Surveying research on favelas and the media: emphases and absences in decades of critical explorations

ABSTRACT Brazil’s favelas have grown in visibility over the last decades much because of the media produced from these communities. This paper surveys decades of scholarly research to review what it is known about relationship of these communities with the media. Results find emphases on the use of the media to memorialize dwellers’ struggles, favela media as popular culture, and a set of partnerships with NGOs. After the 2000s, as these communities are rendered on mainstream media productions, scholars also started seeing favela inhabitants turning into digital activists. Methodologically, much attention has been given to ethnographic observation, while scholarship remains less invested in understanding local frames and discourses.