Between 2019 and 2023, media researchers from Södertörn University in UNISINOS and Universidade Federal de Santa Maria (UFSM) in Brazil, engaged in a collaborative effort to explore Scandinavian and South American perspectives on mediatisation, connecting universities from opposite sides of the world.

The project aimed to promote a nuanced understanding of mediatisation theory from different cultural perspectives and media studies traditions, dismantle epistemological barriers, and provide new insights into societies undergoing the process of mediatisation.

The chapters presented in this volume are grounded on the mobility of researchers across both countries where a productive knowledge exchange contributed to diversify epistemological, empirical, and methodological approaches to mediatisation theory, and provide new perspectives on mediatisation theory in contested media scenarios in Sweden, Brazil, and beyond.

Taking stock of media activist initiatives in the Southwest Asia and North Africa (SWANA) region, this article discusses findings from case study research informing the media education platform “diraya.media.” Through participatory methodology, the case studies and the bilingual (Arabic/English) website aim to analyze and strengthen local media literacy pedagogies by learning with and from media activists in the region. This article reports on six case studies of SWANA-based media activist organizations and pedagogical material for the media literacy classroom. The goal is to reflect and discuss the methodological and theoretical ramifications of Diraya as a pedagogical space for reflection and knowledge exchange between media activists and other learners in the region and beyond. Drawing on the participating activists’ experiences, Diraya is embedded in the turn toward radical media education and civic media literacies, contributing to (1) de-Westernizing media literacy education, (2) creating more learning materials based on local activist knowledge as important resources to increase media literacy, and (3) enabling of long-term collaborations by archiving and making public experiences from SWANA-based media activists.

This article contributes to the growing field of critical studies about the visual politics of the green transition by highlighting the role of communication and the creative industries in promoting “green” ideologies. “The Swedish Mine” advocacy advertising campaign, launched in 2021, is presented as a case study to illustrate how lifestyle advertising genres are used to leverage the emotional engagement of progressive, mining-sceptical urban audiences to increase the social acceptance of intensified mining despite increasing climate awareness. Using visual culture studies, feminist, and critical race theory approaches to analyse the campaign materials, I explore how the campaign aestheticises “green” industrial progress by tokenising multiculturalism, fetishising consumption, and romancing national identity. As a counterpoint, I examine how social media reactions and activist responses illustrate tensions between mining acceptance and mining resistance in Swedish society. I conclude by positioning the campaign rhetoric in various forms of climate propaganda and highlighting the limits of the engineering of public consent for a “green” transition when such attempts use emotions as sites of “cognitive extraction” to cover technological and capitalist imperatives that ultimately promote Sweden as a leading mining nation. 

In Brazil, memes and forms of memetic communication have become a second language, opening up new forms of expression, action and organization. These stem from increasingly polarized positions in society providing the opening for a process of endemic memetization of political discourse. For conservative groups in Brazil, memes have also become a medium of political education and beyond that, images, memes and memetic gestures on social media have become the site of political tensions. In 2018, the general elections that put Jair Bolsonaro in power and the unsolved political assassination of leftist Rio de Janeiro city councilor Marielle Franco, ambushed by armed militia are two of the most significant political events of 2018 in Brazil that precipitated a memetic battle between conservatives and progressives. When we look specifically at the narrower genre of ‘humorous’memes from Bolsonaro supporters, we often see memes promoting violence ‘for laughs’: for instance, making fun of city councilor Marielle Franco’s political assassination as astrategy for promoting and reinforcing Bolsonaro’s violent discourse and necropolitics that has since been normalized and sanctioned by large portions Brazilian society even beyond the electoral period. By contrast, when we look at tactical media by Marielle Franco's supporters claim for justice, we find memetic forms taking shape as artivism and collective actions, such as #MarielleMultiplica. The chapter unpacks how memes became important political tools that articulate extreme-right necoropolitical discourse on the one hand, and how leftist discourses of care and protection were mobilized regarding the assassination of Marielle Franco in widely different modes of production, distribution and circulation of meanings. 

We propose to consider “fake news” as a genre with its own conventions and narrative devices dependent on those of mainstream journalism. Departing from genre theory, “culture jamming” practice and Barnhurst and Nerone’s (2002) concept of journalist modernism rooted in Louis Althusser’s idea of form as the principal expression of ideology, we intend to highlight empirically how mainstream media storytelling is hacked, imitated and hijacked by “fake news” in the four countries that are known to have populist leaders and significant circulation of viral disinformation. Focused on empirical cases from Brazil under Bolsonaro, the Philippines under Duterte, Russia under Putin and Ukraine under Zelensky, this article draws significant comparisons between different cultures and traditions of journalist storytelling in the global peripheries concluding that while “fake news” can be subverting mainstream or integrating with it, even the most distant cases share the common basis of meta-mimesis, imitation of other texts. By way of distancing from the overpublicised cases of Donald Trump or Brexit, we also contribute to de-Westernizing media studies.

Transgender, transsexual, transvestite, nonbinary, and gender fluid—or transvestigender1—individuals in Brazil constitute the most marginalized population in terms of human rights, social policy, and cultural acceptance. In public discourse and media, trans individuals are often portrayed as gender nonconforming and are culturally and politically stigmatized. Casa Chama is a non-governmental organization (hereafter NGO) based in São Paulo, Brazil, that functions as both a shelter and a network for trans individuals. Based in principles of organizational mutual aid (Spade, 2020) and an ethics of care, the “casa” [house] provides a safe working environment and space for cultural events. In embracing a “family” philosophy guided by Casa Chama’s motto “quem acolhe é acolhido, quem é acolhido acolhe” (those who care are cared for, those who are taken care of, provide care) (Casa Chama, 2021), the NGO connects social change networks and provides a platform to amplify trans voices and promote political participation.

This article presents a brief commentary about Vilém Flusser’s activity as a technical advisor for the 1973 XII Bienal de São Paulo through an archive of unpublished correspondences from 1970-1974. This archive reveals Flusser’s persona as a prolific letter writer and gives us a glimpse on his attempt to turn “theory into praxis” by articulating a complex and forward-looking communicological proposition to reorganise the Bienal in line with developments in new media art practices and telecommunications infrastructures at the time. The aim was to critique notions of art display, spectatorship and production, through a utopian, radical, and collective laboratory with artists using communicative practices. Most of the letters were written between 1971-1973 while Flusser was working in Europe, in part to garner international approval and participation for the event. The correspondences also testify to a period of inflection in Flusser’s approach to the visual arts and for the ambitious outlook on artistic practices and their discursive potential for social and political transformation. I suggest that Flusser has used a curatorial approach as a means to embed his philosophy in everyday life through the medium of the art exhibition. Flusser’s work was cut short due to funding issues and other contingencies before the proposition could be fully realized, leading ultimately to his permanent second exile in Europe in late 1973.