The project “Regional Media Ecology in the Legal Amazon Zone”, developed by NetLab UFRJ, mapped and analyzed the socio-environmental coverage of local media in the nine states of the Legal Amazon Zone. The research explored 816 online media outlets in the region, studying their relationship with the location and affiliation with media networks; its socio-environmental coverage (or lack thereof); its adherence to practices that give credibility to journalism; and its position in the regional political economy.
Environmental disinformation currently occupies a leading position in conservative political propaganda in Brazil, paving the way for the systematic advancement of mining activities and agribusiness interests and the dismantling of environmental protection.
Distorted, misleading or uninformative content finds fertile ground in the so-called “news deserts” spread across Brazil, often located in areas where environmental issues are highly sensitive to political, social and cultural life.
In the Legal Amazon Zone, interested parties with local influence to manipulate perceptions on the socio-environmental agenda capture the fragile structure of the regional media to promote themselves and their interests. They thus convert journalistic vehicles into political propaganda platforms in the digital environment.
These predatory practices of (dis)information flourish in this ecosystem, in which unequal power relations and a traditionally oligarchic political economy generate a communication structure which is vulnerable to manipulation and disinformation.
This project focuses on the need to understand how distorted perceptions of environmental protection in the Amazon are constructed within the regional media ecosystem, and how they fuel the advancement of radical and conservative political discourse at regional and national levels.