South America’s biggest media market is home to thousands of radio stations and hundreds of TV channels. Brazilians are among the world’s top users of blogs and social networks and use of online is growing fast, attracting foreign outlets such as Buzzfeed, the Spanish newspaper El País and the Huffington Post, which launched their Portuguese versions between 2012 and 2013.

Following the downturn in the Brazilian economy, mainstream media have suffered from a series of cuts and layoffs. The debate is the same as in New York or Madrid: how to compensate for the fall in traditional advertising revenue. Among the three big newspapers, Folha has been experimenting with television while Estado de S. Paulo is testing new models such as sponsored content.

The BBC’s strategy of publishing text articles and videos in popular internet hubs UOL and G1, part of the giant Grupo Globo, appears to be paying off, with a solid 8% online reach in our survey.

As in some other parts of the world, tablets have reached their peak in Brazil and are being replaced by cheaper cellphones with large screens that can do almost the same.

2014 was the year of the WhatsApp– or ZapZap as it is known in Brazil. News organisations like El País actively encourage sharing with the tool while radio stations have been using accounts to build a collaborative network sharing information about traffic jams in São Paulo. WhatsApp is cheap in comparison with normal phone rates, which explains its rapid growth.

Participation online increased markedly during the recent elections and economic crisis and can be linked to a highly political and polarised public.¹ Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram feeds were flooded with election-related videos, parodies, and memes – in addition to discussion and sharing via WhatsApp. Brazil’s Facebook community is the world’s second biggest outside the US. Google’s Orkut – once the top network in the country – closed down in September.

FM