Remembering Marielle Franco: Haunting online presence and the memorialization of resistance on social media

Abstract

Social media has transformed how we construct collective memory, with increased opportunities for dispersed individuals and groups to participate in collective remembrance. With the ever-changing nature of social media practices, the field of critical memory studies begs for more research on the role of digital media in memory construction. Based on a critical rhetorical analysis of YouTube and Instagram archives, I examine how social media is used to remember Marielle Franco, a Brazilian black queer city councilwoman killed in 2018 by former police officers. Specifically, I argue that two communication strategies – mediating a resistant specter and mediating something-to-be-done – are articulated on social media in the construction of a haunting online presence of Marielle. I further suggest that this digital memorialization is consequential for how Brazil remembers the racial, gendered, and social injustices that inform Brazil’s past, present, and possible future. The analysis contributes to previous literature on cultural memory by articulating the notion of haunting online presence as a heuristic tool to theorize about public mourning, digital memory, and activism.

Keywords

activism collective memory digital memory haunting Marielle Franco

Introduction

On March 14, 2018, Marielle Franco, a black queer city councilwoman from Rio de Janeiro, was assassinated by gunshots in her car, along with her driver Anderson Gomes. Their death and the discovery that they were killed by two former police officers in connection with militias shocked millions. Before being killed, Marielle had served at Rio’s City Council for a year and a half, where she was vocal about police violence and militias’ presence in Rio’s favelas, as well as issues affecting black, poor, and queer groups (Medeiros and Flores, 2020). While the two suspects have been charged with the killing, the reasons for her assassination and who ordered it remain unclear (Barifouse, 2023).

More than 5 years after her death, efforts to manage her case’s visibility and shape her public memory continue through the work of the Instituto Marielle Franco (Marielle Franco’s Institute). The non-profit, founded by Marielle’s family in the aftermath of her death, aims to “fight for justice in Marielle’s murdering case, protect Marielle’s memories, spread Marielle’s legacy, and water the seeds that Marielle had inspired.” The organization states its mission as that of “inspiring, connecting, and potentializing black, LGBTQIA+ and favela resident women to keep moving the structures of society for a more just and egalitarian world” (institutomariellefranco.org). These were counter-hegemonic agendas in the Brazil of Jair Bolsonaro, who was elected the same year Marielle was killed, based on misogynistic, homophobic, and racist rhetoric (Kirby, 2019). The Institute’s memory work was also situated within a context of widespread disinformation and misinformation about Marielle mobilized by conservative groups online (Medeiros and Flores, 2020).

In this paper, I elaborate on how the Marielle Franco’s Institute functions as a counter-hegemonic agent of memory in Brazil through digital practices that articulate what I call a haunting online presence of Marielle on social media. I rely on the concept of haunting (Gordon, 2008), theorizing on collective mediated memory (Hoskins, 2009; Kitch, 2018; Molden, 2016; Neiger et al., 2011; Tenenboim-Weinblatt, 2013; Zelizer, 2004), and digital memory (Birkner and Donk, 2020; Chidgey, 2018, 2020; Hess, 2007; Martini, 2018; Merrill et al., 2020; Reading, 2016; Smit et al., 2018) to discuss two interrelated processes involved in the construction of a haunting online presence: mediating a resistant specter and mediating “something-to-be-done.” Through a critical rhetorical analysis of the Institute’s YouTube and Instagram accounts, I also explicate how the notion of haunting online presence can be used as a heuristic framework to analyze cases of digital memorialization as culturally, politically, and historically situated practices.

In what follows, I first situate what memorializing Marielle Franco represents in contemporary Brazil. Then, I review previous literature on collective memory, mediated memory, and digital memory, followed by a discussion on how the concept of haunting can be used as a lens to study digital memorialization. After explaining how a haunting online presence is articulated in the digital memory of Marielle, I discuss the significance of this study for scholarship at the intersection of memory, activism, and digital media.

A trauma of haunting significance

The public outcry in the aftermath of Marielle’s killing remains relevant more than 5 years after her death. The investigations were in the spotlight in 2023, after the new Minister of Justice and Public Security, Flávio Dino, announced that solving this crime was “a matter of honor for the Brazilian state” during his January inauguration (Barifouse, 2023). Marielle’s sister, Anielle Franco – one of the founders of the Marielle Franco’s Institute – was also nominated in 2023 for the Ministry of Racial Equity by recently elected president Lula da Silva.

On social media, attention to her case was substantially mobilized through these years, especially with the use of the hashtag #JusticeForMarielleAndAnderson and the question “who ordered Marielle’s killing?” (“quem mandou matar Marielle?” in Portuguese). The question can be read as demanding at least two kinds of answers: a specific one, or which individuals should be held accountable for ordering Marielle’s execution; and a broader one, or which systemic forces permitted the public killing of a Black city councilwoman and human rights advocate less than 2 years after her election. “Who ordered Marielle’s killing” is, thus, also a question about Brazil’s haunting past: evoking the memory of Marielle also evokes ghostly memories (Gordon, 2008) of racial, gender, and class violence that continue to inform Brazil’s social relations.

