Editorial

March 10, 2025 | We are still here, amazed and persistent

New Year's Eve in Brazil, it occurs the day after Carnival and Obcomp returns without the excuses that could justify the absence of updates. From this privileged place that allows you to observe and criticize, we will continue to share information and experiences that impact the processes of public communication and politics and, consequently, the ways of being in the world. From the perspective of the public interest that governs democracies and their communication - public communication - we share observations aligned with three recent public events, which have the potential to be transformed into exciting research objects. These are events that add different perspectives related to the themes of the field of political communication and the public debate that point to the crises of contemporary democracies and the power of communication. We will then address an aspect of the national conjuncture related to the (in) communication of the Brazilian government and the evaluation of public opinion on President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva; The authoritarian behavior of the current US president, Donald Trump; and the public debate generated by the audience and international recognition of the film I'm still here.

Lula government communication and the low popularity obtained by the president in research allow us to specifically address the exercise of public communication. Studies developed in the field of political communication have situated communication in the redemocratization of Brazil as one of the most important characteristics, both in the strengthening of conventional media and business organizations, and in the power of communication structures and strategies linked to the governance of leftist parties, especially the project of popular administration in Porto Alegre (4 mandates, from 1989 to 2004) and the complex system developed in the two mandates of Luiz Inácio da Silva (2003 2010). The concept of public communication was consolidated in these periods, with the significant advance of public policies related to human rights, environment, education that generated important public debates.

In the short period of 12 years, the world and Brazil have changed radically, with the rise of the far right and new digital communication devices that have changed politics and governance, expanding spaces and the circulation of conservative and fascist ideas combined with millionaire investments. It is in this imbroglio that President Lula's third government happens and, still in his third year, the absence of a public communication policy with strategies that promote discourse unity, visibility for government actions and public debate is evident. It is evident the complexity of communication during this period, which covers the intensification of political-ideological disputes and digital media; tensions between the judiciary, legislative and executive powers; institutional disputes in the government itself and with support parties; economic problems and the search for solutions. The president's charisma was not enough to calm public opinion and the rise in prices, given the erratic official communication transformed into a constant agenda for the press associated with the surprise about the Lula government's low popularity rates. The change of leaders in the Secretariat of Social Communication (Secom) - the body responsible for formulating and implementing the policy of communication and dissemination of the Federal Executive Power - the lack of unity in public discourses and visibility to government actions have not allowed society to understand how to govern and actions for the public interest. The absence of the principles of public communication is evident, in contradictory information or disconnected information that, of course, generates insecurity and weaken the government project.

From the complexity of generating public communication in current Brazil, we go to the histrionic performance of the current president of the United States in its private course. While the world considered the new election of a political businessman speaking out in Donald Trump, he takes office, shows his weapons to exercise autocratic power and overshadow principles of democracy, as if he drove a reality show in which countries are pieces of a wicked game where the winner is already defined. Without any concession to public communication, international relations and protocols, it brings its clown vindictive and boast its power. The visibility of this power can be identified, especially in cruel and humiliating propaganda at two moments: the broadcast of , in their own networks, maintained by the shrill music that guides images of Gaza's transformation into a resort where happy users on colorful landscapes are overlapping the survivors and wreckage of a annihilated land. Trump and Netanyahu appear enjoying the beauties of the place. The second moment is the formal registration and its disclosure of the humiliating meeting between President Trump and his deputy James Vance with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky, until that moment partners in the war against Russia and, suddenly, the submission speech proposed to the Ukrainian state. Two haunment facts to the country's image and international relations that infringe minimal rules of civility in peacetime and strategically ignore the principles of democracy aimed at public interest, in the name of promoting personalism and “owner of the world” performance.

Lastly, it is worth addressing the movie I am still here by Walter Salles Jr., cinematic phenomenon and public interest. From the book of the same name by Marcelo Rubens Paiva, the film is located as a delicate product of communication in the cut of a story that can occur anywhere in the world. The work extrapolated the brands of success and arrived at the Oscar podium as the best foreign film, after a trajectory of awards. In 1997, what is this, companion?

Moved by a strong market machine, I am still here showed Brazil secrets of the military regime by telling, in a universal language, an intimate history of pain and fear of a family submitted to the atrocities of the regime in the name of national security. The film is subtle about violence and the only explicit death is that of a dear dog. Perhaps that is why it surprises, thrill and fulfills an important role in this national moment of political-ideological polarization: it makes the period of dictatorship remembered and perhaps it can clarify those who defend the return of this regime, since the military themselves did not support the quasi-goer of 8/1/23. Thousands of Brazilians watched and learned a little about that little studied historical period in schools. Many films and series have already been made about the military regime, but I am still here, an even profitable film market may have opened by recovering excerpts from that period that still retains so many secrets that could be told in hundreds of stories about missing, destroyed families, torture, death, censorship and the repression of society and resistance. These are topics of public interest that trigger collective memory, create a network of recognition about our identity, our democracy and generate important public debate.

Yes, we address events about political public communication that problematize contemporary democracy and apparently have no binding. The first is the finding about the incommunication of a government (Lula in Brazil) madePress, at a time of facilitating communication in hundreds of devices and specialists. The second impacts the total disrespect for the public interest, the authoritarian and disrespectful behavior between countries (the meeting of Trump, Vance and Zelensky) and the morbid cruelty of a president who releases a video on his networks where he celebrates the installation of a paradise resort on rubble and Gaza deaths. Finally, the reference to memory about the military dictatorship in Brazil, through the film I am still here, whose repercussion enables amplifying related stories that are of public interest and generates debates.

Porto Alegre, March 10, 2025