Strengthening Journalism from the Margins: Engaged Journalism in Brazil and Egypt

Abstract

This article develops the concept of engaged journalism outside a US context, comparing how engaged journalists in Brazil and Egypt discursively negotiate their professional positions in the face of far-right governments’ constraints. Engaged journalists are professional journalists working in alternative media and strongly committed to a political position. Inspired by Bourdieu’s field theory, the article investigates how engaged journalists legitimise themselves by contesting legacy journalism from the margins through innovative digital formats in times of blurred boundaries. A qualitative content analysis of 21 articles (editorials and op-ed pieces) published in The Intercept Brasil and MadaMasr from 2015 to 2020 (a) develops the concept of engaged journalism in alternative media, (b) reconstructs how two media initiatives in the Global South discursively negotiated editorial actions and distinguished themselves from legacy journalism, and (c) proposes a global transferable understanding of engaged journalism based on research in two media systems. Three themes emerge: raison d’être and purpose, tensions between democratic and authoritarian norms, and the establishment of legitimacy through an emphasis on journalistic practices, revealing that engaged journalists are driven by media criticism, but still position themselves within journalism, offering a radical new path. This article contributes to theory-building about engaged journalism in the Global South.

Keywords:

• Alternative media
• engaged journalism
• Egypt
• Brazil
• MadaMasr
• The Intercept Brasil
• qualitative content analysis

Introduction

Journalism around the world faces transformative challenges: traditional funding models no longer guarantee viability; digitisation deprived journalists of their gate-keeping privileges and authority to interpret the world, and media-hostile authoritarianism is globally on the rise. These developments raise questions regarding how to understand journalists’ actions in form of alternative professional approaches at the micro-, meso-, and macrolevels (Holt, Ustad Figenschou, and Frischlich 2019). By comparing two unique alternative journalism projects from the Global South, MadaMasr in Egypt and The Intercept Brasil, this article examines how engaged journalists discursively negotiate their positions in the journalistic field and respond to challenges in a time of journalism crisis and blurred boundaries. The digital has become a precondition for alternative media, which we position within the field of digital journalism, understood as the “phenomenon and practice of selecting, interpreting, editing, and distributing news about public affairs” through digital infrastructures, which enables a “symbiotic relationship with its audiences” (Steensen and Westlund 2020, 107).

To register subtle transformation processes from a liminal position, we analyse MadaMasr and The Intercept Brasil, which both use social media and online tools extensively to reach and expand their audiences, using Medeiros (2019) concept of engaged journalism, which refers to a particular form of alternative journalism practiced by professional journalists outside traditional newsrooms. Engaged journalists possess the expertise to produce high-quality journalistic work while positioning themselves as politically progressive vis-à-vis their far-right governments. Our work contributes to the field by examining locations where engaged journalism has rarely been studied. Little is known about engaged journalism in the Global South, which has alternative context-sensitive media realities outside Western trajectories (Mutsvairo et al. 2021). By reconstructing how engaged journalists discursively negotiate their journalistic identities, justify editorial actions, and distinguish themselves from legacy media, our article advances the concept of engaged journalism in two under-researched media landscapes.

We begin by laying out the theoretical framework that undergirds alternative journalism and developing the concept of engaged journalism. After describing the Brazilian and Egyptian media systems, we detail our comparative research design and methodology. Our findings trace three main argumentation patterns: (1) engaged journalism’s raison d’être and purpose; (2) the tensions between democratic and authoritarian norms, and (3) establishing legitimacy through an emphasis on journalistic practice. The conclusion contextualises the findings within current academic debates.

Theoretical Framework: Field Theory and Alternative Journalism

Field theory enriches literature on journalism, its boundaries, and power dynamics, offering a “theoretical framework to connect between the micro-level of the agent and the macro-level of society” (Willig, Waltorp, and Hartley 2015, 9). Fields are microcosms inside broader social contexts that have their own rules and functioning logics (Bourdieu 2005, 30–33). The spatial and dynamic focus on societal fields allows for relational approaches instead of a linear hierarchy.

For journalism as a field, autonomy means that journalists have the capacity to defend their field’s intrinsic rules, which include defining its professional standards and sanctions as opposed to outside actors or forces doing so (Örnebring 2010, 569). The rules define who belongs to the field and who does not, which means marginalising some actors, especially those practicing journalism outside of traditional newsrooms. However, as journalism has relatively weak autonomy, it is susceptible to pressures from other fields, like politics, technology, or the economy. Changes like new legislation, economic crises, or political activism can influence the journalistic field (Benson and Neveu 2005, 6).

By connecting a field’s structural elements to actors’ trajectories and their varying access to social, cultural, and economic forms of capital, field theory enables us to analyse the tensions between established actors and those in liminal positions. Research on journalism’s boundaries details different dynamics and manifestations of in/exclusions and shows that tensions increase when liminal actors propose practices and norms distinct from those widely accepted in the field (Belair-Gagnon, Holton, and Westlund 2019; Callison and Young 2020; Carlson and Lewis 2015; Eldridge 2014; Eldridge 2019; Badr 2020b).

