6
Politics: dangerous words
Politics may seem like an odd topic to appear in a book about social media in a low- income settlement in Brazil. To some extent this is true: locals in general dismiss politics as a topic, sharing pessimistic views on govern-ment politics with comgovern-ments like ‘politicians only show their faces here during election campaigns’ and that they ‘always forget their promises after they are elected’. It is not a subject people enjoy, hence the general absence of political dialogue on and off social media. Some discussion does take place, mostly during election campaigns, when locals use social media to show support for a candidate or to share an opinion regarding a national debate – or, mostly, to post humorous memes that reflect their scepticism and pessimism about politicians. But although campaigning parties and candidates bombard the settlement with leaflets, posters, slo-gans on walls and loud jingles, this does not seem an especially relevant topic here (Fig. 6.1).
However, this is not the usual type of scepticism found in middle- class conversations about corruption in public offices. Locals recognise that politics is vital to people’s welfare in places such as Balduíno where most residents are constantly struggling. They represent the social group that relies most on government help. In contrast to the affluent population the inhabitants of Balduíno mostly go to public schools and depend on the public health system; many cannot rely on private security schemes and look for formal employment because of the public benefits that it entails (such as job- seekers’ allowances and pensions in retirement).
And on top of this, the most vulnerable people in the settlement receive money from welfare programmes. The fact that conversations about poli-tics are not particularly present in their everyday exchanges (whether on social media or in face- to- face exchanges) is therefore interesting in itself. However, in order to examine political disputes we need to broaden the definition of politics to consider it in terms of how individuals and
groups negotiate their interests in society.1 From this perspective we can investigate how social media plays a role in mediating relationships that are not based on personal ties.
Once we adopt this wider conception of politics we realise that, far from being an irrelevant topic, politics appears as a key subject which has also featured in all previous chapters. For example, Chapter 2 examined Fig. 6.1 A pessimistic meme about politics. Translated, it reads:
‘Mr Candidate, if you did not visit Balduíno in the last 4 years ... you will not do it now. Get out, plague!’
social MeDia in eMergent Brazil 160
how locals learned the advantages of acting ‘invisibly’, including online, such as when they use language strategies to encrypt their conversa-tions so that others around cannot understand. Chapter 3 contrasted the highly moralised and controlled central spaces in the settlement with more peripheral spaces that allow insubordination, and explored how this context influences posting on social media in terms of ‘lights on’
(everyone is watching) and ‘lights off’ (only some are watching). Later chapters analysed more specific domains involving power relations in intimate alliances (Chapter 4), or in school and work (Chapter 5). In this chapter we consider relationships beyond these previous spheres, includ-ing those that are mediated or associated with evangelical churches, police and organised crime.
Since most disputes examined in this chapter are not related to gov-ernment politics, it is useful briefly to contextualise the different forces driving change and influencing relations in the settlement today. As Chapters 1, 2 and 4 illustrated, Balduíno is a place that still has only a shadowy presence of the state; living there is still largely associated with participating in networks of mutual support and extended families.2 Yet there are also other forces currently interfering in the settlement’s social relations, given how the Coconut Coast has developed in the past decades into a touristic variation of a gated community,3 and so attracting some of the tourism previously focused on the city of Salvador. These new economic pressures reflect on locals, who have to deal with the growing institutional presences of ‘agentes de saúde’, akin to UK district nurses, a police force and educational services,4 formal and informal businesses and evangelical organisations. All of these have now arrived in Balduíno, along with migrants seeking new employment opportunities.
The chapter has two parts. The first examines various events that attracted collective attention in the settlement, including crimes (delib-erate and accidental), and shows how some of these events mobilised locals to organise public acts of protest. In this context we will consider, for example, the differences that exist when people discuss a certain vio-lent event online and offline: do they repeat online what they say when they meet others in the streets? In most cases the conversations in the streets and on social media are very different, and it is useful to analyse what this difference says about local social relations.
The second part of this chapter assesses situations in which locals use social media to influence public opinion. We will see, for example, how and why a former drug dealer used Facebook to publicise his conver-sion to evangelical Christianity and how this act may reduce his chances of being killed by former rivals. Church communities, groups of drug
distributors and the local police also take advantage of social media to influence society.
In this chapter I aim to answer whether social media actually empowers vulnerable individuals and groups, and also whether the local enthusiasm for social media means that people are gaining more inde-pendence from their traditional support networks.
Vulnerability
Violence is a common part of everyday relations in Brazilian low- income localities.5 Although violence is now increasingly associated with crime, it also featured prominently before the recent economic development of the region (see Chapter 2). Social media provides a useful opportunity to compare the conversation about these violent events that happens online, on both public- and private- facing domains, with face- to- face exchanges or public demonstrations offline.
This part of the chapter includes analysis of disputes that attracted attention and motivated locals to engage in days or weeks of discussions.
These cases are about conflicts of interest, some caused by the robbery or murder of locals and others by accidents (unintended situations) with victims. As the first cases show, violent conflicts are intensely debated as people move around the settlement and meet face to face. However, these conversations either disappear or are highly self- censored when they are mentioned on public- facing social media spaces such as Facebook timelines.