As such, at the core of Marielle’s memorialization is the articulation of how Brazil’s social formation is entangled with how she died. In 2022, it was estimated that around 1.4 per 100,000 Brazilian women were victtims of femicide in Brazil, with 1437 cases registered that year (Statista Research Department, 2023). Black women remain the leading victims of these crimes (Varejão, 2020). According to the Brazilian Atlas of Violence, over 65% of all women murdered in 2017 were black (Varejão, 2020). Black people are also disproportionately killed in Brazil, with 7 in every 10 people killed being black (Vidas Negras, n.d.). Police brutality against black people is also a routinized practice in Brazil’s favelas (BBC News, 2020). In Rio de Janeiro, where Marielle was killed, of the 885 civilians killed by the police in the first half of 2019, 80% were black or brown (Lima, 2021). Marielle’s killing also adds to an accumulation of death squad murders in Brazil’s peripheral neighborhoods (Smith, 2013). As Smith (2013) argues, death squad murders are “part of the landscape of inequality and black suffering in Brazil” (p. 180). Black Brazilians have historically been constructed “as the internal enemy (captives, terrorists, criminals)” in the country (Smith, 2013: 181), which is often reinforced in spectacular mediated images of black dead bodies and police violence against black populations (Smith, 2013).

This is observed in the continuous circulation of disinformation and misinformation about Marielle and the devaluation of her life by some politicians after she died. False rumors that she would be connected to narco-trafficking groups in Rio have been continuously replicated by right-wing political figures on platforms such as WhatsApp, Facebook, and Twitter (Medeiros and Flores, 2020). Marielle was frequently attacked by conservative groups as a “bandit defender” who was not killed by former police officers but by her own wrongdoings (Medeiros and Flores, 2020).

Medeiros and Flores (2020) suggest that one of the purposes of circulating disinformation and misinformation about Marielle was to attack what she came to represent, “a symbol of . . . leftist values and causes, such as human rights, feminism, and anti-racism . . . To attack her image was, therefore, to attack the left itself” (p. 191). This became emblematic, for example, when two politicians from the far-right Social Liberal Party (PSL) ripped apart a street plaque created to commemorate Marielle – they affirmed it was illegally put on the street by leftist militants (Molica, 2018). Such actions were further encouraged in the year Bolsonaro was elected based on a campaign marked by anti-feminist rhetoric and practices (Dias, 2022). But spreading narratives of Marielle as a criminal and attempting to vanish her memory accomplishes another social function in Brazil: they devalue black women’s lives and sustain racialized and gendered colonial relations. Such actions thus represent a continuation of the historical racial violence committed against black women in Brazil (Carneiro, 2016). Disinformation about and devaluation of their past are renewed forms of racial and gendered violence.

While Medeiros and Flores (2020) focused on far-right discourses about Marielle, my focus here is on the Marielle Franco’s Institute’s counter-hegemonic responses to such a context, how such responses were articulated online through digital memorialization practices, and what public actions and commitments these practices can mobilize. To further explore these linkages, I review next literature on the politics of memory.

Collective memory and resistance

Much of the scholarship on cultural memory, as Daphi and Zamponi (2019) note, draws from Maurice Halbwachs’ conception of memory “as a collective and social phenomenon” (p. 401). Collective memory studies depart from the assumption that memories are not mirrored representations of the past but are socially and culturally constructed (Chidgey, 2018, 2020; Daphi and Zamponi, 2019; Hoskins, 2009; Merrill et al., 2020; Molden, 2016; Neiger et al., 2011; Reading, 2016; Zelizer, 2004). This scholarly tradition invites us to ask how memories are formed, and the conditions and implications of memory work. This can involve critical explorations of how memories are assembled, the means through which they are articulated, and the kinds of practices, discourses, and political imaginations they mobilize (Chidgey, 2020).

In that regard, a fruitful research area has grown at the intersection of social movements and memory studies, or what Daphi and Zamponi (2019) call the movement-memory nexus. Not only collective memory has been considered in the study of social movements, but memory studies have also called attention to the role of “mnemonic agency, resilience, and resistance” in memory construction (Daphi and Zamponi, 2019: 399). Studies on the politics of memory, for example, have explored how power dynamics shape contentious memory-making processes, often emphasizing social movements as resistant agents of memory that can challenge hegemonic narratives of the past (Merrill and Lindgren, 2020; Molden, 2016).

