Internet and democracy: the protests of June in Brazil
| Autor | Eduardo Magrani and Mariana Valente |
| Páginas | 178-183 |
Page 178
See notes 74 and 75
In the protests of June, online information was a key factor to the change of position of the traditional media, the great public and the political system. As already indicated, the tipping point that made the masses take the streets was the complaints, through social networks, regarding gratuitous police violence against protesters.
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The so called protests of June in Brazil had an incubation phase that dates back to August 2012. That was when the mayor of Natal city, in the northeast of Brazil, announced a raise of R$ 0,20 for the bus fare and, against such raise, approximately 2 thousand people went to the streets, resulting in its revocation. This episode was marked by media attention and police repression, launching the basis of the protests to happen in the irst semester of 2013, which became very intense in June, headed then by the Free Fare Movement ("Movimento Passe Livre" or MPL, in Portuguese).[1]
The MPL organized a series of marches in different Brazilian regions, starting in the city of São Paulo, motivated by an increase, made on June 2nd, in the urban transport fare (subway, bus and urban trains), from R$ 3,00 to R$ 3,20. The three irst protests happened on June 6th, 7th and 11th, and were repressed with police violence, resulting in wounded people at both sides – protesters and policemen. The traditional media did not hesitate to adopt a clear anti-protests view: the words "vandals", "rioters" and "vandalism" were constantly repeated. A big newspaper from São Paulo published, at this moment, an editorial calling for more police repression.
The great shift in the public opinion began on June 13th, when the riot police of the Military Police of São Paulo violently repressed part of the already thousands of protesters and journalists, at times in answer to acts of aggression, at other times without previous aggression. It was on the Internet that information started to pop up: it was enough to be online to become aware of police brutality, therefore bringing to light the distance between the traditional media version of the facts and that of the protesters, who were then organizing themselves around independent media groups on the Internet. [2]
It was on the following days that the protests gained massive adhesion all over the country[3] and the demands were widely diversiied. From this moment on, the traditional media would report the protests with an enthusiastic encouraging speech, repeating emphatically the word "peaceful".
The newspapers and opinion makers would try to explain what the protesters wanted. One thing was sure: the protests were not anymore limited to the raise of transport fares. Various monitors of online activity emerged, each of them offering their graphical analysis. The CausaBrasil platform monitored the activity on social networks in that period (from June 16th on),[4] indicating the prominence, in the month of June, of the following demands: (i) fare price, with declining importance through the month, (ii) Dilma Rousseff’s government, a growing agenda through the month, (iii) political reform, (iv) PEC 37,[5] highlighted on June 26th, (v) democracy, a demand that remained stable through the monitored period.[6] On top of those demands, it can be
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pointed as structural factors of the period, a feeling of distrust in the traditional representative system and on political parties organizations, as well as a desire for new ways of political participation and the broadening of the democratic sphere, combined with a dissatisfaction with the insuficiency and partiality of traditional media coverage.
By the end of June, the pace of the protests decreased. President Dilma Rousseff made a statement on national television on June 21st, trying to make a stand against the demands that still appeared to be incomprehensible. The messages were: to press the Congress to approve a proposal from the Executive, which had already been rejected, aiming to direct resources...
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