Alternative journalism occupies a liminal position between journalism and activism (Atton and Hamilton 2008). Alternative journalists are the peripheral actors whose practices and norms challenge established professional standards. In a relational, multi-level approach, alternative news media are defined as “a proclaimed and/or (self-)perceived corrective, opposing what is perceived as the dominant mainstream media in a given system” (Holt, Ustad Figenschou, and Frischlich 2019, 862). Alternative journalists seek to redress legacy media’s shortcomings by subverting systemic constraints, proposing innovative ways of doing journalism, and re-examining “notions of truth, reality, objectivity, expertise, authority and credibility” (Atton and Hamilton 2008, 135).

Various examples show that alternative journalists challenged and subverted legacy journalism to highlight marginalised perspectives and actors even before the digital disruption. These include abolitionist presses in the US and in Brazil before the end of slavery (e.g., Custódio 2017; Fanuzzi 2003) and samizdat in the former Soviet Union, publications that offered a space for dissident discourse, circumventing state-controlled media (Downing 1995, 200). While digitally native alternative journalism shares some similarities with these predecessors, it differs in several ways. Historically, alternative media faced major logistic and economic difficulties in terms of reaching broad publics, often relying on underground networks of production and distribution. The internet and social media have decreased the political costs involved in dissemination, enabling alternative media to reach audiences directly and challenge legacy media’s interpretation of issues and events (Mattoni and Teune 2014, 883; Richter, Dupuis, and Badr 2021). Digitisation further decentralised funding models and made collaborative crowdfunding possible, allowing alternative journalism to count on audiences’ support (Ganter and Paulino 2021).

Although digitisation caused disruptions that redefined the journalistic field and “news production has spread far beyond what we used to call the newsroom” (Russell 2016, 12), this does not mean that alternative journalists no longer occupy liminal positions. Journalists’ professional belonging is still mostly connected to affiliation with a legacy media outlet, which provides material and immaterial capital (Bogaerts and Carpentier 2019; Badr 2020b). Thus, alternative journalists’ decisions to work outside mainstream media structures marginalises them. Digitisation has also increased transnationalisation processes and expanded alternative media global networks (Cammaerts and Audenhove 2005), leading to transnational funding models that may oppose legacy journalism’s local logics. Media assistance programs and support from Western countries for journalistic initiatives create tensions (Myers, Dietz, and Frère 2015), a dilemma that applies to MadaMasr and The Intercept Brasil.

Engaged Journalism

Alternative journalism is an umbrella term that covers categories of journalism outside legacy media structures, such as engaged journalism. Analysing how engaged journalism is reveals “the degree to which a news organization actively considers and interacts with its audience in furtherance of its journalistic and financial mission” (Batsell 2015, 7). Audience involvement is a possible solution to challenges like the rise of far-right, media-hostile populism and financial struggles. Audience involvement can include crowdsourcing for investigative journalism, community events, or interactive news pieces. In addition, engaged journalists foster a deliberative climate on social media and provide reporting that fits community needs and preferences (Batsell 2015; Green-Barber and McKinley 2019).

Drawing on these aspects of engaged journalism, scholars investigate how news organisations in Europe and the US attempt to make their journalism more engaged by using tools that encourage audience interactions (Cox and Poepsel 2020; Schmidt and Lawrence 2020), designing social media strategies for constructive conversations (Xia et al. 2020), or fostering participatory and public journalism (Cox and Poepsel 2020; Schmidt and Lawrence 2020; Min 2020). In the US, scholars focus on how engaged journalism can serve small towns and marginalised ethnic minorities (Cox and Poepsel 2020; Crittenden and Haywood 2020; Wenzel 2019). Research reveals hopes that engaged journalism may provide new forms of revenue (Batsell 2015, 8), even if little evidence supports those hopes (Green-Barber and McKinley 2019, 52).

This article builds on a concept of engaged journalism developed in a study of alternative coverage of protests in Brazil, during which professional journalists in alternative media collectives played a key role (Medeiros 2019). This approach contributes to understanding professional journalists’ role within alternative media. Our conceptualisation shares some similarities with existing definitions, such as collaborative funding models (crowdfunding or subscriptions) and journalists’ commitment to their audiences as communities. This article offers two approaches. First, it focusses on professional journalists’ (marginal) political positioning within the field; existing literature on engaged journalism often regards it as a service, not a deliberate political act (Wall (2019) accounts for politics while researching engaged citizen journalists, yet her focus remains on actors without professional credentials). Second, it elucidates professional journalists’ roles in alternative media, as opposed to traditional newsrooms. Both these aspects have been under-researched in scholarship on alternative media, which spotlights individuals without professional journalistic educations who approach alternative media as community leaders (Medrado 2007), participants in citizen media (Rodriguez 2001), and activists (Mattoni 2012).

Our study of engaged journalism investigates how professional journalists – often with years of experience in traditional newsrooms – deliberately choose to work at the margins of traditional journalism, in digitally native, non-profit journalism with a clear political position. The journalists’ decisions derive from their desire to position themselves as allies to progressive movements in politically polarised climates with increasing far-right, authoritarian trends. Instead of seeking objectivity, engaged journalists counter the imbalances in legacy media, which they perceive as favouring those in power. Engaged journalists prioritise marginalised actors’ perspectives and perform a watchdog function with regard to the powerful. Drawing on performance practices (Shove et al. 2012), engaged journalists possess the necessary material and competence to perform professional journalism, while attributing different values to their practices. They occupy a liminal position in the field of journalism because they challenge its logics by deliberately working from the margins, outside traditional structures. However, they possess the professional knowledge required to potentially be central actors.

