What is Alternative Media

2013 was an important year for the Brazilian political life, as citizens took to the streets against the increase of public transport fare. The demonstrations revealed a widespread dissatisfaction with the Brazilian political system and the traditional media did not escape the criticisms. This chapter focuses on how discourses about mainstream media were articulated on Twitter during Brazilian protests. Our corpus has 6,580 tweets that directly mention 12 Brazilian mainstream media. The goal was to understand how these discourses were translated into the practice of using Twitter in this specific context which mixes the possibility of participation and expression in a digital and social environment and the context of protest. Results show that at the same time that the major media continue to be important elements guiding the political discussion in social networks, the speeches towards them are extremely critical. Although Globo is the main target, the tone is almost homogeneous between different media, which shows a general mistrust towards the communication system.