A substantial body of this literature has also focused particularly on how media and mediatized processes are implicated in collective memory (Hoskins, 2009; Neiger et al., 2011; Tenenboim-Weinblatt, 2013; Zelizer, 2004). The study of mediated memories has challenged conceptions of static memory sites, calling attention to the “living” aspect of memories, or how “wider social and media frameworks” (Chidgey, 2020: 227) dynamically shape practices of remembrance. The advance of digital media, in particular, is said to have transformed our memory ecologies and how cultural memories are archived and assembled (Birkner and Donk, 2020; Chidgey, 2018; Daphi and Zamponi, 2019; Merrill et al., 2020; Reading, 2016).

Memory, activism, and social media

An emergent area in mediated memory studies has explored how digital media contributes to transformed memory ecologies (Hoskins, 2011) through new modes of storing, sharing, and mobilizing memories (Reading, 2016). The dynamic interplay between personal and collective archival memories afforded by digital media is also crucial in understanding memory work in the context of social movements and activism (Birkner and Donk, 2020; Chidgey, 2018; Hoskins, 2011; Reading, 2016).

Such studies have explored, for example, the dynamics of digital memory, from web memorials (Hess, 2007; Martini, 2018) to the unorganized and collective social media archival of historical events (e.g. the 2017 Women’s March, Chidgey, 2020; Kitch, 2018). Several contemporary movements, such Black Lives Matter, Arab Spring, Occupy Street, have also been analyzed for their reliance on social media platforms to organize, mobilize, and archive memories of activist efforts (Chidgey, 2020). Previous studies have thus emphasized how social media can facilitate dispersed and distant users to collectively co-create narratives about past figures and events in ways that favor the formation of collective identities (Martini, 2018) and social movement identities (Merrill et al., 2020).

Still, scholars in the intersection of memory and digital activism have also critically observed how social media hegemonic infrastructures and norms can shape the remembrance of political events (Smit et al., 2018). As Smit et al. (2018) note, “the underlying structure, architecture, and affordances” of social media platforms can privilege “creative practices over others, semi-automatically value certain objects higher than others, and steer particular interpretations of mediated materials” (p. 3122). This is not a trivial consideration. It calls attention to how the algorithmic logic of these platforms, which favors commercial strategies such as increasing visibility and sharing, is consequential to the kinds of narratives and styles that prevail in digital memorialization (Smit et al., 2018).

The temporality of memories in digital media is another aspect that has received attention. Merrill and Lindgren (2020), for example, elucidate how the unique temporal rhythms of digital activism, functioning across multiple platforms, can extend remembrance work across time and space, both online and offline. They thus emphasize the possibilities of connective, collective, and rhythmic activist mobilizations in remembrance practices facilitated by digital media (Merrill and Lindgren, 2020). Focused on feminist movements, Chidgey (2018) similarly discusses how “extended life cycles and cultural reproductions of feminist pasts” (p. 20) are increasingly made possible through assemblages of memories in social media, which enable “memory agency from below” (p. 3).

The intersection of feminist memory and digital memory has been fruitfully explored in a strand of this literature (Chidgey, 2018; Fuentes, 2019; Kitch, 2018; Reading, 2016). This body of work has critically considered, among other things, the conditions of production and technologies that can shape, limit, and enable feminist organizing and visibility in the circulation of feminist labor (Chidgey, 2018; Kitch, 2018; Reading, 2016). An illustrative example from Latin America is explored in Fuentes’ (2019) study on the digital memory dynamics of “Ni Una Menos” (NUM, Not One Woman Less), which started with demonstrations against gender violence in Argentina. As Fuentes (2019) suggests, through symbolic and networked action on social media, NUM became “a multisited, multiplatform, (a)synchronic performance constellation that aims to hack patriarchy” (p. 176). Fuentes (2019) thus elaborates on how social media facilitated collective responses to different cases of gender violence through distributed and decentralized online networks and practices (e.g. through the use of varied Latin America feminist-oriented hashtags in demonstrations of transnational social media solidarities).

The possibilities of social media to facilitate renewed forms of curating, circulating, and increasing the visibility of feminist work do not, however, dissolve complex issues involving representation, power, and identity, especially in the memorialization of gender violence. Representing histories of violence and oppression can sometimes result in the reification of violence and the revictimization of those who were oppressed (Hesford and Kozol, 2001). Visual memories make such questions even more salient. In the case of social media, in particular, the demand for the visual in memory work is often a shaping condition for increased circulation and visibility amid the algorithmic logic of these platforms (Smit et al., 2018).

