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Has anyone among you
ever been exposed to tear gas?

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Tear gas? Anyone?

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I'm sorry to hear that, so you might know
that it's a very toxic substance,

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but you might not know
that it's a very simple molecule

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with an unpronouncable name:

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it's called chlorobenzalmalononitrile.

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I made it.

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It's decades old, but it's becoming
very trendy among police forces

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around the planet lately, it seems,

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and according to my experience
as a non-voluntary breather of it,

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tear gas has two main
but quite opposite effects.

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One, it can really burn your eyes,

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and two, it can also
help you to open them.

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Tear gas definitely helped
to open mine to something

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that I want to share
with you this afternoon:

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that livestreaming the power
of independent broadcasts through the web

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can be a game-changer in journalism,

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in activism, and as I see it,
in the political discourse as well.

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That idea started 
to dawn on me in early 2011

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when I was covering
a protest in São Paulo.

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It was the marijuana march,

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a gathering of people asking
for the legalization of cannabis.

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When that group started to move,

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the riot police came from the back
with rubber bullets, bombs,

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and then the gas.

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But to make a long story short,

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I had entered that protest
as the editor-in-chief

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of a well-established printed magazine
where I'd worked for 11 years,

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and thanks to this unsolicited
effects of tear gas,

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I left it as a journalist that was now
committed to new ways

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of sharing the raw experience
of what it's like to be there, actually.

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So in the following week,
I was back in the streets,

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but that time, I wasn't a member
of any media outlet anymore.

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I was there as an independent
livestreamer, and all I had with me

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was basically borrowed equipment.

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I had a very simple camera
and a backpack with 3G modems.

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And I had this weblink
that could be shared through social media,

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could be put in any website,

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and that time,
the protest went along fine.

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There was no violence.

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There was no action scenes.

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But there was something really exciting,

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because I could see at a distance
the TV channels covering it,

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and they had these big vans
and the teams and the cameras,

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and I was basically doing the same thing

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and all I had was a backpack.

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And that was really
exciting to a journalist,

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but the most interesting part
was when I got back home, actually,

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because I learned that I had been watched

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by more than 90,000 people,

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and I got hundreds of emails and messages
of people asking me, basically,

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how did I do it,

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how it was possible to do such a thing.

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And I learned something else,
that that was actually the first time

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that somebody had ever done
a livestreaming in a street protest

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in the country.

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And that really shocked me,

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because I was no geek,
I was no technology guy,

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and all the equipment needed
was already there,

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was easily available.

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And I realized that
we had a frontier here,

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a very important one,

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that it was just a matter
of changing the perspective,

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and the web could be actually used,

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already used, as a colossal
and uncontrollable

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and highly anarchical TV channel,
TV network,

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and anyone with very basic skills
and very basic equipment,

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even someone like me who had this
little stuttering issue,

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so if it happens, bear with me please,

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even someone like me
could become a broadcaster.

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And that sounded revolutionary in my mind.

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So for the next couple of years,

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I started to experiment with
livestreaming in different ways,

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not only in the streets
but mostly in studios and in homes,

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until the beginning of 2013, last year,

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when I became the cofounder of a group
called Mídia NINJA.

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NINJA is an acronym

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that stands for Narrativas Independentes 
Jornalismo e Ação,

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or in English, independent narratives,
journalism, and action.

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It was a media group
that had little media plan.

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We didn't have any financial structure.

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We were not planning
to make money out of this,

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which was wise, because you shouldn't
try to make money out of journalism now.

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But we had a very solid
and clear conviction,

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that we knew that the hyperconnected
environment of social media

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could maybe allow us to consolidate

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a network of experimental journalists
throughout the country.

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So we launched a Facebook page first,
and then a manifesto,

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and started to cover the streets
in a very simple way.

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But then something happened,
something that wasn't predicted,

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that no one could have anticipated.

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Street protests started
to erupt in São Paulo.

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They began as very local and specific.

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They were against the bus fare hike
that had just happened in the city.

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This is a bus.

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It's written there, "Theft."

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But those kind of manifestations
started to grow,

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and they kept happening.

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So the police violence against them
started to grow as well.

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But there was another conflict,

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the one I believe that's
more important here

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to make my point that
it was a narrative conflict.

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There was this mainstream media
version of the facts

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that anyone who was on the streets
could easily challenge

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if they presented their own vision
of what was actually happening there.

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And it was this clash of visions,
this clash of narratives,

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that I think turned those protests

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into a long period in the country
of political reckoning

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where hundreds of thousands of people,

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probably more than a million people

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took to the streets in the whole country.