Positioned within alternative media, our article contributes to understanding what Russell (2016) describes as “journalism as activism,” which refers to the increasingly porous interaction between journalism and activism due to digital technologies and media professionals’ willingness to put their skills at the service of movements with which they sympathise. Our research emerges from a growing need to study journalism that takes place outside traditional newsrooms (Ahva 2017, 1529; Deuze and Witschge 2018, 176; Raetzsch 2017, 73–74). It examines professional journalists’ roles in alternative media and how they, as liminal actors, interact with pressures on traditional journalism like economic precarity, authoritarian tendencies, and digital disruption. Table 1 summarises engaged journalism’s characteristics.

Table 1. Engaged journalism’s tensions with the journalistic field.

Established: Within the field	Liminal: Outside the field
Professional journalistic background technical skills (sourcing, verification, etc.)	Normative purpose: deliberate political, progressive positioning critical of impartiality against powerful actors supportive of activist movements
Selective and/or pragmatic media partnerships	Media criticism
Paid subscriptions	Outside traditional newsroom structures
	Innovative community involvement social media visibility and campaigning
	Political marginalisation survival and uncertainty repeated attacks safety and security measures

Comparing Engaged Journalism in Brazil and Egypt

Building on the work of Hallin and Mancini (2004, 2012) this article contrasts and compares dissimilar media systems marked by increasing authoritarianism. Below, sociopolitical contexts at the macrolevel, engaged journalistic media at the mesolevel, and confrontations with the authorities as micro-cases are comparatively explained.

The Contexts: Socio-Political Landscapes and Authoritarian Trends

While Brazil is a “flawed democracy” and Egypt is an “authoritarian regime” (Democracy Index 2020), both countries have recently experienced similar trends towards far-right authoritarianism (Badr 2020a). Brazil took a sharp turn to the extreme right with Jair Bolsonaro’s election as president in 2018 and his administration’s criminalisation of Brazil’s progressive social movements and support for agribusiness and fundamentalist Christians reversing social inclusion and environmental protection measures (Medeiros and Motta 2020). Brazil’s media landscape has long been marked by ownership concentration and political clientelism (Bastian 2019), but Bolsonaro’s administration increased threats to freedom of expression. The Bolsonaro family – three of the president’s children occupy political offices – publicly discredits legacy media. Attacks on media freedom include redirecting the federal government’s advertising budget towards favourable media and public statements defaming and humiliating specific journalists. Coordinated, massive online harassment of critical media aims “to control the public debate and avoid having to address the substance of questions” investigative journalists raise (Reporters Without Borders 2020).

In Egypt, too, authoritarian tendencies have intensified over the past decade. The current phase is one of “trapped endurance” for journalists (Badr 2020c). After a brief liberal phase in the post-revolutionary years of 2011–2013, harsh repressive measures interrupted the fluid democratic process and massively constrained freedom of expression (Abdulla 2014, Sakr 2013). While maintaining the pretence of an independent judiciary, authorities apply legal authoritarianism (Hamzawy 2017). Since 2017, a series of media laws and policies have resulted in new regulatory monitoring bodies, opaque media acquisition and media ownership concentration (Reporters Without Borders 2019a), media bans, and restrictive website licensing. Legislation wrongfully disguised as antiterrorism and anti-misinformation protecting state security have paved the way for arbitrary detentions, passport confiscation, and searches of journalists’ homes (Badr 2020a).

Engaged Journalism Media: The Intercept Brasil and MadaMasr

Despite operating in different national contexts, The Intercept Brasil and MadaMasr share many similarities: both a) are relatively new, innovative projects, founded and run by professional journalists; b) depend on innovative financing models, such as crowdfunding and community subscriptions that do not accept advertisements or endorsements; c) articulate criticism of the media; d) perform journalistic roles not confined to the newsroom; and e) participate in transnational media networks of collaboration.

The Intercept Brasil was founded in 2016 by a team of Brazilian journalists and the US journalist Glenn Greenwald (who left The Intercept and The Intercept Brasil in 2020 (Reed 2020)). It describes itself as a news media “dedicated to holding the powerful to account through fearless and combative journalism” (The Intercept Brasil 2020). Currently financed through crowdfunding on a Brazilian platform by more than 10,000 individuals (Estarque 2020), the project enjoys editorial autonomy with regard to its US-based parent company, First Look Media. Its Brazilian staff published impactful investigative pieces on Brazilian politics, including the Lava Jato scandal, which caused a confrontation with the authorities. The Intercept Brasil is part of growing ecosystem of alternative journalism initiatives in Brazil, which have become increasingly institutionalised (Ganter and Paulino 2021).

MadaMasr was founded in a politically charged moment in June 2013 when the journalists’ contracts at Egypt Independent, the English edition of Al-Masry Al-Youm daily, were terminated. Translated, MadaMasr means ScopeEgypt. Lina Attalah started the online platform, MadaMasr, striving for “independent, progressive journalism” (Leihs 2015, 81). Starting as a digital journalism platform in Arabic and English, MadaMasr gradually carved itself a visible place in alternative media and has been repeatedly targeted by authorities. MadaMasr developed transnational collaborations with other Arab engaged outlets like 7iber (Ink) or Aljumhouriya (The Republic) through joint publishing or events to build pan-Arab readership and alliances. Since May 2017, MadaMasr’s website is officially banned in Egypt. The team must circumvent firewalls to reach its Egyptian readers (through VPNs or using social media), while repeatedly fending off cyberattacks. Their financial strategy of relying on readers only is not new in Egypt: in the 1990s, Al-Dustur, an opposition newspaper, relied solely on sales. MadaMasr combines diversified monetary resources: community-based subscription programs, media assistance, innovative financial models, like research and editing services, and fan merchandise.