These are important considerations for the analysis at hand, which engages with the digital memory of a social figure that came to symbolize the extreme consequences of structural gender and racial violence in Brazil. As such, I turn to the Marielle Franco’s Insitute’s YouTube and Instagram accounts as rhetorical artifacts of collective memory. The focus on these platforms provides unique venues to explore the challenges and potential ambivalence of representing Marielle in the aftermath of her assassination in a project of digital activist remembrance. Both platforms privilege multimodal communication centered on visual narratives, which invite unique ways of witnessing the past. The focus on these platforms is also not arbitrary given their popularity in Brazil. Instagram and YouTube figure, respectively, as the third and fourth most popular social media websites among Brazilians, the first and second being Facebook and Pinterest (Statista Research Department, 2022). While the Institute has a presence on Facebook, its content is primarily a repetition of what is shared on Instagram, which has incredibly more followers (263k) than its Facebook page (29k) (as of October 2023).

Accordingly, this study is guided by the following questions: How are YouTube and Instagram used to remember Marielle Franco? Which linkages between past, present, and future do they afford? And how does this digital memory work connect with Marielle’s activism? I bring the concept of haunting (Gordon, 2008), discussed next, to critically address these questions.

Haunting and ghostly memories

I suggest that previous theorizing on haunting, conceptualized as an essential element of social life (Gordon, 2008), can help us critically uncover the communicative strategies and mobilizing potential of activist remembrance on social media. A haunting perspective to the study of social life, as Gordon (2008) writes, starts from the premise that “the power relations that characterize any historically embedded society are never as transparently clear as the names we give them imply” (p. 3). Gordon (2008) invites us to complexify our treatment of social categories like race, class, and gender and how they structure social relations and subject positions, even when their influence is not clearly visible. From that perspective, haunting provides not only a lens into the study of social life but also an emphasis on its “ghostly aspects” (p. 7), or the ghostly matters that continue to haunt institutions and people.

In Gordon’s (2008) conceptualization, haunting describes “how that which appears to be not there is often a seething presence” while ghosts are “the sign, or the empirical evidence . . . that tells you a haunting is taking place” (p. 8). Importantly, a ghost is not defined merely as a missing or dead person but a social figure that makes itself known or apparent to us in a ghostly form, bringing to our attention that which was lost or was “barely visible” (p. 8). Using haunting as a lens and a method to study the complexity of social life can involve identifying cases of haunting and evaluating their consequences (Gordon, 2008). Examining cases of haunting occur, for example, in analyses of state terrorism and the varied lived experiences resulting from it (Gordon, 2008). Such investigations, as Gordon (2008) suggests, are often situated as a “case of modernity’s violence and wounds” (pp. 24–25).

It is worth noticing that a continuous focus on past violence and trauma as the ultimate subject of collective memory has its setbacks. Chidgey (2018) has criticized particularly the reliance on ghosts and specters as a lens to analyze the erasure of women and feminist movements in social and political life. As she argues, this reliance can “limit how feminist activist memories can be approached and understood” by projecting feminist work “as mere trace or documentation (as ghost)” (p. 20). She suggests we should rely on a more affirmative and present-grounded lens, proposing an assemblage theory that emphasizes instead how feminist memories can remain productive across time and situation.

The emphasis on feminist memories’ capacity to endure and inspire action is a powerful assertion that strengthens the linkages between memory, activism, and digital media. But this effort does not need to be carried out in opposition to a theory of haunting. A haunting lens also does not need to limit the potential to see the productive aspects of memorializing feminist struggle. I suggest, instead, that more attention should be paid to the “something-to-be-done” aspect of haunting. This emphasis can potentially reconcile how examinations of trauma can also encompass the “afterlives” of feminist work (Chidgey, 2018), or the resistant and productive potential of feminist activist memories during extended periods.

As Gordon (2008) originally wrote, although haunting often arises during tumultuous times, it is a process defined by its potential to mobilize the feeling that “something else, something different from before, seems like it must be done” (p. xvi). Specifically, she argues that a distinguishing feature of a state of haunting is that it produces this “something-to-be-done” feeling as a reaction to harm or loss sustained by past or present social violence. Haunting can thus be used to examine not only how past traumas and oppressions continue to structure social life, but also how particular ways of remembering can mobilize generative affects of social change. This mobilizing potential can link the remembrance of haunting pasts with present and future needs to act on social justice projects. Haunting can thus be understood as a rhetorical force that can be articulated in the memory of social movements. Likewise, ghosts, as evidence of a haunting, can be seen as social figures that refuse to be forgotten and thus can enact power over present social relations. Ghosts can be brought to our attention to inform memory construction in rhetorical acts that invite us not to forget their haunting presence.

The study of ghostly matters has been used in previous literature to reference “the haunting force of memory” (Hoag, 2014: 3) and never-to-be-forgotten social figures (Foss and Domenici, 2001). As Hoag (2014) articulates, haunting forces remind us that those who are dead or presumably forgotten still have rhetorical power to mobilize actions in the present (Hoag, 2014). Foss and Domenici (2001), for example, explored this conception in their rhetorical analysis of the 1977 Mothers of Plaza de Mayo demonstrations in Argentina, which demanded answers and accountability from authorities regarding their children’s disappearance during the dictatorial regime. Although not used intentionally by the Mothers, they argue, haunting was articulated as a metaphor through specific practices and symbols (e.g. photos of the disappeared), which helped create “a space apart – a haunted space – that has maintained salience of the disappeared as an issue” (Foss and Domenici, 2001: 251).

