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Marielle, Presente! Marielle, presente! How the coverage of the murder of a black, lesbian and peripheral councilwoman helped to construct a sense of community among Brazilian women: An analysis of mainstream and independent feminist media Giselle Silva dos Santos Student ID: 12846856 Master’s Thesis Erasmus Mundus Master’s in Journalism, Media and Globalization Graduate School of Communication Supervisor: Dr. Penny Sheets Thibaut, PhD Word count: 9.496 *given the method, in consultation with my supervisor, a word limit of 9.500 was allowed Abstract On the 14th of March 2018, the councilwoman and human rights activist Marielle Franco and her driver, Anderson Gomes, were ambushed and shot to death in the city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. But what was meant to be just an addition to the already high crime rates of the country prompted international outrage and gave the minorities defended by Franco a chance to rise up and have their voices heard in politics and by the media. Through a Critical Discourse Analysis of articles published by Brazilian feminist, independent online media and mainstream news outlets, this paper aims to understand how the coverage of the murder of a black, lesbian and peripheral councilwoman helped to construct a sense of community among Brazilian women. Results show that it happened mainly through the building of an intersectional community that speaks for the empowerment of black women and against the hegemonic structures and the multidimensionality of the oppression. This research provides an opportunity to reflect on the implications of social changes to the status quo, the future of media and political representation in general. Keywords: Marielle Franco, Critical Discourse Analysis, community, cyberactivism, feminism, intersectionality, multidimensionality of the oppression. Introduction Although the assassinations of politicians and human rights activists are not rare occurrences in Brazil, Marielle Franco’s execution, ambushed and shot to death alongside her driver, Anderson Gomes, on the 14th of March 2018 – and the still unsolved question of who ordered her murder – triggered a national outrage (Haynes, 2018) with potential for long- lasting social and political implications. As a black, lesbian and peripheral councilwoman who disturbed the status quo by working in favour of the disadvantaged population of Brazilian favelas and being an outspoken critic of police violence in Rio de Janeiro, her death 2 created a gap that quickly became a legacy, as thousands of Brazilians flocked to the streets to mourn her and demand a resolution to the case. Two years later, phrases like “Marielle vive” and “Marielle presente” – Marielle lives and Marielle is here, respectively – are reminders that her voice and ideals live on, as her name became known throughout the world (Londoño, 2019; Waldron, 2018). With the massive commotion generated by her murder, national news outlets began to wonder ‘who was this woman?’. A rookie politician with little name recognition in the national sphere, what made her so special to the point that she “became a global symbol of resistance to the rising conservative tide”? (Londoño, 2019). Part of the answer lies in her ‘peripheral origins’ – a term indicating underprivileged neighbourhoods; she was born and raised at Complexo da Maré, a favela in the north of Rio de Janeiro – and intersectional activism. As highlighted by The New York Times, Franco’s uniqueness factor in Brazilian politics made her “a role model for people who do not see themselves represented in a system dominated by white men” (Londoño, 2019). Coincidentally or not, the first national elections after her death, in October 2018, were characterized by a rise in the number of women elected to the Chamber of Deputies (“Bancada feminina”, 2018). This is specifically important as more black and peripheral women are now part of the National Congress, which also elected its first indigenous congresswoman in 196 years of the Chamber’s history. What is unclear, however, is how media coverage of her murder may have facilitated such political mobilization among, in particular, black and peripheral women in Brazil. Previous research has examined Marielle Franco’s case, with diverse outcomes. Rocha (2018) highlighted the legislator’s work in favour of the population in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro, places where racism, discrimination and social inequality have been a stigma for generations. Lins and Lopes (2018) analysed the propagation of fake news against Marielle Franco as a media phenomenon, concluding that they were substantiated by negative female 3 stereotypes that slandered and disqualified women as a gender suited to playing powerful roles. On a different note, Danin, Carvalho and Reis (2018) tackled the international coverage of Franco’s execution and how journalism portrayed the relationship between black people and the police. Although very valuable, none of these studies help to understand how Marielle Franco’s death and its coverage in the media sparked a movement that would lead people to gather towards her ideals, even inspiring other women, as well as representatives of black, peripheral and LGBTQ collectives, to pursue a path in politics. Therefore, this paper proposes to fill this gap by discussing the coverage of Marielle Franco’s case under a different standpoint: the construction of a sense of community and belonging. Through a Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) of articles published by mainstream and independent, feminist online media, I aim to answer to the following research question: To what extent did the coverage of the murder of a black, lesbian and peripheral councilwoman help to construct a sense of community among Brazilian women? Theoretical framework Media, cyberactivism and the internet in Brazil In order to understand the particularities of online media coverage of Marielle Franco’s murder, it is important to comprehend its cyberactivist nature. Sandoval-Almazan and Gil-Garcia (2014) set out to contextualize how social movements and political activism nowadays rely on social media and other information technologies. They argue that since social protests have become “powerful expressions against government regimes or specific public policies” (p. 365), technology has made this process easier, with people using its tools to communicate, share information and mobilize citizens. These new online activities consist in what they call cyberactivism. 4 Examples of it are all around the world. Khamis and Vaughn (2013) discussed the role played by cyberactivism and new media in paving the way for political transformation following both the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions of 2011. According to Bounenni (as cited in Khamis & Vaughn, 2013), citizen journalists used the Internet and social media to mitigate the harsh media control enforced by the Tunisian government, becoming “an important source of news for the international media, posting videos of the protests and providing updates on the numbers killed” (p. 73). Cyberactivism had equally significant potential in the context of the Egyptian Arab Spring. As noted by Khamis and Vaughn (2013), both Tunisian and Egyptian activists collaborated with each other in the exchange of useful tactics and advice to overcome their respective repressive regimes. Within the context of the Brazilian media system, where the state privileges media activity as being private and commercial (Lima, as cited in Barros, 2017), cyberactivism becomes a tool of content democratization, since the ownership of mainstream media outlets is concentrated in the hands of a few actors, such as religious and entrepreneurial groups, powerful families and political oligarchies (Azevedo, 2006; Marinoni, 2015; Cabral, 2016; Barros, 2017). In this sense, cyberactivism has provided an educational environment for the native people of Brazil to reaffirm their indigenous identities and pluralities. The use of the Internet among the indigenous population and their “appropriation, interaction, and production of content” served to challenge “interpretative schemes that insist on the categorization of stereotypes” (Pereira, 2013, p. 1864), giving them a voice and therefore becoming a powerful communication tool in a society dominated and colonized by old, white and rich men. This relationship between minorities and the digital world can also be observed when it comes to gender, characterizing the concept of cyberfeminism (Ferreira, 2015). Matos (2017, p. 430) explored how feminist media in Brazil have engaged in new ways of using 5 technologies for development and empowerment, articulating “counter-hegemonic discourses which go against traditional representations of gender”. These cyberfeminist platforms aiming to disseminate women’s rights are particularly important within the context of developing countries such as Brazil, since they empower “different perspectives from the mainstream” (Matos, 2017, p. 431). Yet, the opportunities provided by the Internet to partake in a critical debate are still not as democratized as they should be. Daniels (2009) emphasizes how, from the economic stance, women remain the poorest global citizens, which compromises their access to technology and information. This aspect is even more pronounced when you analyse the intersections between gender and race, since most of the practices and critiques in the field suggest that gender “is a unified category and, by implication, that digital technologies mean the same thing to all women across differences of race, class, sexuality”
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