The Cases: Scoops and State Reactions

Starting in June 2019, The Intercept Brasil published a series of articles based on anonymously leaked Telegram group chatlogs of prosecutors involved in the anti-corruption operation known as Lava Jato (Car Wash). Since 2014, Lava Jato has led to more than 400 prosecutions (Londoño and Casado 2019), especially of politicians from major parties and businesspeople. The chatlogs revealed illegal arrangements between prosecutors and then Judge Sérgio Moro – later named justice minister under Bolsonaro. The chatlogs reveal Judge Moro’s partisan motivation for arresting former President Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva in 2017, to prevent him from running in the presidential elections that Bolsonaro won. Between June 2019 and October 2020, The Intercept Brasil published 29 articles in the Vaza Jato series, a wordplay of the operation’s name and the Portuguese verb for leaking (vazar). It also shared the massive dataset with legacy media, for example, Folha de São Paulo and Veja, which used the chatlogs in their own critical coverage.

Brazilian authorities’ reactions varied: Lava Jato taskforce prosecutors attempted to criminalise The Intercept Brasil’s anonymous source, claiming that the chatlogs had been obtained through illegal hacking (Londoño and Casado 2019) and questioned the messages’ authenticity (Oliveira 2020). President Bolsonaro not only encouraged online harassment of The Intercept Brasil, but also threatened Glenn Greenwald – who is married to a Brazilian and has been living in Brazil for years – with arrest and deportation (Reporters Without Borders 2019b). In January 2020, authorities began investigating Greenwald, provoking an outcry among national and international press freedom NGOs (Pires 2020). Later, the investigation was dismissed based on a Brazilian Supreme Court decision.

MadaMasr has a track record of publishing on topics the Egyptian government regards as deviant, therefore facing constant harassment, intimidation, and smear campaigns. Three prominent encounters with the authorities in 2015, 2019, and 2020 included brief detentions of MadaMasr journalists. In the first two cases, the triggering articles defied the official agenda: a 2015 article investigated Military Trials verdicts, resulting in the detainment for a few days of a senior journalist, who was only released after the former UN Secretary General himself demanded it. The second article, in November 2019, investigated the president’s son’s political influence. This led to a journalist’s detention, a subsequent raid on MadaMasr headquarters, and the brief detention of three additional MadaMasr journalists (Badr 2020c). The third encounter, in May 2020, was triggered by the editor-in-chief’s interview with the mother of a prominent political prisoner, whose visitation rights had been denied. The editor-in-chief’s detention was brief. She was released on bail the same day.

MadaMasr enjoys high-profile connections, ties to the diplomatic community and international human rights NGOs, as well as symbolic capital, including recognition and high-status journalism awards. This creates a paradoxical relationship: international allies provide protection and visibility to MadaMasr when needed, but, at the same time, are a cause for delegitimization by the regime (El-Khayat 2019) and peers’ envy. Some journalists complain the outlet receives preferential treatment.

Research Question, Methods, and Sampling

Our central research question is: How do engaged journalists discursively negotiate their journalistic identity while facing constraints on media freedom? Using a grounded theory approach, we reconstruct the negotiation processes of engaged journalists in two countries in the Global South – Brazil and Egypt. The research design is a multimethod approach that engages with meso- and microlevels to address complex social processes and establish context-sensitive tools for data collection (Schreier 2018). We use a) a comparative media system approach and b) qualitative content analysis to reveal how engaged journalists articulate their professional identity in Brazil and Egypt. To provide additional context regarding editorial choices not clear from the published articles, we conducted semi-structured expert interviews with a journalist with editorial responsibility from each publication. One limitation of the study is that it relies on journalists’ self-perceptions and does not include researchers’ observations.

a) Comparative Media System Approach

Embedding journalist initiatives in their socio-political contexts fosters the transferability of engaged journalism outside Western contexts. To establish comparability between The Intercept Brasil and MadaMasr, the research design follows the principles of theoretical sampling (Maines 2003). Both journalism initiatives: (1) have a marginal position in their journalistic field, (2) propose new professional paths for journalism, and (3) operate in media systems with authoritarian constraints.

Due to the difference in comparative contexts, sampling could not establish identical time periods for the analysed data. However, the data sample includes equivalent self-reflective journalistic discourses triggered by similar confrontations and processes. The temporal scope (The Intercept Brasil: 2019–2020 and MadaMasr: 2015–2020) emerged inductively and contextually from the first article that generated an encounter with the authorities until November 2020. In line with the research question, the sample consisted of editorials and op-eds, excluding factual articles, in order to reconstruct the “metajournalistic discourses” prevalent in such opinion-based genres (Carlson 2016, 357). Metajournalistic discourses explain how we are to understand the news by interpreting what makes individual news items intelligible on a microlevel and positioning the social place of journalism on a macrolevel (Carlson 2016, 353).

