Justice, Memory, and Suffering Modulations: The #100diasporMariana Campaign in the BHP Trial

This article analyzes the #100diasporMariana campaign, a sub-campaign of the @revidamariana movement, which seeks to amplify demands for justice related to the 2015 Samarco dam disaster in Mariana, Brazil, as it intersects with the BHP trial taking place in England in October 2024. It follows the question of how the #100diasporMariana campaign dispute and try to shape public perceptions and demands for justice regarding the Samarco disaster, and what discursive strategies does it employ to build and sustain these demands in the context of the BHP trial. Through a content analysis of the campaign's posts, this study investigates the discursive strategies employed to keep the memory of the disaster alive, engage the audience with a distant suffering — both geographically and temporally — and attune them to demands for recognition. The campaign combines personal narratives, technical data, statistics, emotional, political, and legal arguments, among others, to personify the victims and socio-environmental damages, bringing past events into the present and highlighting ongoing suffering, thereby constructing a specific sense of justice. The general objective is to analyze how the #100diasporMariana campaign constructs and modulates discourses of justice, memory, and recognition around the disaster and trial. Specific objectives include identifying key discursive strategies, examining the interplay of narratives, exploring cyberactivism as a tool for shaping public perception, and analyzing how the campaign uses past events to articulate present demands for reparation. The article also discusses how cyberactivism is used to contest dominant narratives and reinforce accountability claims.