Rachel Mourao speaks at The Croft Institute for International Studies on social media and political protests. (Photo by Xinyi Song
The Croft Institute for International Studies hosted Rachel Mourao as part of its Visiting Speaker Series tonight.
Mourao, assistant professor of journalism at Michigan State University, is known for her research on social media and political protests in Latin America.
“As a journalist by training and someone who has researched the role of social media in political protest for her PhD dissertation, she will be able to speak from various angles about the place of social media in Latin America,” Oliver Dinius, executive director of the Croft Institute, said.
A native Brazilian, Mourao looks at the impact technology has made on news production, over time and during political events.
“In 2013, there was massive protests in Brazil,” Mourao said. “For this protest, people in the press were saying that social media caused it and that it was a ‘Twitter revolution.’ I asked myself ‘Well, does it?’ and that became my main question. I don’t just study protests. I also study elections but more so in the United States. I gravitated more toward how journalists use technology to cover political events.”
Laura Combust, a freshman international studies major with a focus on Latin America and Spanish, said she admits she feels more informed about social media and its effect on things happening around the world.
“The rise of social media is a part of all our lives,” Combust said. “Just seeing how social media affects even a protest was very interesting to me.”