The steps to generate the media sample were as follows: (1) an online search on both media websites (using the keywords “vaza jato” in: https://theintercept.com/brasil/ and “media freedom” and “MadaMasr” in: https://madamasr.com/), which generated a collection of self-reflective articles; (2) a manual search that revealed other relevant articles that fit the thematic criteria; and (3) content categorisation and comparison, as described in detail in the next section.

b) Qualitative Content Analysis

A total of 21 articles were analysed: The Intercept Brasil published 11 articles over two years (nine in 2019, two in 2020). MadaMasr published 10 articles over four years (two in 2015, three in 2018, four in 2019 and one in 2020). The articles were coded in their original languages to avoid meaning distortion. After the first round, both coders compared their findings in English to establish inductive common themes.

Qualitative content analysis followed a deductive-inductive approach (Mayring 2010; Kuckartz 2014) that employed repeated cycles of analysis with a developing codebook. It consisted of guiding questions, which included self-descriptive notions (i.e., “How do actors describe themselves (activists, journalists, or both)?”), journalistic norms (i.e., “How do actors approach the topic of objectivity?” or “How do actors define freedom of expression?”), and practical questions (i.e., “How do actors describe efforts to protect themselves from repression?”). These guiding questions helped generate the first inductive categories (for example, media criticism or interactions with authorities), further finetuned by subthemes or specific aspects that became prominent during the coding. Working comparatively, the subthemes were interpretatively connected and condensed into overarching argumentation patterns around purpose, tensions, and legitimacy. These patterns were discussed in the expert interviews. Anchor citations, main statements that summarise and illustrate the categories, were selected.

Findings: Purpose, Tensions and Legitimacy in Engaged Journalism

In both countries, engaged journalists oscillated between their positions within and outside the journalistic field. The Intercept Brasil and MadaMasr simultaneously rebelled against and reproduced professional norms and practices, re-establishing and reinventing professional tensions and struggles outside established institutions. From a relational perspective, Table 2 summarises how The Intercept Brasil and MadaMasr discursively negotiated their journalistic identities using three similar argumentation patterns: (1) raison d’être and purpose, (2) tensions between democratic and authoritarian norms, and (3) establishing legitimacy through emphasising journalistic practice. However, the patterns were not identical. Each context led to nuanced realities, as detailed below.

Table 2. Argumentation patterns in The Intercept Brasil and MadaMasr.

Argumentation pattern	Description of argument	The Intercept Brasil	MadaMasr
Raison d'être and purpose	Articulation of mission and motivation to practice journalism in the forms they have chosen	Ensuring that authorities remain accountable to the public; watchdog function	Engagement with society and reimagining social reality
Tensions between democratic and authoritarian norms	Contrasting current socio-political reality and normative democratic values as a strategic discourse against repression	Contrasting freedom of the press as a democratic principle in reaction to authorities’ backlash	Surviving despite constant uncertainty
Establishing legitimacy through emphasising journalistic practice	Journalists refer to well-established practices in the journalistic field to claim belonging despite their liminal position	Belonging to the journalistic field through shared professional standards and cooperation with legacy media	Working from within the professional parameters for journalism for self-protection

The Intercept Brasil: Normative Motivations against Repression

The Intercept Brasil defined its raison d'être and purpose in the journalistic field by claiming a watchdog function, arguing that it was (1) ensuring that the authorities remain accountable to the public. It drew on normative notions of press freedom, accountability, and journalism’s function in a democracy. The Intercept Brasil named the public’s right to know about the authorities’ misconduct as its motivation for covering the leaked chatlogs. In its first editorial after the leaks, it justified publishing private chatlogs by highlighting press freedom and transparency: “Freedom of the press exists in order to shed light on what our society’s most powerful figures do in the shadows” (Greenwald, Reed, et al. 2019). Thus, The Intercept Brasil located itself in the tradition of watchdog journalism, guarding society’s democratic values, connected to established perceptions of journalism as the fourth estate (Hampton 2010). The Intercept Brasil differentiated between information of public interest and individuals’ right to privacy, explaining why it did not publish any personal information in the chatlogs, such as private addresses or family matters, as a judgement call that “journalists in democracies around the world” make (Greenwald, Reed, et al. 2019).

Initially, the main officials involved in the leaks stated that the chats had been obtained illegally and that The Intercept Brasil supported illegal hacking (Reporters Without Borders 2019b). Later, authorities questioned the messages’ authenticity, claiming that their content had been altered. The Intercept Brasil dismissed these accusations as classical repression strategies:

they [Sérgio Moro and Lava Jato prosecutors] employed the same tactics authorities around the world use when the press brings their corruption to light: to draw attention away from the facts demonstrated in the stories, directing their discourses against the journalists and their sources instead. (Greenwald, Demori, et al. 2019)

Thus, authorities attempted to criminalise and stop The Intercept Brasil’s coverage, something its staff had expected, as one journalist stated (cited as TIB editor for security):

On the day we published the first story, we left the newsroom and took the computers, external hard drives, and everything with us because we were worried about a possible federal police raid in the newsroom … We were expecting such a truculent reaction. This was also why we did not send a request for comment [to the individuals mentioned in the story] before publishing it .… The risk that we would then be censored was just too big. (TIB editor, personal communication)

Engaged journalists also criticised legacy media outlets whose coverage emphasised the authorities’ accusations against The Intercept Brasil and the source’s credibility. Instead, The Intercept Brasil shifted the focus to the leaked content itself, reminding the readers of the right to source protection: “Can you imagine if the whole press embarked on a crusade to uncover everybody’s sources? Who benefits from this detour? For now, we will call this only bad journalism” (Greenwald and Demori 2019b). The Intercept Brasil criticised other journalists for weakening this principle by adopting authorities’ perspective.

