The New School Graduate Program in International Affairs

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: Human Rights and Media in Brazil

In this three-week course, students will study the human rights movement in Brazil with an emphasis on the crucial role that media plays in representing and responding to critical human rights issues. In the last decade, the convergence of new media technologies with the human rights movement has had a profound impact. This transformation has enabled the globalization process of human rights activism through the rapid distribution of web-based news, research, and visual representation. Digitalization has also crossed over with traditional media (television, print, film, photography, and radio) enhancing both the production and the distribution of human rights reports. The emerging interactivity between producers and consumers of human rights information is also changing as people once considered as objects of human rights reports are becoming subjects who are now creating, manipulating, and challenging dominant paradigms of media representation. This growing diversity has had serious social and cultural implications on how human rights information is received, engaged, and transformed.

The contemporary mediascape of human rights has now become a sub-field of the larger movement involving researchers, educators, journalists, film makers, photographers, writers, visual artists, web designers, and many other types of media workers. This course will study human rights through the lens of the media in order to critically understand the changing nature of human rights representation and how to better prepare for becoming involved in representing human rights.

Brazil presents a fascinating example of the emerging field of international human rights and media study. Although Brazil has a history of violating a broad range of human rights, the last decade has brought about substantial constitutional, legislative, and institutional changes in respect for human rights. These changes include governmental support of human rights groups to investigate and report their findings, and new legal guarantees promoting freedom for political rights and freedom of speech and press. But at the local level, especially in large urban areas such as Rio, the challenges of human rights remain many, considering the continuing prevalence of poverty, violence, street children, police brutality, abusive prison conditions, and corruption. The intention of this course is not to focus exclusively on the history of these violations but to study the many positive responses and media programs that have emerged to change social conditions and promote human rights and peace.

As a base for the class, students will be affiliated with Viva Rio, one of the leading frontline NGOs in the city of Rio. Over the last ten years, Viva Rio has emerged as one of the most innovative human rights organizations in the world with community-based programs addressing peace and public safety, human rights training for the police, community-based conflict resolution, small-arms disarmament campaigns, micro-credit and youth entrepreneurship programs, and community and environmental development. Viva Rio is also one of the most active NGOs in bridging the digital divide with its cyber cafes inside favela communities, their favela-based web portal, and their community and human rights radio station. Many research scholars are also in-residence at Viva Rio and their home base is a site for ongoing human rights education training for field workers and community residents.

Although we will be based out of Viva Rio, we will also visit other NGOs who specialize in other areas such as street children, women's human rights, sex workers and human rights, HIV harm reduction and human rights, and race and human rights. The course is designed to introduce a wide range of human rights and media initiatives with the intention of presenting a holistic experience of human rights work. Many NGOs in Rio today are actively involved in media campaigns and human rights education initiatives. When we visit with an NGO, often within a favela community, we will not only study their programs, but also their media strategies in regards to the production, circulation, and reception of human rights information.

Course Objectives:

• To study the emerging field of human rights and diverse media practices by visiting organizations such as Viva Rio and through presentations by human rights and media scholars. By studying in another country, students will realize that they are participating in a worldwide movement.

• Students will be exposed to the international standards, the basic conceptions and distinctions of human rights, the historical generations of human rights, and the major themes and events in the contemporary Brazilian human rights movement.

• Students will learn about international human rights organizations, local human rights NGOs, and international foundations that fund human rights projects. Students will study how NGOs "respond" to human rights violations and how NGOs work in a pro-active mode disseminating information and educating for the future.

• Students will be exposed to the issues surrounding human rights and media representation and the various strategies to represent violations such as human rights reports, personal narratives, journalism, documentary film, photo reportage, web sites, community-based media projects, new interactive forms of participatory media, and other human rights media projects. We will also have the opportunity to read about and meet some of the principal human rights researchers, journalists, photographers, documentary filmmakers, and media workers in Brazil.

• Students will have the opportunity to explore research interests concerning human rights, media, and Brazilian culture. The program should serve as a stimulating introduction to Brazilian studies, human rights, and media studies.

Information Session: Friday, Nov. 10, 6 p.m. room 609 and Friday, Nov. 17, 5-6pm, room 602

Faculty Coordinator: Peter Lucas (lucasp@newschool.edu)

Tentative Program Dates: June 25 - July 15