Paper short abstract

This paper presents a case study about how low-income Brazilians living in a dormitory village in the Northeastern coast of Bahia use digital photography associated with social media as tools of political empowerment.

Paper long abstract

In the past 20 years, nearly one fourth of Brazil's population crossed the poverty line to become what some have called the "new middle class". This is a paper about how photography and social media mediate diverging political interests in a low-income dormitory village in the Northeastern coast of Bahia.

I will compare two batches of photographs shared online during the presentation: the first batch shows street protests happening in large cities as a consequence of corruption accusations associated with for this year's World Cup in Brazil; the second are photos taken and shared to address the consequences of a crime that happened recently in the community where I currently live. My intention is to see if digital technology is a tool of empowerment not just to the educated middle class, but also to the large contingent of undereducated emerging working class that represent today more than 50% of the country's population.