By (2) contrasting freedom of the press as a democratic principle with the authorities’ backlash, engaged journalists defend themselves against officials’ attacks. The Intercept Brasil openly confronts the Bolsonaro government and mixes established journalistic practices with typical alternative media publishing routines, striving to offer journalism a new role in authoritarian times. They discursively connect their loyalty to democratic values to their rigorous journalistic work, while criticising legacy media for not holding up journalistic standards, which are protected by constitutional guarantees. These values are exactly what moved The Intercept Brasil to publish the Vaza Jato leaks, as a contribution to restoring democratic institutions, “regaining trust in journalism and helping to form a democratic cordon that reveals truth and helps rebuild part of the social tissue that has been ripped in recent years” (Pinheiro-Machado 2019).

Finally, engaged journalists assert (3) belonging to the journalistic field through shared professional standards and cooperation with legacy media. The Intercept Brasil strongly emphasised traditional professional skills, like source protection and how it is a journalist’s right and duty, anchored in the country’s constitution (Greenwald, Demori, et al. 2019). Journalistic fact verification was also central. The Intercept Brasil described in detail the steps taken to verify the chatlogs’ authenticity, consulting with digital experts, confirming with multiple sources, and comparing the messages’ content with public information (Greenwald and Demori 2019a). The Intercept Brasil referred to how legacy media performed the same verification practices with the shared data, thus proving their authenticity (Greenwald and Demori 2019a).

By maintaining partnerships with legacy media, The Intercept Brasil positions itself as part of the journalistic field despite its criticism of other media outlets. It situated itself within the “serious press” (Greenwald and Demori 2019b) that published the leaks and, thus, fulfilled a watchdog role. These media partnerships served as a survival strategy against state repression:

We had two reasons for that, one of them was survival. We thought that, if the government wanted to crush us, they could do it easily. They would find a way to close the website. … However, if we partner with large media outlets, that becomes harder. It wouldn’t just mean crushing The Intercept, it would involve crushing Folha de São Paulo, Veja, [columnist] Reinaldo Azevedo, El País [Brasil], UOL.… The second reason was the file’s vastness; it was just too massive.… It felt even selfish for us to keep the file only to ourselves, not sharing it with media outlets that approached it professionally. (TIB editor, personal communication)

The Intercept Brasil acknowledges its own liminal position and the need to share the dataset with media outlets centrally located in the journalistic field. The editors deliberately partnered with large media organisations instead of other alternative media in Brazil for this specific story. As a small, exclusively digital medium, The Intercept Brasil wanted to profit from the visibility other known Brazilian legacy print and online media would bestow on it. Thus, despite clashing editorial stances, The Intercept Brasil initiated pragmatic cooperation with commercial legacy media. Here, classic professional standards united alternative and legacy media.

Tensions arose as The Intercept Brasil connected itself to the journalistic field, yet questioned core journalistic values like impartiality, arguing for the duty to take a position, especially considering the current political climate. The following statement clarifies this and exemplifies engaged journalists’ clear political stance, which is central to our conceptualisation (Medeiros 2019):

We don’t have much of a problem with being hard on those who deserve it, especially with this government [the Bolsonaro administration] and at the current moment. We cannot normalise certain people, at the risk of normalising fascist, hateful discourse …. It is not enough to quote two versions of the story. You have to tell the reader who is right and who is wrong. The Intercept has this approach and it is much more adequate for our times. (TIB editor, personal communication).

MadaMasr: Engaged Journalism Enduring Trapped Endurance

MadaMasr’s self-perception of its raison d’être and purpose is a key for positioning it within engaged journalism. Its founder (cited as MM editor) highlights (1) engagement with society and reimagining reality:

We aspire to do journalism that doesn’t just represent reality; we aspire to be speculative, to take readers on a journey to explore possibilities and to reimagine reality. It is an attempt to remain engaged in negotiation with our reality from a new position, to redefine what journalism is about, and expand boundaries of journalism. Our ambition is to enhance journalism’s potential. (MM editor, personal communication).

MadaMasr’s editor embraces an identity that combines journalism and activism without seeing any contradiction between the two, a key characteristic of engaged journalism: “Editing is a political act. … [It is] a project of inquiry, of curiosity, one that particularly extends into the darker rooms of power, spaces that we barely see or know” (MadaMasr 2018b). This summarises the reason for the critical investigative scoops that began in 2015. For MadaMasr, the Arab uprisings are a process in which journalism functions as a continuous act of resistance, as visualised on a big mind map in their office. MadaMasr was developed by “children of Tahrir”:

When we started publishing in 2013, many thought of us as media by and for the children of the 2011 revolution. We are indeed the children (and the makers) of 2011. But we are far more ambitious than that. (Attalah 2019).

MadaMasr is critical of what it terms mainstream journalism. It wants to construct social reality and spur social change beyond the sterile, official narratives in other media that “think they convey the only truth” (MadaMasr 2018a). At the same time, it seeks to endure. “We want to be present so long as we can! We want to bear witness in these times” (MM editor, personal communication).

A further element of engagement is building relations with readers beyond interactive online content and social media, through creating memories, being a source of inspiration, and showing solidarity, for example, through yoga classes or excursions. When journalists were asked, “What should remain if journalism left them or they left it, it was building a community of readers” (MadaMasr 2018a). This exemplifies how engaged journalists in alternative media regard engagement with readers as one of their goals.

