Participants in crime and in news: PCC and militiamen appropriations of the contemporary media arena

Abstract

We propose to investigate appropriation gestures of media arena by criminals as an emergence of the mediatization phenomenon in contemporary society. More than participants of criminal stories, they engage in the production of reports about themselves widespread by media, with the main aim of competing for control of their own symbolic constructions. By dislocating themselves from the place of informative content receivers, they break the boundary line of the audience and become producers of media reports as a tool of competition for spaces of production and transmission of it. We appoint two emblematic events – the kidnapping of journalist Guilherme Portanova by the PCC and the release of “defenseinterviews” videos by a carioca militia chief –, to begin a reflection about the effects of media on subjects who usually appear only as characters in police reporting.