Similarly, haunting is used here as a heuristic to understand how collective remembrance can intervene in historical oppressions and processes of resistance through digital memory work. I suggest that mobilizing haunting and ghostly social figures can function as a communicative strategy that can be powerfully articulated on social media. In the case of the digital memory of Marielle Franco, I suggest that YouTube and Instagram were used to remember repressed specters and ghostly matters by creating a haunting online presence for her, shaped by digital practices that incessantly bring repressed but never forgotten people and issues to the fore.

Methods

I explore these assertions through a close textual analysis of the Marielle Franco’s Institute’s social media archives. Close Textual Analysis (CTA) can be defined as the interpretive practice aimed at explaining “how texts operate to produce meaning, effect persuasion, and activate convictions in public context” (Browne, 2009). This was complemented with paratextual information from traditional media coverage and social media users’ comments to situate the cultural, political, social, and historical context of the archives under analysis. The direct quotes from archives used here were translated from Portuguese to English by the author.

Archives under critique

As of August 2022 (the time the analysis concluded), the Institute has shared 150 videos on YouTube since May 27, 2020, and accumulated 14k channel subscribers. To engage with its content, I first explored the channel’s interface and the content tagged under different playlists. The playlists showcase videos from specific events or about particular themes. To address my questions, I selected the videos tagged under the playlist “Marielle as a city councilwoman,” which features 14 videos of Marielle’s speeches at Rio’s city council between 2017 and 2018. They were selected to address the question of how digital archives of Marielle’s past are animated on YouTube and whether and how they enable links between past, present, and future. In word doc tables, I included general information about the videos (e.g. title and descriptions, how Marielle appeared, the content of her speeches, users’ engagement in likes and comments, and contextual information from when the speech was delivered and later uploaded). While watching the videos, I analyzed how meanings about Marielle were articulated in the content curated to be shared on YouTube.

As of August 2022 (the time the analysis concluded), the Institute has shared 1831 posts on its Instagram account since February 24, 2019, and accumulated 128k followers. After immersing myself in the page, I selected all the posts shared during May 2022 for closer analysis due to events that happened during that month. Specifically, Brazil witnessed two cases of extreme police violence against black people. First, the Vila Cruzeiro massacre in Rio on May 24, 2022, which resulted in the killing of 26 people during a police operation in that community. Second, on May 25, 2022, the killing of Genivaldo de Jesus, a 38-year-old black man diagnosed with schizophrenia who Federal Highway Police agents asphyxiated under the trunk of a car. Both cases speak to what Marielle denounced: police violence against favela residents and black people. Analyzing the content shared in that month could illustrate whether and how the Institute’s Instagram account connects Marielle’s past with present struggles. The 72 posts shared in May were manually collected and analyzed following CTA’s tenets by exploring which meanings were articulated in those posts and whether and how they remembered Marielle in connection with present and future needs.

Constructing a haunting online presence

The digital memorialization of Marielle Franco by the Institute that carries her name accomplishes two important functions in the process of collectively remembering her: they memorialize Marielle by framing her as a symbol of resistance for groups occupying different intersections of race, class, gender, and sexuality; and they connect her past with current resistant practices to effect present and future change. This is possible, I suggest, through the construction of a haunting online presence in the digital memory of Marielle. This rhetorical strategy involves two interrelated processes: mediating a resistant specter and mediating something-to-be-done.

Mediating a resistant specter

The videos and photos of Marielle shared on Instagram and YouTube not only animate and circulate Marielle’s presence on social media but also invite users to witness her virtual reappearance as an inspiring social figure who can mobilize change. On YouTube, this is salient in the videos of Marielle’s speeches, which bring the reappearance of her social figure speaking of haunting topics in Brazil while helping to crystalize her image as a symbol of change in the chambers. On Instagram, her image is animated through the sharing of heroic representations of her in artistic creations in her commemoration or past photos that either represent her as an empowered figure in political settings or humanize her beyond her role at the city council. These memory assemblages (Chidgey, 2018) help to create and maintain multiple representations of Marielle online in ways that move away from sole remembrances of violence.

A resistant specter in videos

The videos of Marielle’s past speeches at the chambers shared on YouTube constitute one of the virtual forms by which Marielle’s ghost can re-appear to social media users and remind viewers of haunting cases. As part of a rhetorical memorializing strategy that results in a haunting online presence of Marielle, the videos can function as both an index for who Marielle was at the chambers and a counter-hegemonic memory archive (Molden, 2016) about her past as a city councilwoman. This is significant, especially in a context where misinformation and disinformation about her were being circulated by conservative groups online (Medeiros and Flores, 2020). The videos thus make Marielle’s virtual apparition visible to dispersed and networked viewers on YouTube, inviting them to see and hear Marielle’s past social concerns.