MadaMasr was occupied with (2) surviving under constant uncertainty, as tensions between democratic and authoritarian norms grew. The quest for enduring meant fending off confrontations with the state. Already in 2015, after being released from a brief detention due to critical coverage, one MadaMasr journalist criticised the persistent “criminalization of journalistic work and the use of the Penal Code to imprison journalists” (Bahgat 2015). MadaMasr journalists are aware of the restrictive field: they know that membership in the Journalists’ Syndicate is the prerequisite for recognition and official protection (Badr 2020b). During the second brief arrest, the authorities repeatedly warned journalists that not all MadaMasr staff are syndicate members and thus do not enjoy legal protection from prosecution (Attalah 2019).

In “On Becoming Legal,” MadaMasr justifies playing by unjust rules, having decided to apply for a license to legalise its status as an online news website under the new laws: “We’ve opted to register within its parameters because we still have much to say and do. We’re not ready to go just yet, and if it takes becoming ‘legal’ in the eyes of the state in order to remain operational, then we will attempt to do just that” (MadaMasr 2018b). The new laws control online space and were used to keep MadaMasr’s legal status ambiguous in times of confrontation (Nagy and Al-Azhary 2019). Celebrating six years in June 2019 was therefore branded as “against the odds.” The editor-in-chief states that to them remaining in the profession is beyond survival. They know the end is coming, so they can also just enjoy their presence and do what they want” (BBC Arabic 2020).

MadaMasr deliberated their editorial decisions with readers. For example, the outlet used the idiom “prisoner of love” to describe itself after the office raid:

In a message, I wrote to them [MadaMasr journalists] about how moved I was by their dedication and their tireless engagement in this difficult time. One of them, Yasmin el-Rifae, responded briefly, sharply and poetically. “Prisoner of love,” she said. (Attalah 2019)

“Prisoner of love” signifies passionate journalists working tirelessly, risking their private lives and safety under unpredictable circumstances. The metaphor refers to journalists’ feeling confined or trapped in journalism by their own commitment and dedication to journalistic values, practicing engaged journalism out of intrinsic motivation (Badr 2020c; Schapals, Maares, and Hanusch 2019). Journalistic passion seems to explain why journalists keep working for MadaMasr knowing they might face criminal charges at any time. In “Woes of an Ordinary Journalist,” a MadaMasr journalist reflects on balancing her roles as a mother and a journalist when she was detained: “My thoughts jumped to my children and who would take care of them. I thought of everything except what I could have done to avoid this fate” (Mamdouh 2019).

In establishing its legitimacy in the journalistic field, MadaMasr insists that it (3) works within professional parameters. When interrogated by a security officer in 2018, a MadaMasr journalist recollects her communication: “I explained to him that I am an ordinary journalist who does her job properly and gets both sides of the story. I said that I publish everything under my name and have nothing to hide. … Or will we continue to be journalists who ‘must have done something’?” (Mamdouh 2019).

While asserting its identity as professional journalism, MadaMasr emulates traditional journalism:

We like to think of ourselves as craftswomen and men whose excitement doesn’t end at finding valuable information: it only begins then. What follows is a process of rigorous questioning, not only with regards to the veracity of the information, but also to the context in which it has emerged. (Attalah 2019)

In the face of legal authoritarianism, MadaMasr uses a variety of journalistic practices to resist, engage, and protect itself with strict professional codes as self-defence against unpredictable politicised backlashes (cf. Badr 2020c). “Sticking to the professional parameters is our ultimate protection, which delayed the attack on us” (MM editor, personal communication). Examples of careful professional measures in journalism include obtaining confirmation regarding information from two separate sources, rigorous fact-checking, and running stories by a legal advisor. Sometimes MadaMasr staff decides to “let go of some stories, even if they are fact-checked and correct” to protect the whole team. MadaMasr uses survival techniques at the level of wording and articulation. Further protective practices include ensuring anonymity for critical pieces, which means publishing without individual by-lines. MadaMasr uses activist measures so that publicity functions as a protective shield in confrontations. When the security officers stormed the office in 2019, MadaMasr used social media to alert and mobilise its community instantly (MadaMasr 2019). It also utilises transnational media partnerships for mutual support and solidarity campaigns.

Discussion: Towards a Global Concept of Engaged Journalism

This article has developed the concept engaged journalism outside the Global North by focusing on professional journalists outside traditional newsrooms at the margins of the journalistic field. It contributes to scholarship by comparing two engaged journalism initiatives founded by professional journalists in alternative digital structures that have had major impacts in their respective countries. Reconstructing meta-journalistic discourses (Carlson 2016), the article focusses on how journalists renegotiate their journalistic identity when faced with government constraints. Engaged journalists’ self-perceptions incorporate journalistic practices in the normative and political dimensions; competence, made evident by their journalistic know-how, and material elements of novel digital infrastructures that are crucial to dissemination, crowdfunding, community building, and mobilisation (cf. Shove et al. 2012; Medeiros 2019).

