ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews the pivotal role of media activists, technology and organizational tactics during major street demonstrations in Rio de Janeiro during 2013–2014. Based on participant-observation, conversations with journalists and media activists, and selective document analysis, we examine how an organized group of media-activists known as Mídia NINJA produced and transposed spaces of resistance. Following Judith Butler’s work on performative assembly, we suggest that citizen media projects provided necessary socio-technical infrastructure for anti-status quo politics and mass mobilization. Technologies employed during and after protests were powerful tools to protect activists from police brutality and legal persecution. Beyond the immediacy of the 2013–2014 protests, we consider the challenges facing Mídia NINJA. The group’s commitment to providing a platform for affiliated participants to produce material without heavy editorial intervention was eventually eclipsed by partisanship in higher levels of the organization during a campaign to unseat President Dilma Rousseff through legally dubious impeachment proceedings.
