What are the current conditions of (in)security and vulnerability for journalists in Brazil? And how have these conditions manifested in real-world cases in recent years?
These are the questions that guide the newest free e-book released by COM+ in partnership with Obcom (Observatory of Communication, Freedom of Expression and Censorship). Entitled “Security and Press Freedom – Threats to journalists in Brazil” the work is organized by professors Elizabeth Saad and Daniela Osvald Ramos, both researchers at COM+, and by Aianne Amado. The e-book brings together a collection of recent cases of different types of violence committed against journalists.
The chapters represent final projects for the course “New Paradigms and Dimensions of Violence in the Field of Communication: Harassment and Threats Against Journalists and Communicators”, offered annually by the professors at the Postgraduate Program in Communication Sciences of ECA-USP.
Furthermore, the work is also part of the results of the project “Safety Matters: research and education on the Safety of Journalists in cooperation between Norway-Brazil-South Africa and the USA”, coordinated in Brazil by Elizabeth Saad and Daniela Osvald Ramos and part of an international program encompassing ECA-USP, Oslo Metropolitan University (Norway), the University of Tulsa (USA) and Wits University (South Africa).
The project aims to contribute to the safety of journalists by training journalism researchers in the analytical and practical tools necessary to investigate, understand, and improve the safety of journalists in a constantly changing transnational landscape marked by political and physical insecurities.
The work has 5 chapters, authored by 10 researchers: “Narco violence, state negligence, and threats to the
duty to inform”; “Silenced voices: racism, transphobia, and gender-based violence in Brazilian journalism”; “Legal violence against science communicators in Brazil: the case of Nunca Vi 1 Cientista”; “What about the culture desk? the (lack of) safety of journalists during Carnival 2025” and “The Renaud Philippe case: assault on journalists covering indigenous land reoccupations in Mato Grosso do Sul”.