen Sousveillance. This term highlights the particular, protective role that sousveillance can play in protest contexts, preventing police brutality and other forms of injustice, as well as its capacity to change the reality of protest as a whole. Citizen Sousveillance encompasses five dimensions: 1. a nonviolence dimension—it can act as a nonviolent form of resistance and as protection against violent repression; 2. a raw reality dimension—it can work to spread, if not an unmediated version of reality, a more raw reality of protest than we would see in coverage produced by corporate mainstream media; 3. a counternarrative dimension—it provides material that can be used to create narratives that act as counterpoints to corporate, mainstream media coverage of protest; 4. an archival dimension—it can help accumulate media that records and preserves records of protest for historical purposes; and 5. a virtual dimension—it can work as a channel for those not involved in protests to still follow its developments. These dimensions — and the concept of Citizen Sousveillance itself — were discerned through an empirically-grounded analysis of the activities of a Brazilian activist group called Mídia NINJA. The social media work of this group, as well as interviews with five members, make up the case-study around which this thesis is organized. iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS First and foremost, I would like to thank my thesis supervisor Professor Dr. Martin French in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Concordia University. I am 100% sure that without your support, strength of scholarship, and patience, this thesis would have never been possible. Your kindness, compassion, and guidance made this (long) journey bearable, enriching, life-changing, and successful. I would also like to thank my committee members, Professor Dr. Katja Grötzner Neves, in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, and Professor Dr. Bart Simon, in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Concordia University. I would like to express my gratitude to my friends and family. To my mother Maria Helena, and my father, Irineu, for having established the values that have brought me to where I am today, and that I take everywhere – honesty, love, and the value of hard work. Also, thanks to my family, who are in my heart at all times: Cris, Mara, Fabi, Clari, Will, Henry and Ryan. And my furry loves – Maple and Oreo. Lastly, I will always remember the soundtrack of my entire master’s degree. Since the first courses in 2014, to the final review of my thesis in 2020, I listened to Explosions in the Sky to focus or relax, especially the album The Earth Is Not A Cold Dead Place. iv Table of Contents Table of Figures....................................................................................................................... vii 1. Introduction ............................................................................................................................... 1 1.1 Context: Introducing Citizen Sousveillance .......................................................................... 1 1.2 – Thesis Statement ................................................................................................................ 4 1.3 – Research Question .............................................................................................................. 4 1.4 – Methodology ...................................................................................................................... 5 1.4.1 – Interviews .................................................................................................................... 5 1.4.2 – Publicly Available Data ............................................................................................... 6 1.4.3 Data Collection and Analysis ......................................................................................... 7 1.5 – Thesis Structure .................................................................................................................. 8 2. Literature Review – understanding the theoretical basis of surveillance, sousveillance and peaceful protest. ................................................................................................................... 10 2.1 – Panoptic Surveillance ....................................................................................................... 10 2.1.1 – Surveillance ............................................................................................................... 11 2.1.2 – The Panopticon, According to Bentham and Foucault .............................................. 12 2.1.3 – Applications of the Panopticon in Surveillance Studies ............................................ 14 2.1.4 – Critiques of the Panopticon ....................................................................................... 17 2.2 – Veillances ..................................................................................................................... 18 2.2.1 Sousveillance ................................................................................................................ 19 2.2.2 Developing the concept of sousveillance ..................................................................... 21 2.3 Citizen Sousveillance .......................................................................................................... 23 2.3.1 – Citizen Journalism ..................................................................................................... 26 2.3.2 – Frame analysis ........................................................................................................... 28 2.3.3 – Citizen Sousveillance and the Multimedia Citizen .................................................... 29 2.4 – Nonviolent Resistance ...................................................................................................... 31 2.4.1 – Theory of nonviolence ............................................................................................... 32 3 – Mídia NINJA – development, challenges and presence ..................................................... 38 3.1 A brief account of the development of Mídia Ninja: How it all started – Jornadas de Junho in 2013 ....................................................................................................................................... 39 3.2 – Mídia NINJA’s challenges – Changing the narrative ...................................................... 46 v 3.3 Mídia NINJA: A Social Medias Analysis. .......................................................................... 52 3.3.1 Protection and nonviolence .......................................................................................... 56 3.3.2 A more raw reality of protests ...................................................................................... 60 3.3.3 Challenging mainstream narrative ................................................................................ 64 3.3.4 Historical records .......................................................................................................... 68 3.3.5 Virtual accessibility ...................................................................................................... 72 4 – What is the relation of Mídia NINJA with protests? ........................................................
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