Book Review: Media and the Image of the Nation during Brazil's 2013 Protests by César Jiménez-Martínez

The literature about the status of an image, about hegemonic signs, of the capacity to make something visible, as well as the regime of visibility is extensive and connect in a fascinating way with the discussion of power - the power to construct an icon, to naturalize an emblem, to make an arbitrary articulation a commonsensical symbol for a human collective, to represent people, cultures and souls.

This book is about that construction, the image of nation-states, including the actors trying to create that image and the reasons and conditions to make it so. The origins and this book's case study are in the revolts that shook Brazil in the years before the South American country organized an array of global sports events, the most important the FIFA World Cup of 2014 and the Summer Olympic Games of 2016. Specifically, the book takes the Jornadas de Junho protests' that occurred in June-July 2013, becoming the most significant and broadest mobilization in decades in Brazil. From this chain of protests, the book launches the question about the construction of the country's image. And such query makes total sense from a historical point of view, from how the idea of Brazil has been built by state and hegemonic power, with all its colonialist inheritance and whitening processes. But also, from a contemporary perspective connected to branding a nation with the state-corporate interest of showcasing it as “safe”, “modern”, and “reliable” for the international investor gaze.

Now, a priori, attention on this construction would only look at mainstream media or the state. This book gets away from that dual analysis in addressing who, how, why and under what circumstances are constructing - or trying to - the nation. The analysis thus focus on four actors: the state, mainstream local media, activists, and foreign media, to see the kind of country they depict, the strategies they use and the conditions they have to portray a particular image. Through the examination of newspaper articles, television reports, online videos and photos produced by Brazil's top newspapers, TV newscasts, grassroots media groups, and foreign media, on the one hand; and sixty-four interviews with government officials, activists, journalists and foreign correspondents, the findings unfold. And this unfolding makes evident the story of an image in contention, of different sources trying to figure – and to communicate – an idea of what Brazil is.

Consequently, the research grounds the analysis in a world that - although it might seem commonsensical or normal when the historical development of media and media practices is not accounted – has more actors with the capacity to contest official images. For instance, unlike the late 1980s, when the international press played a significant role in disseminating the atrocities committed by local dictatorships in South America abroad the region, today grassroots activists have the capacity to do that work. Certainly, their power will not be the same as mainstream local media, but it brings an actor to the dispute of painting what Brazil is. How do all these actors dispute the visible nation? The answer comes in the pages of this book that gives us the chance to see the ambiguities in manufacturing the country, the multidimensional paths to doing so and the fact that states and mainstream media's prerogative and power to fix the nation has been undermined.

Image of the Nation During Brazil's 2013 Protests, is thus a stimulating piece to enrich debates connected to why the nation is still central in the discussion about the life in common, to discussions on the evolution of its modern fixations in post-modern times; to its capacity to include others and enhance pluralism; and to the decolonial claim of moving beyond colonial understandings of nation-states. It is a piece that reminds us that the power to represent the “us” will always be a central aspect of media and communications studies, particularly in political communication. And this text gives us elements to enrich that analysis, and to understand and embrace the fact that in the dangerous exercise of being and making something visible in a society crowded by screens, there is more than one actor in the scene. César Jiménez-Martínez invites us to see them, to see their practices, strategies and conditions in a relevant work for the field of media and communications.