ABSTRACT
Chapter 6 discusses the third of the five examples of protest literacies covered in the book: media-activist literacies. Focussing on the local example of favela-based community media practices, discussed in this chapter are repertoires of literacy practices traditional to such social movement journalism, but also, how these were undergoing changes contemporarily through the increasing adoption of social media from around 2008 onwards. Assuming a historical perspective, Chapter 6 traces the trajectories of text-artefacts that featured in the memorial-demonstration for Matheus illustrated previously in Chapter 5 (both chapters should be read in sequence for that reason). Reconstructing specific social contexts and communicational technologies through which these text-artefacts were (re)produced and (re)circulated over a five year period from 2008 to 2013, Chapter 6 highlights the development and dissemination of interconnecting names and cases of police violence as symbols of protest, during a particular moment of socio-political and communications technological change, and in turn, how these and other related examples became accumulating reference points in the ongoing cycle of contentious politics in Rio de Janeiro from 2006-2016 charted throughout the book.
