A Teia - Brazil 's popular project of communication

A Teia (or “The Web”) is a project of popular communication in Brazil, created by Núcleo Piratininga de Comunicação (NPC) that is involved in creating connections by developing and building a solidarity network among various counter hegemonic communication experiences in Brazil.

Authorship: Luisa Santiago.
Translated by: Jessica Alves Thiebaut.
Review: André Rezende Broseghini and Junia Zaidan.

About

A Teia (or “The Web”) is a project of popular communication in Brazil, created by Núcleo Piratininga de Comunicação (NPC) that is involved in creating connections by developing and building a solidarity network among various counter hegemonic communication experiences in Brazil. The project was released at the 2018’s World Social Forum (WSF) in Salvador.

The aim of the project is to produce and share Brazilian workers’ life stories and narratives of resistance, because communication media is not widely available for the people and the internet’s political potential  is not accessible for all the population. The project enabled new possibilities in these communities, but also faced the complexities of reproducing a capitalist dominating structure that is present in mass media.  The project also faced issues arising from a steady enlargement of capital (industries, banks, big businesses), with  assault on historical achievements of labor workers, increasing violence against communities on the outskirts (favelas, rural areas, indigenous communities), and violation of human rights and our fragile democracy.

The challenge and purpose of this  project is to consolidate the communication for those who fight for their rights, land, housing, employment, culture, art, respect, human dignity, environment and for  life.

A Teia is thus a strategy to make peripheric stories reach the general public and those who want the world to be a better and equal place The project’s website is available  at http://teiapopular.org/.

The following institutions, projects and organizations are involved with the  popular communication project, A Teia (with respective Brazilian federative unit in parenthesis):

• Agência Abraço Brasil;
• Agência Tambor (Maranhão);
• CDD Vive (Rio de Janeiro);
• Jornal A Notícia Por Quem Vive (Rio de Janeiro);
• Centro Sabiá (Pernambuco);
• Furo (Pará);
• Jornal Abaixo Assinado (Rio de Janeiro);
• Jornalismo B (Rio Grande do Sul);
• NPC (Rio de Janeiro);
• Outras Palavras; Rádio Classista (Ceará);
• Terra Sem Males (Paraná);
• Vias de Fato (Maranhão);
• Voz das Comunidades (Bahia);
• Voz das Comunidades (Rio de Janeiro).

This project takes into account the existence of different alternative initiatives  to deal with narratives under dispute  present in the Brazilian society. Initiatives are carried out by  popular collectives and trade unions. For the activists of the A Teia project, who have for almost 25 years fought for people’s communication, the current distressing scenario of social politics in Brazil urged them to create this communication project in the country.