Reflection 11/16/20

A current example of the concept of amplification is the social media mobilization around the blackout in Amapá, Brazil. Basically,  on November 3rd, there was a fire in the transformers of a power distribution substation that serves the Brazilian state of Amapá, leaving thousands of people without power, food, and water for days in the middle of a pandemic. The state, one of the poorest of the country, had already been hit hard by the pandemic, and now even fewer people are able to socially distance. There have been no substantial efforts from the federal government to address the blackout and there was relatively little press coverage on the subject — way less than there would be had this episode occurred in wealthier regions of the country. The lack of sufficient coverage on Amapá is part of a larger, long-standing problem of traditional media in Brazil, which tends to give more attention to the matters of wealthier and more politically powerful regions of the country — perhaps because they’re able to attract attention by “achieving visibility in terms of audience metrics, thus demonstrating that they are already receiving attention and engagement and have the potential to attract more” (p. 3166). This imbalance in mediatic and institutional attention led many internet users to take on the role of reporting what’s happening in Amapá at the moment, spreading the message to people from other places who were unaware of the dimensions of the problem. As more users, including those from affluent regions, engaged with tweets and Instagram posts about the blackout, I noticed an increase in coverage from mainstream media sources. Drawing from Zhang’s work, we can say these users elevated “other actors’ (citizens, journalists, media platforms) perceptions of the object’s worthiness or significance” (p. 3162), amplifying the attention given to the blackout and its consequences. The increased mentions of this issue on social media and more traditional news outlets also pressured the government to start taking action — though it has been working at an astonishingly slow pace. The case of Amapá’s blackout is surprisingly similar to Zhang’s analysis of the role of amplification and attention in the Black Lives Matter movement — “it was when Black Lives Matter activists won the attention of the press through coordinated social media messaging that elites started taking seriously the activists’ concerns” (p. 3163). I now want to learn more about the uses of amplification and attention in social justice movements.