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But it wasn't about
the bus fare hike anymore.

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It was about everything.

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The people's demands, their expectations,

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the reasons why they were on the streets

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could be as diverse as they could
be contradictory in many cases.

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If you could read it,
you would understand me.

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But it was in this environment
of political catharsis

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that the country was going through

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that it had to do with politics, indeed,

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but it had to do also
with a new way of organizing,

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through a new way of communicating.

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It was in that environment
that Mídia NINJA emerged

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from almost anonymity
to become a national phenomenon,

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because we did have the right equipment.

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We are not using big cameras.

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We are using basically this.

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We are using smartphones.

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And that, actually, allowed us to become
invisible in the middle of the protests,

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but it allowed us to do something else:

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to show what it was like
to be in the protests,

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to present to people at home
a subjective perspective.

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But there was something
that is more important,

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I think, than the equipment.

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It was our mindset,

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because we are not behaving
as a media outlet.

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We are not competing for news.

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We are trying to encourage people,

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to invite people,
and to actually teach people

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how to do this, how they also
could become broadcasters.

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And that was crucial to turn Mídia NINJA
from a small group of people,

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and in a matter of weeks,

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we multiplied and we grew
exponentially throughout the country.

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So in a matter of a week or two,
as the protests kept happening,

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we were hundreds of young people

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connected in this network
throughout the country.

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We were covering more than
50 cities at the same time.

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That's something that
no TV channel could ever do.

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That was responsible
for turning us suddenly, actually,

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into kind of the mainstream
media of social media.

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So we had a couple of thousands
of followers on our Facebook page,

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and soon we had a quarter
of a million followers.

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Our posts and our videos

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were being seen by more than
11 million timelines a week.

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It was way more than any newspaper
or any magazine could ever do.

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And that turned Mídia NINJA
into something else,

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more than a media outlet,
than a media project.

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It became almost like a public service

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to the citizen, to the protester,

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to the activist,

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because they had a very simple
and efficient and peaceful tool

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to confront both police
and media authority.

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Many of our images started 
to be used in regular TV channels.

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Our livestreams started to be broadcast
even in regular televisions

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when things got really rough.

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Some our images were responsible
to take some people out of jail,

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people who were being arrested unfairly

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under false accusations,
and we could prove them innocent.

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And that also turned Mídia NINJA very soon

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to be seen as almost
an enemy of cops, unfortunately,

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and we started to be severely beaten,
and eventually arrested on the streets.

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It happened in many cases.

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But that was also useful,
because we were still at the web,

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so that helped to trigger
an important debate in the country

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on the role of the media itself

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and the state of the freedom
of the press in the country.

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So Mídia NINJA now evolved

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and finally consolidated itself
in what we hoped it would become:

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a national network
of hundreds of young people,

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self-organizing themselves locally

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to cover social, human rights issues,

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and expressing themselves
not only politically

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but journalistically.

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What I started to do
in the beginning of this year,

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as Mídia NINJA is already
a self-organizing network,

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I'm dedicating myself to another project.

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It's called Fluxo,
which is Portuguese for "stream."

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It's a journalism studio
in São Paulo downtown,

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where I used livestream to experiment

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with what I call post-television formats.

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But I'm also trying to come up with ways
to finance independent journalism

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through a direct relationship
with an audience,

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with an active audience,

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because now I really want
to try to make a living

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out of my tear gas resolution back then.

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But there's something
more significant here,

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something that I believe is more important
and more crucial than my personal example.

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I said that livestream could turn the web
into a colossal TV network,

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but I believe it does something else,

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because after watching people using it,

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not only to cover things but to express,
to organize themselves politically,

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I believe livestream can turn cyberspace
into a global political arena

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where everyone might have a voice,

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a proper voice,

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because livestream takes the monopoly
of the broadcast political discourse,

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of the verbal aspect
of the political dialogue

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out of the mouths of just politicians
and political pundits alone,

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and it empowers the citizen
through this direct and non-mediated power

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of exchanging experiences and dialogue,

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empowers them to question
and to influence authorities

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in ways in which we are about to see.

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And I believe it does something else
that might be even more important,

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that the simplicity of the technology
can merge objectivity and subjectivity

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in a very political way, as I see it,

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because it really helps the audience,

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the citizen, to see the world
through somebody else's eye,

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so it helps the citizen
to put him- or herself

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in other people's place.

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And that idea, I think, 
should be the intention,

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should be the goal of any good journalism,
any good activism,

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but most of all, any good politics.

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Thank you very much. It was an honor.

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(Applause)