‘News deserts’ are no longer the majority in Brazil, says study – 09/08/2023 – Market

For the third consecutive time, the Atlas da Notícia, an annual study on local journalism in Brazil, pointed out a drop in the number of municipalities without information vehicles, the so-called news deserts.

The reduction was 8.6% in one year, close to the pace of decline in the previous survey, identifying 271 new cities with at least one website, newspaper, social media page or other local coverage format.

With that, for the first time, there are now less news deserts than “non-deserts”, areas with access to local information, albeit limited, in Brazil.

In total, there are 2,712 deserts, with a population of 26.7 million. And 2,858 “non-deserts” were surveyed, totaling 176.3 million inhabitants. Of these, however, 1,643 municipalities have only one or two, configuring what the Atlas calls “almost deserts”.

“What has happened the most is the emergence of these individual vehicles, blogs, profiles”, says Sérgio Lüdtke, president of Projor – Institute for the Development of Journalism, which produces the Atlas.

He warns, however, that “it is a fragile expansion, which does not bring so much optimism because we already see the closure of many of these online initiatives”, due to lack of financial support. “The person can get at most one ad via Google or a hit with local trade.”

The change is headed by the North and Northeast regions, where 95 and 87 new cities were identified, respectively, with new digital vehicles or, to a lesser extent, news on community radio stations. The most favored states were Pará and Pernambuco, with 36 each.

Even so, the Northeast is the region of the country with the most municipalities without local coverage, proportionally.

In this edition of the survey, 14,444 vehicles operating in Brazil were identified, 5.2% more than last year, 5,245 of which online, 36% of the total — of which 1,671 blogs or social media pages, by individual entrepreneurs, as the study describes.

The survey is financed by Meta, owner of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, platforms present in the survey of local news profiles, as well as YouTube, from Alphabet. Others, such as TikTok, Twitter and Telegram, are also registered, but to a lesser extent.

The work involved 303 volunteer employees and students from 80 organizations and universities, in the last ten months, across the country.

Since 2017, when it was launched, the survey has been updated regularly, says Sérgio Spagnuolo, data coordinator at Atlas da Notícia. The year 2020 was skipped, due to the pandemic, but “it has the same methodology and the same rigor since 2019, with comparability”.