Midiativismo e participação política em redes sociotécnicas: estratégias discursivas de coletivos brasileiros no processo eleitoral de 2018

Abstract

The current technological context enables diverse subjects, in groups or individually, to produce and distribute content, with the potential to become relevant, due to the popularization of information and communication technologies (ICTs), especially the internet and social networks’ websites (social media). This situation reconfigures the ways to undertake actions of social contestation through activism, conformed by the permanent updating of media devices, enabling the emergence of mediactivists colectives that produce counter hegemonic, or no hegemonic, discourses, giving new outlines to the forms of political participation, here understood in a broad sense, in addition to the processes related to decision making in institutional spheres. In this context, this investigation aims to outline the relationship between media activism and participation in order to understand whether the aforementioned activist practice through the media represents an expansion of the possibilities for participation. The research takes as example the discursive strategies of two media colletives, Mídia Ninja (MN) and Jornalistas Livres (JLs), during the 2018 brazilian electoral process. To perform the analysis, 30 posts with the highest engagement from each group were selected (totaling 60), on their respective Facebook pages. Textually Oriented Discourse Analysis, based on the three-dimensional concept of discourse (text, discursive production and social practice), and Critical Discourse Analysis (ACD) were used as methodology. The theoretical network that supports the study deals with issues related to the sociotechnical reticularization of society, mediatization and what this means for the processes of political participation; the aspects related to alternative media, cyberactivism, net-activism, mediactivism and free media and their intertwining with journalism. As results, the investigation reveals that the relationship between mediactivism and political participation is fruitful and substantive, being positive for democracy, when it seeks social justice and the defense of human rights. Subjects, movements and groups sometimes marginalized from public debates (the election is one of them) find ways of representation through mediactivism, wich was perceived in the enunciative materiality of the MN and the JLs, configuring an expansion of the possibilities of participation. From the interpretation of the enunciatitions of the collectives considering eight categories (formats, intertextuality and interdiscursivity, textual genres, ethos, characterization of the candidates, thematization, participation and mediactivism), the research shows that the discourses of the MN and the JLs were organized in order to support leftist candidates (mainly the presidential candidate Fernando Haddad, from PT), linking to this support several themes linked to progressive causes (feminism – mainly the #EleNão movement, anti-racism, defense of democracy, LGBT etc.), constituting, even with the contingencies (superficiality and silences), important counterpoint spheres in the face of the advance of hate speech in digital networks. It is also noted that the mediactivism of the groups is not pure, it is just one of the ways for self- expression. Taking advantage of the possibilities of free media action, the MN and the JLs presented a hybrid language, mixing markers of journalistic and propagandistic practices (with predominance of the latter) and moving between digital activism and social media activism (without going to the streets to do the mediatic register), to participate politically in the 2018 brazilian electoral process.