Youth, social protests and representations on violence

Abstract

This article aims at analyzing the representations around the notion of violence as it is employed by three different actors involved in the recurrent manifestations against the raise in public transportation fees seen in June, 2013, in Brazil. We depart from the perspective of the sociology of conflictualities, which emphasizes the complexity of the current social conflicts, to explore some of its dynamics and specificities. We focus on one specific aspect for this analysis: the changing characterization of the notion of violence as they occur in the representations by the youth (through the analysis of both their discourse and their engagement on virtual communities and demonstrations on the streets), by the conventional media (through the analysis of daily news published by two major Brazilian newspapers), and by political authorities (though the analysis of their public statements as noticed by those newspapers). Throughout this research, there has become evident that some actors involved made substantially different use of the same concept of violence within just a short lapse of time. In trying to understand this abrupt displacement of substantial meaning of violence as operated by some actors, we acknowledged two different moments: first from June 11th until June 17th, and second, from June 18th until the 20th. The displacement on the meaning of violence have reflected a dispute amongst actors over the legitimacy of the public demonstrations.