Mídia e comunicação

Feminicide is the gender-related killing of cisgender and transgender women and girls. It reflects patriarchal and racialized systems of oppression and reveals how territories and socio-economic landscapes configure everyday gender-related violence. In recent decades, many grassroots data production initiatives have emerged with the aim of monitoring this extreme but invisibilized phenomenon. We bridge scholarship in feminist and information geographies with data feminism to examine the ways in which space, broadly defined, shapes the counterdata production strategies of feminicide data activists. Drawing on a qualitative study of 33 monitoring efforts led by civil society organizations across 15 countries, primarily in Latin America, we provide a conceptual framework for examining the spatial dimensions of data activism. We show how there are striking transnational patterns related to where feminicide goes unrecorded, resulting in geographies of missing data. In response to these omissions, activists deploy multiple spatialized strategies to make these geographies visible, to situate and contextualize each case of feminicide, to reclaim databases as spaces for memory and witnessing, and to build transnational networks of solidarity. In this sense, we argue that data activism about feminicide constitutes a space of resistance and resignification of everyday forms of gender-related violence.

This paper examines the increased visibility of urban infrastructures occurring through a close coupling of information technologies and the selective integration of urban services. It asks how circulatory flow is managed in the contemporary city, by focusing on the emergence of new forms of governmentality associated with “smart” technologies. Drawing on Foucault’s governmentality, and based on a case study of Rio de Janeiro’s Operations Centre (COR), the paper argues that new understandings of the city are being developed, representing a new mode of urban infrastructure based on the partial and selective rebundling of splintered networks and fragmented urban space. The COR operates through a “un-black boxing” of urban infrastructures, where the extension of control room logics to the totality of the city points to their fragility and the continuous effort involved in their operational accomplishment. It also functions through a collapse in relations of control—of the everyday and the emergency—, which, enabled by the incorporation of the public in operational control, further raise public awareness of urban infrastructures. These characteristics point to a specific form of urban governmentality based on the operationalisation of infrastructural flows and the development of novel ways of seeing and engaging with the city.

This article examines the mobilisation of spatial media technologies for digitally mapping informal settlements. It argues that digital mapping operates politically through a re-configuration of circulation, power, and territorial formations. Drawing on Stuart Elden’s understanding of territory, where space is ‘rendered’ as a political category, the coming together of digital mapping and the geoweb is uncovered as a political technique re-making territory through computational logics – operating as a calculative practice that, beyond simply representing space, is productive of the political spatiality that characterises territory. The article is based on an analysis of recent attempts by ICT corporates, particularly Google, to map favelas in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, critically examining the claim that digitally mapping informal settlements is a mechanism for socio-economic inclusion. Providing a counterargument to claims around the power of digital maps to incorporate favelas, provide recognition, legitimacy, visibility and citizenship, we discuss how in the interface between digital and urban worlds, territory as a political space is constructed through economic incorporation. In doing so, the article unpacks the spatial politics of digital and smart urbanisms and the emerging sovereignties of digital territories, particularly in the context of the tension between inclusion and exclusion experienced by those who live in informal settlements in cities in the global South.

Rio de Janeiro continues to invest significantly in becoming a smart and innovative capital, with the 1746 platform as a cornerstone of this strategy. Aligned with the principle of High-Performance Management in urban governance, the 1746 platform facilitates service requests and complaints, enabling citizens to connect with the municipality through multiple communication channels. This system is intended to generate valuable insights for improving urban management. Contrary to positivist views of technology, this study highlights the emergence of new technopolitical dimensions of injustice linked to data flow management. Its key contribution lies in framing data-driven Citizen Relationship Management (CiRM) systems through the lens of data justice, addressing questions about how data is generated, analyzed, and processed, who benefits or is excluded, and how data relates to a broader social justice agenda. Methodologically, the research adopts a case study approach, integrating quantitative and qualitative methods such as data mining, geospatial analysis, interviews, and content analysis. The research findings reveal that the system has a limited capacity to democratize urban governance in Rio de Janeiro. While it facilitates the communication between citizens and the City Hall, it falls short in influencing long-term urban planning, fostering the inclusion of marginalized groups, and addressing underlying social structures.

This article explores how two community-led newspapers in Maré and Rocinha in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, promoted social resilience in their respective favelas during the first 6 months of COVID-19. We reviewed stories published in both newspapers and interviewed a sample of their journalists to investigate the newspapers’ responses to the pandemic’s effects, government policies (or lack thereof), and resident reactions to evolving virus-related risks during our study period. We employed Keck and Sakdapolrak’s social resilience framework to examine our data and found that the newspapers contributed significantly to the resilience of both communities during our study period. Contrary to the neoliberal view of resilience as self-reliance, these newspapers sought instead to encourage sustained collective agency and to challenge oppressive governance through generative activities and advocacy. Our findings deepen understanding of the role of community-organized activities in marginalized populations’ struggles to assert their right to the city, particularly during crises.

A realidade dos movimentos sociais é bastante dinâmica e nem sempre as teorizações têm acompanhado esse dinamismo. Com a globalização e a informatização da sociedade, os movimentos sociais em muitos países, inclusive no Brasil e em outros países da América Latina, tenderam a se diversificar e se complexificar. Por isso, muitas das explicações paradigmáticas ou hegemônicas nos estudos da segunda metade do século XX necessitam de revisões ou atualizações ante a emergência de novos sujeitos sociais ou cenários políticos. Este estudo busca, inicialmente, uma compreensão acerca da nova configuração da sociedade civil organizada, explicitando os múltiplos tipos de ações coletivas do novo milênio. A partir desta compreensão, busca-se explorar a diversidade identitária dos sujeitos, a transversalidade nas demandas por direitos, as formas de ativismo e de empoderamento através de articulações em rede e, finalmente, a participação política das organizações em rede.

This article analyzes urban governance innovations in the city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, focusing on the role of these innovations within the wider political management strategy of the executive leader. These innovations, all of which utilize digital information and communication technologies, are important elements within a leadership and management strategy. The article explores the role of digital innovations within the broader strategy of the mayor’s use of managerial tools as means to strengthen control of the city’s governance. Though presented as an apolitical management style of “what works,” this form of management is also deployed to enforce contentious political decisions with substantial implications for the social fabric of the city. This article offers an analysis of the political role and implications of urban governance and public service innovations that are often presented and analyzed in purely instrumental and apolitical ways.

Este artigo discute a cultura e a indústria do medo no Brasil atual, através da relação entre juventude e violência, e no avaliar as consequências desta correlação por meio das proposições levantadas pela mídia brasileira no imaginário nacional. Essa problemática é compreendida tendo em vista a questão da formação dos jovens no país nessa primeira década do século XXI, e em um momento de mudanças significativas nos padrões de comportamento nacional. Mudanças que pulverizam os valores sociais e caminham a passos largos para o individualismo crescente nas relações societárias e uma ampliação do medo do outro, no interior das formas interativas a que estão sujeitos não apenas a juventude, mas a população em geral.