For example, in a video shared on August 18, 2021, a fragment from a past television broadcast of Rio’s City Council, Marielle appears in a medium shot speaking at two microphones. Two men stand behind her, while Marielle stands in the foreground and at the center, enunciating the title of the video: “My word is a woman’s word, but that’s valuable.” After she says this, the camera shows another city councilman, who was one of the first suspects in early investigations of having ordered her killing (but the witness who accused him was discredited soon after). In the video, Marielle affirms that her word values more than that of “certain city councilmen” who have uttered sexist and prejudiced jokes about a proposed bill to include the Day of Lesbian Visibility in the city calendar of Rio. Although there is no description for this 34-second video, the representation of Marielle as a defender of women’s voice and queer visibility, along with her critique of sexism in the council, is conveyed.

While videos such as these can create the impression in viewers that they are witnessing authentic mediated content (Smit et al., 2017), they are also visual reminders that she no longer is. By watching her speak while knowing she was killed, engaged viewers are invited to experience again the affects that were mobilized in the aftermath of her death. This affective reaction is materialized particularly in the comments to these videos, which can partially attest to how they work as a haunting reminder that Marielle’s life and work were abruptly interrupted.

For example, in a video posted on November 20, 2020, a user commented, “they have shut down this super important person to the world.” Another comment also expresses ambivalent feelings when seeing the video: “How hard!!! . . . And much, much anger!! ‘Who ordered Marielle’s killing?’ . . . But I believe that, from there where she stands now, she is protecting and illuminating her warriors. Her seed perpetuates itself. Marielle lives!!!” Such comments express the potential ambivalences of a haunting online presence of Marielle on YouTube: while the videos create the impression of verisimilitude (videos stand for Marielle’s presence), they also remind viewers of Marielle’s absence (she is present as an online appearance only – albeit an influential one).

Importantly, the comments also demonstrate connective forms of solidarity online and attest to the dynamic interactions between the Institute’s archival and curation strategies and users’ reactions to those strategies. This can result in the co-creation of particular narratives for what Marielle’s past means in the present. Marielle’s online presence thus becomes a haunting that will not be forgotten and a force that can influence present and future needs.

A resistant specter in art and photos

On the Instagram page, images of Marielle re-interpreted in art pieces or past photos of her are frequently shared. This reappearance of Marielle through artistic representations and photo archives helps to remember her as a symbol of resistance through a humanizing perspective. For example, in a post from May 19, 2022, four pictures show one street art that pays homage to Marielle in Berlin, with the caption: “Marielle left seeds that continue to be cared for with ever more strong roots. We’ll keep going to follow Marielle’s legacy.”

Photos and caption thus convey the message that Marielle’s “seeds” (her legacy) remain an inspiration transnationally. They also exemplify how her image has become iconic. Indeed, the art pieces shared on the Instagram page often reproduce the same expression of Marielle: of her looking up and away, an inspiring figure that saw beyond her time. The repetition and re-circulation of this expression of Marielle in different artistic interpretations invites remembering her as an influential political figure.

The Insitute also posts past photos of Marielle in personal moments among family and friends, which humanize her figure and invite an empathetic remembrance of her as a daughter, a sister, a mother, an aunt, a person who was loved and cared for. In a post to commemorate Mother’s Day, for example, the Institute shared two pictures of Marielle smiling and hugging her mother, sister, and niece during different family events. The image of Marielle smiling is frequent in the photos shared by the Insitute on Instagram, replacing a victimizing frame of gender violence with a humanizing regime of representation that situates her value beyond political settings.

The mediation of Marielle’s resistant specter on YouTube videos and Instagram photos is potentialized by platforms that also afford digital archival, easier retrieval, and potential recirculation of audiovisual content, thus extending the life cycle of Marielle’s online apparition (Chidgey, 2018). Added to this is the potential of her indexical online presence to mobilize particular affects and conditions for action in counter-hegemonic images that reinforce her figure as a symbol of resistance in humanized representations. Such features reinforce and complement each other in the process of mediating her virtual specter and maintaining her haunting online presence.

Mediating something-to-be-done

The process I call mediating something-to-be-done refers to the sharing of content that connects Marielle’s past political commitments with current social and political issues. This is done by curating specific fragments of her speeches on YouTube shared in strategic moments, and by sharing Instagram posts covering oppressive situations and resistant collective responses related to topics that were at the core of Marielle’s agenda.

