Public Arena on the internet in defense of the public university in Brazil:

Strategies of #UERJResiste

Abstract

The important dramatization of public scenes through social media can be observed within the paradigm of the Networked Society proposed by Castells (2003). Networked social movements mobilize their efforts to foster and balance public debate in their favor. In this article, we aim to understand how the communication strategies on #UERJResiste Facebook page in defense of the State University of Rio de Janeiro – UERJ – was presented in this public arena 
(Cefaï, 2017a, 2017b), in the period from January to April, 2017. 266 posts were collected to outline an ethnographic description (Laplantine, 2004) of the social movement. An interview was also held with one of the page’s administrators to understand how the content is produced in order to compose a situational analysis. As a result, we identified four categories that also constitute communication strategies: media politics, discourse of resisting, educational shares, and poetics of identity. In view of the privatization discourses of education and the attacks on its autonomy and its professionals, we understand #UERJResiste as a protagonist with an important narrative to be disseminated, reflected, and discussed in the defense of the Brazilian Public University. Among the main contributions to this study are networked social movements from an ethnographic perspective of a public arena. We also highlight an understanding of strategic communication in the civic dynamics, rebounding the importance of the autonomy of universities for democratic consolidation and citizen participation.