Findings indicate that engaged journalism is marked by tensions and struggles in times of blurred, yet evolving, boundaries in digital journalism. The three argumentation patterns mentioned above, purpose, tensions, and legitimacy, that guide engaged journalism demonstrate subtle differences in each context. The self-proclaimed high normative dimension for engaged journalism, as typical in alternative news media, (Holt, Ustad Figenschou, and Frischlich 2019), results in openly embraced and acknowledged political stances, which engaged journalists do not see as contradictory to journalism. For instance, engaged journalists’ political commitment is visible in MadaMasr’s self-description as “the children of Tahrir,” presenting journalism as resistance and political engagement. The Intercept Brasil’s self-perception focusses on watchdog functions, uncovering authorities’ misconduct and self-distinction as “serious press.” This political engagement is different from definitions of engaged journalism that highlight service-oriented aspects to the community. This conceptualization concentrates on the work of journalists in authoritarian contexts, who, unlike their colleagues in Western democracies, must routinely pre-empt governmental repression resulting from critical coverage of the authorities.

Engaged journalists openly stress their normative position, that structurally distincts them from legacy journalism, highlighting their liminal status and leading to tensions within the journalistic field (see Table 1). Alternative journalists with professional backgrounds combine strong media criticism and counterhegemonic discourses, both central characteristics of alternative media (Holt, Ustad Figenschou, and Frischlich 2019), with their credentials. Engaged journalists at The Intercept Brasil and MadaMasr criticise established journalistic procedures, such as neutrality, yet make strong claims of belonging to the profession by defending well-established journalistic competences, for example, source protection and verification. Their claims to upholding professional values serve as protection against governmental backlashes.

Engaged journalists distance themselves from the field by criticising legacy journalism, which, they think, should move beyond information-gathering and towards questioning, negotiating, and even reimagining reality. Engaged journalists legitimise themselves by making claims to belonging to the journalistic field and highlight their rigorous competences and commitment to values like truthfulness and accountability. However, this does not rule out timely, strategic partnerships with either likeminded, transnational Arab media networks in Egypt or even commercial media in Brazil.

Engaged journalists negotiate their liminal position in the journalistic field with their professional knowledge and recognition. Here they reinterpret their peripheral positions as strength: instable crowdfunding models mean independence from classic funding models; sustaining authoritarian backlashes transforms into endurance; and alternative structures creatively use digital communications and transnational networks. Engagement with the community becomes a guarantee for political independence and viability.

While these forms of engaged journalism echo elements of advocacy or partisan journalism, the digital component adds new dimensions. Digital technology is, however, a double-edged sword: enabling engaged journalism to pursue data collection, dissemination, community-building, and transnational collaborations, but also placing engaged journalists in positions of direct confrontation with far-right authoritarian governments, leading to a discursive preoccupation with survival and longevity. This novel dimension pushes the debate on alternative news media, not present in Western contexts (at least not with state actors, but instead “mob censorship” (Waisbord 2020)). Preoccupation with safety and digital security means preserving an agile technical infrastructure, accommodating digital authoritarianism (surveillance, banning, and online harassment campaigns) and protecting sources’ anonymity, especially since technology can reveal it if hardware is confiscated. Both outlets shield themselves and their work from smear campaigns.

Our findings show one central difference in engaged journalism resulting from comparing contexts: the degree of democratic institutionalisation in each context varies. The Intercept Brasil anchors its journalism in democratic traditions and constitutionally enshrined freedom of the press. While it feared a police raid, the formal democratic institutions in Brazil still minimally protected The Intercept Brasil from a raid and detention. By contrast, MadaMasr acknowledges the state’s arbitrariness and unpredictable patterns of restrictive legislations. It had to develop techniques to deal with arrests and police raids in trapped endurance, relying explicitly on high-profile international support (Badr, 2020c). Different degrees of severity of political exclusion and punitive consequences led to different focuses in self-reflective discourses on survival and uncertainty.

Conclusion

This article advances a global understanding of the concept engaged journalism beyond the Western US-American dominated concept. By comparing meta-journalistic discourses in Brazil and Egypt, we reveal how two different engaged journalism initiatives navigate far-right political contexts, while maintaining professional standards from a liminal position. Nuancing the concept of engaged journalism (Medeiros 2019), the findings reveal how non-profit initiatives negotiate progressive positions within a tight journalistic field. Findings show that radical normative engagement does not contradict established journalistic competence. Engaged journalists do not reject journalism’s function or role in society. Instead, they propose radical paths for journalism’s further engagement, protecting the field’s autonomy from politics and the economy. Therefore, engaged journalism does not constitute a complete rupture with established journalism, but a professional response that seeks to strengthen the journalistic field from the margins.

By deliberately speaking from the periphery, engaged journalists navigate radical criticism of legacy media, a distinct normative political position, rejection of weak journalistic autonomy, and negotiating economic precarity, on the one hand, and repeated reference to traditional journalistic norms and practices, including newsroom routines and news values, journalism’s watchdog function, verification, and protecting sources, on the other. They also selectively build cooperation networks with legacy media for visibility and survival.

Journalism faces disruptions globally. Investigating different manifestations of engaged journalism would develop a body of research on the spectrum of practices that are both critical of and stem from legacy journalism. Creating innovative typologies of engaged journalism practiced in the Global South would encourage study of similar initiatives in the Global North, to compare our understanding of engaged journalism in different media contexts. Further research should investigate journalists in vulnerable positions due to the intersecting marginalisation of political and journalistic fields. One approach would be to conduct audience-focussed studies to understand how audiences perceive journalists’ commitment to community engagement.

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank our interview partners for kindly agreeing to talk with us for this article, and the DJ editorial team and anonymous reviewers for contributing to developing earlier versions of this article.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.