Remembering past commitments strategically

Videos of Marielle’s vocal interventions at the city chambers are as much about Marielle’s political past as they are projections of haunted topics that need attention today. The videos shared on YouTube exemplify some of the main topics that guided Marielle’s agenda and that are continued by the Foundation created to “multiply the legacy” of Marielle. As such, the haunting online presence created for her on YouTube involves making visible not only her past political commitments but also haunted issues that should still mobilize present action. These past commitments are re-circulated through the mediation of this “something-to-be-done” affect that characterizes a haunting presence (Gordon, 2008).

For example, in a video posted on November 20, 2020, when Brazil commemorates Black Consciousness Day, titled “Marielle Franco on November 20 and criticism to the Ministry of Education,” Marielle directly confronts the Rio’s Ministry assertions that racism did not exist and that race was not important by emphasizing the persistence of racism in Brazil. The video thus speaks of ghostly matters that continue to haunt Brazil’s social relations but with a renewed symbolic force when this haunting is spoken about by Marielle, a black woman assassinated by former police officers. The video gained renewed significance particularly by being posted on Black Consciousness Day.

The rhetorical power of these videos in eliciting “something-to-be-done” affects is also reinforced by the identities that Marielle embodied and that become inevitably visible in the videos of her speeches. For example, in the video “Marielle speaks about Carnival in 2018,” posted on February 12, 2021, shared 4 days before Carnival festivities, Marielle condemns the objectification and sexualization of black women – an identity she embodied and identified with – during Carnival. The video thus reminds viewers of the oppression women often face during street celebrations that continue to reproduce a rape culture that dates back to slavery.

Having her image return online to speak of specific identities and haunting topics (like racism and gender violence) reinforces the memory of her as a symbol of both trauma and resistance. Together, the collection of videos composes an assemblage of audiovisual content that remind viewers of how she employed her voice to destabilize oppressions of race, class, gender, and sexuality at the chambers. The videos thus help to create a prospective memory about Marielle, that is, a memory of the promises and commitments made during her term that have yet to come to realization (Tenenboim-Weinblatt, 2013). By anchoring this content in specific commemorative dates and related present concerns, the videos invite a “something-to-de-done” affect that can help create the conditions for imagining different actions in the present.

The past in present events

In addition to invoking Marielle’s specter in videos that remain relevant today, the Institute also shares content about current events that demonstrate that haunted pasts of systemic racism and gender violence remain issues of the present. This is especially emphasized on their Instagram page. The page frequently covers cases of police violence against black people and favela residents, as well as cases of political violence against elected black women, as they unfold. Concomitantly, several posts invite people to participate in demonstrations on related topics while advocating for policy interventions aimed at protecting and promoting black people.

For example, at the beginning of May, the Institute shared different posts to remember the Jacarezinho Massacre, which occurred a year before. This was the most lethal police operation in favelas in Rio’s history, resulting in the death of 28 people. On May 6, they shared a post with a black and white photo of two children holding flyers with the phrases: “Which lives matter? Jacarezinho asks for peace.” The child in the front, who is black, looks directly at the camera, with a mask and the flier partially covering his face. The caption provides additional interpretive context. It constructs the event as a case of state violence (“The #JacarezinhoMassacre had 28 people killed by the State”), and it emphasizes that the people killed were residents (rather than “criminals”) who had their rights violated by the police when they had their “houses invaded” and “bodies lying on favela streets.” It ends by naming such cases as genocide and reaffirming that “Black and favela residents’ lives matter!” In this post, the juxtaposition of visual and verbal content emphasizes the intersection of race and class-based state violence in Brazil.

This remembrance of how past violence continues to resonate in the present can invite the haunting feeling that something must be done while events are still happening. For example, the cases of the Vila Cruzeiro massacre and the killing of Genivaldo de Jesus were covered on the Institute’s Instagram page soon after their occurrences. The images shared often functioned as evidence of the presence of police agents in favela communities while the captions emphasized the humanity of the people assaulted by the state, invoking feelings of urgency that actions must be taken to stop the repetition of such situations. The page also frequently covered cases of political violence against black women elected for city councils. This coverage was informed by fact-based and contextualized information that actively countered misinformation against black women occupying political positions.

But the page also shared content about protests related to these cases (such as in the aftermath of the killing of Genivaldo de Jesus by the police). The posts either invite users to attend street demonstrations against police brutality and in favor of Black lives or share photos of the demonstrations themselves. Concomitantly, the page also promoted black women running for legislative positions in the coming elections (the same position Marielle occupied) while encouraging users to learn more about their political programs. The coverage and promotion of these events thus connect the Institute’s narratives of Marielle’s past with present possibilities to continue her social justice agenda, extending Marielle’s haunting online presence.

