Half Brazilian municipalities are considered news deserts, where access to local information is non-existent or extremely scarce. According to data from "Atlas da Notícia," the Northeast region of Brasil is proportionally the most affected.
Almost half of Brazilian municipalities are news deserts-areas where there are no local press outlets or platforms to cover what happens in the region. The numbers are from "Atlas da Notícia," from a survey carried out by ProJor (Institute for the Development of Journalism), and they refer to the year 2023. Created by journalist Alberto Dines, Projor is one of the leading research initiatives in journalism in Brasil today.
What happens in a news desert? Nobody knows. Because they are less populated and often far from the capitals, these cities are outside the coverage of large vehicles.
What happens in a news desert? Nobody knows. Because they are less populated and often far from the capitals, these cities are outside the coverage of large vehicles.
The research by "Atlas da Notícia" proposes two classifications: news deserts and "almost-deserts." Deserts are areas where there are no local news outlets. And the almost-deserts are those with a maximum of two regional news outlets. Even the regions cataloged in this second category are still considered vulnerable and fragile due to the possibility of experiencing external political or business interference. 77.48% of Brazilian municipalities are in one of these two situations.
The Atlas survey has been carried out since 2017, gathering and crossing public data, but also with local calculation. The good news is that the figures show an 8.6% reduction in deserts compared to the previous year. This reduction has been occurring gradually and is mainly associated with the emergence of news outlets linked to peripheral territories and populations.
The survey carried out in 2023 showed that for the first time since the beginning of the surveys, the majority of respondents were non-deserts. However, there are still 2,712 municipalities considered desert regions. Dubes Sônego, journalist and researcher at Atlas, argues that regional journalism is highly important and that benefits can be perceived in several instances. One example is the correlation between better HDI indices and qualified and active news production on a local scale.
Kamylla Sousa is one of more than 26.7 million people living in a new desert region. She lives in Brejo, a municipality in Maranhão of approximately 35,000 inhabitants and without any regional news outlets.
Among the problems she reports are disinformation and the city's organization, which is undermined in the absence of local coverage. "To obtain municipal information, I believe that not only I, but a good part of the population submits to news blogs or Instagram pages... I see many inlanders who believe in everything they are told because they do not obtain information from true sources," says Kamylla.
Regional Data
The Northeast region of Brasil, where Kamylla Sousa lives, has the highest proportion of information desert municipalities: 56.7%. However, 87 municipalities have left the desert classification, a 9% drop in the number of cities in this category.
The Central-West remains the region with the highest percentage of non-deserts. Even so, it has registered the closure of 41 local news outlets.
The total number of deserts in the South region dropped by 8%, which is equivalent to 44 municipalities. The Southeast is in its third consecutive year of decline, with 22 municipalities ceasing to be deserts compared to the previous census.
The North was the region with the most significant drop in the number of deserts. There are now 189 of the 270 cities without local news outlets, equivalent to a 30% drop.
The states with the worst situation are Piauí and Rio Grande do Norte, both of which have more than 70% of the municipalities without local coverage. Seven of Rio de Janeiro's 92 municipalities are in this situation, making it the Brazilian state with the lowest rate of news deserts.
The Strength of Digital Native Media
Of the almost 15,000 regional news outlets analyzed in 2023, 70% were considered digital natives, such as websites, newsletters, or radio programs. Dubes Sônego attributes the growth of these modalities to their practicality. "Nowadays, uploading a page on social media is much cheaper, in the past it was necessary to buy a printer or have money to have it printed [...] nowadays you record with a mobile phone, and you can even make a podcast."
COAR, a verification project based in Piauí, was one of these initiatives. It was born as a digital vehicle in 2020. Since then, it has acted directly in tackling disinformation and in the digital literacy work of the portion of the population that lives in regions that are news deserts.
For this literacy, COAR developed "regional manuals" to teach checking techniques to the inhabitants of news desert municipalities. The text uses regional language, which is similar to what is used by the populations of the North and Northeast. Marta Alencar, a doctoral student in journalism and founder of the project, explains that the manuals aim to instruct people to discern the quality of a news story for themselves. So, the people from this region will not be vulnerable to information from distant, often incorrect, vehicles or news outlets.
However, the maintenance of vehicles like this is quite costly and sometimes unsustainable. Atlas' qualitative research in cities classified as almost-deserts showed that only a few journalists could earn more than R$2,000 monthly from their professional work in local news outlets. Alencar said that notices and donations are often insufficient to maintain COAR's activities, and he ends up financing the project with personal resources. As a result, many vehicles tend to close over time.
Funding sources for journalistic initiatives vary but are mainly from private funds and non-profit organizations. The initiatives' revenues are ultimately limited to advertising and paid content, which prevents the expansion of these vehicles. According to Dubes Sônego, from Atlas, countries such as Canada, Austria, and Norway have different state funding models to strengthen the regionalization of news production - but it is also necessary to be aware of this type of funding.
Sônego recalls, for example, that there is an obstacle arising from the political influence that may be exerted on local news portals since they become dependent on this government budget to maintain themselves. And this can compromise the independence of journalistic production.
By Davi Guedes. Content originally published by the Scientific News Agency of the Rio de Janeiro State University (Agenc)
