Segura a Onda (Flatten the Curve): Brazilian experience on mapping citizen initiatives to deal with pandemic Covid-19

Abstract

The report aims to socialize the experience of creating and maintaining Segura a Onda platform, designed as a repository of relevant and qualified information on citizen initiatives that emerged in the country as a strategy to face the pandemic. First, it briefly introduces the context of the health crisis in Brazil regarding information. Then, it describes the work method for curating and publishing information, organized in thematic forums. It presents the direct movements carried out with the objective of generating greater action, dialogue and interaction. As a self-organization of a citizens' initiative promoted by a group of volunteers with no financial support, the group experienced many challenges in the process. The conclusion shows that, even with the dissemination on the most popular social networks among Brazilians, the diffusion of the content was limited, as these platforms require payment of boost fees to increase the visibility of the posts. However, an indirect contribution of the platform is the documentation of citizen initiatives during this period to constitute, to some extent, memory of social processes. Thus, it is envisaged that this experience report can contribute to future debates and research on the strategy of producing mappings for citizen initiatives, their scope and impact