Ensuring access to information about electoral processes in Brazil

Agência Mural and Énois

Agência Mural: Since 2010, Agência Mural (Agência de Jornalismo das Periferias) has been producing local journalism that celebrates the complexities of São Paulo’s periferias and recognises the political importance of local communities. 

With a diverse team, Agência Mural makes local journalism for periferias and by people from periferias, with the goal of fighting stereotypes and ensuring access to information. 

Énois: Founded in 2009, Énois is a laboratory that works to boost diversity, representation and inclusion in Brazilian journalism. More than 500 young people from periferias have graduated in journalism and more than 4 thousand students attended the online Journalism School. In time, these young people, through Énois, produced content in partnership with nationwide media outlets.

In 2020, during São Paulo’s city elections, Agência Mural and Énois partnered to increase citizens’ access to information about the electoral process. 

As documented by Moi and Weingrill in their study, “A urgência de investir nos ecossistemas locais de informação”, Together, they hired carros de som (sound cars) to travel through seven regions of the city to broadcast five episodes of the podcast Em Quarantena. 

Produced by Mural, the episodes were dedicated to explaining the electoral process to its listeners: residents of the periferias.

This partnership led to over 35 hours of content being shared all over the city, covering everything from the differences between councilors and mayors to the content of the target plan that concerned periferias – which the population had the right to demand, and to demand from their representatives once elected.

To them, this initiative was a response to the information disorder that became so prevalent in election time in the country: As Moi and Wiengrill explain: “It was urgent to clear up the confusion that had been spread in large volumes, especially via WhatsApp. Thinking of ways to get the message across to the target audience also required another way of producing and distributing information.”