As such, both the Institute’s YouTube and Instagram accounts invite users to witness who Marielle was and how her past resonates in the present. They create a haunting online presence of Marielle by recirculating her virtual presence amid fragmented assemblages of past and present situations that can mobilize users to act for change. The creation and maintenance of this haunting online presence are thus accomplished through the expansion of Marielle’s presence temporally and spatially online, through the coverage of issues related to Marielle’s life and death, and an emphasis on how historical injustices remain urgent concerns to be combatted.

Conclusion

On September 20, 2022, during an event that honored Anielle Franco (Marielle’s sister), Brazilian feminist Sueli Carneiro affirmed: “The Marielle Franco’s Institute, under Anielle’s leadership, stands as a resistance lighthouse that safeguards democracy and defends women’s rights.” I discussed here how this resistance work, which originated from the need to remember Marielle under Jair Bolsonaro’s presidency, is articulated on social media. Specifically, I argued that YouTube and Instagram are used to construct a haunting online presence of Marielle through two interrelated strategies: mediating a resistant specter and mediating something-to-be-done.

The mediation of a resistant specter is articulated through the online sharing of (audio)visual archives that function as counter-hegemonic vehicles of memory (Molden, 2016) and which are powerful for their indexical, iconic, and symbolic meanings (Zelizer, 2004). That is, videos and photos shared on YouTube and Instagram help to maintain her figure as a symbol for resistant groups embodying the intersections she once did as a black queer favela resident woman at the chambers. Through their persistence on digital archives, Marielle’s ghostly figure is maintained online as a reminder of a haunted society that was permissive to her killing but also of the activism she carried out and that continues through the Institute’s work to address present and future needs. Such a case thus exemplifies how remembering the past through specific social figures “ensures a certain continuity between different waves of mobilization” and helps past activist commitments to “last through memory” (Daphi and Zamponi, 2019: 408).

The other crucial strategy that affords a haunting online presence of Marielle, and thus enables this continuity in her remembrance, is the mediation of a “something-to-be-done” feeling (Gordon, 2008). This is elicited particularly through sharing digital archives online related to specific topics of Marielle’s agenda in the context of current social issues. On YouTube, the content of the videos, the time they are uploaded, and the platform where they are shared are relevant for the construction of a haunting online presence by animating content about her past commitments in a format that is easily retrievable and shareable online. This increases the potential for her visual specter to re-circulate and thus re-appear online under strategic moments of the present, facilitating linkages between past, present, and future and thus mobilizing viewers to remember how her agenda has yet to be realized. It also gives renewed opportunities for her virtual presence to be found online by dispersed users who can then participate in the co-construction of narratives about her past through comments that can persist in her digital remembrance (Kitch, 2018; Martini, 2018). This process of constructing a haunting online presence always in connection with present and future needs helps to mobilize a “something-to-be-done” affect, thus maintaining the “afterlives” of activist labor in archival assemblages that persist beyond the time they were made (Chidgey, 2018).

On Instagram, posts about current events facilitate the circulation of images and discourses about black empowerment from an intersectional lens that highlights oppression and resistance as dialectical forces (Collins, 2000). Such a process also exposes the ambivalences of representing haunted racial and gender violence (Hesford and Kozol, 2001) without neglecting the resistant acts that often arise in response to oppression. While the Instagram page is often used to cover situations of state violence against black and poor people that have often prevailed in the memory of Brazil’s racial and class struggles (Smith, 2013), the page also invites users to participate in and witness demonstrations and social interventions to combat racism, state violence, and present social injustices. They are, as such, reminders of a haunting but in ways that avoid the simplistic victimizations of Black identities by remembering Marielle’s activism as it relates to present struggles.

The process of memorializing Marielle Franco through the Institute’s social media thus demonstrates how the concept of haunting can work as a fruitful lens to understand the nuances of the memory-movement-digital media nexus (Merrill et al., 2020). As exemplified, analyzing how digital memorialization can rhetorically articulate a haunting online presence helps to “anchor digital memory . . . as embedded in processes of contesting power and visibility’ (Merrill et al., 2020: 8). I thus theorized that constructing a haunting online presence for social figures that become representatives of particular historical struggles can function as a rhetorical resource to process past trauma, enact activism in the present, and envision a better future. This is facilitated by social media affordances, which change the temporality and spatiality in which the “ghost” of a social figure – in our case, Marielle – appears as a resistant specter while concomitantly allowing the coverage and archive of current issues that connect her past to present oppressions and resistance practices.

This paper thus responds to demands from existing literature to further investigate the role of digital media in memory work (Birkner and Donk, 2020; Daphi and Zamponi, 2019). It does so by proposing haunting online presence as a conceptual heuristic to understand the rhetorical possibilities of digital assemblages of memories. It also articulates how this concept can account for the remembrance of haunted pasts in connection with the mobilization of “something-to-be-done” affects that can create the conditions for present action and prospective commitments for social change.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Charles E. Morris III for providing invaluable feedback on previous versions of this manuscript.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Raiana de Carvalho

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