‘Ninjas’, street journalism and the reinvention of traditional media

By Ana Paula Santos
Journalist and Public Relations Brazilian

Recently, a new social phenomenon has mobilized Brazil: thousands of people took to the streets in a series of successive events in June and July of 2013. In the first protests, which took place in São Paulo, people coalesced against bus fare raises. In the following weeks, new events started to occur in other regions of the country, in a way that Brazil witnessed a great variety of protests which happened daily with a more diverse agenda, involving topics such as politics, corruption, the World Cup, just to name a few.

Protests were organized through Facebook, enabling the gathering of large crowds in several locations simultaneously. The events accomplished to bring together over one million people from different age groups and social classes. In a single day (June 20, 2013), 79 million Internet users posted comments on the protest in social networks.
Along with a social phenomenon, there was also a media phenomenon: The Mídia Ninja group (Ninja standing for Independent Narratives, Journalism and Action). Infiltrated in the crowds (some of them were journalists, while others weren’t), the ‘Ninjas’ broadcasted protests live through the Internet, counting solely on their mobile devices with 3G Internet access and a Facebook page. The unedited live coverage added up to 150 thousand hits.

The group is committed to the causes they cover. Some of the participants ended up arrested during the events in June, moment in which Mídia Ninja grew outstandingly in popularity. After the wave of protests, the movement lost projection, though it continues acting in the coverage of large events, strikes and demonstrations that occur punctually across the country, with the objective of accomplishing a journalism that is active and ‘raw’, since the videos are posted with no edition, but with emotional voiceovers by the ‘militant-report’.

Nowadays, people increasingly produce and post content instantaneously, using their mobile devices and social network. Mídia Ninja has simply embodied what is known as street journalism – a new form of non-mediated communication that spreads around the world, enabled by digital technology. Considering this context, what is the future of traditional media?
History has already shown us that the surge of new communication media does not necessarily extinguishes the ones used before. TV has not killed radio whereas the Internet has not killed print media. What happens is that the means of communication are transformed in order to coexist.

If today people depend less on traditional media to be able to learn about the facts, it means it clearly needs to be reinvented. The neutral/informative journalism formula, predominant in the media in the 20th century, has already become obsolete. Newspapers, magazines, radio stations, TV channels and even news portals on the web need to deliver more than information. It is necessary to correlate facts, explain, interpret and contextualize them. Analysis has become a competitive differential, mediation in the 21st century.

It is not a coincidence that more and more frequently well-known journalists start their own blog, mostly hosted and sponsored by the news agencies that employ them. Here in Brazil, blogs on politics are such a big hit that they have earned a spot in national news.

Another possible solution for the press is the return of investigative journalism and the New Journalism. Being rigorous while sifting through the facts, in-depth content and language innovation would add meaning to the mass media available on the Internet. Will that be a wake-up call to media conglomerates? Let’s wait and see, shall we?

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Ana Paula Santos, Journalist and Public Relations Brazilian, Ana Paula is a journalist skilled in electric energy sector. Over six years experience in digital media and Public Relationsn. Currently acts as coordinator of institutional communication channels at Chamber of Electric Energy Trading (CCEE, the market operator of electric energy in Brazil).