Text body - interviews

Rodrigo Moita de Deus: Interview

Question: A famous Portuguese in the most popular Portuguese blog!
Rodrigo Moita de Deus:  “31 da Armada”, exactly.
The idea is that for somebody to create a revolution you need to create your own media. I will show in my presentation that all revolutions had their own media, like: Lenin had “Pravda” and Mao Zedong gets the dazibao (wall posters), and the French revolution had the word-of-mouth.

The next big revolution is based on social media. Not because of brain issue or genius strategy, but just because necessity calls for it – it’s cheap. We used social media to create our media for the revolution. It’s quite easy and a very friendly one – a pro-capitalist, pro-Bush and pro-American revolution, so… (laughs). Mainly at free markets and at non-socialist governments – that’s the main goal for our revolution. It’s like an academic exercise – we want to know where we can go with social media. We read a lot of history and we try to adapt every situation that we read, every case study or success in revolution history, and try to adapt it to social media.

Question: Why are you so rebellious?
Rodrigo Moita de Deus: I don’t know – if you are going to make a stand or an exercise, why not try to make a revolution – it’s a good aim!

Question: Communication is…?
Rodrigo Moita de Deus: Brain.
The base for communication is the way that your brain understands the signals that you use or give to the people, so brain processes are decisive to effective communication.

Question: An example of communication that has really changed the world?
Rodrigo Moita de Deus: The French Revolution. The word-of-mouth. The base in Paris was that the king was not good enough for the country, so they killed the king.
A good revolutionary strategy goes through using all possible media, so I use almost all platforms possible.

Question: Would you recommend one?
Rodrigo Moita de Deus: Facebook is more complete – you can share videos and you can share photographs, you can engage more easily, so I would say: Facebook, yes, definitely!
Democracy is now changing the way you think, so you cannot do revolution outside the democracy, so yes, the next big revolution will be a peaceful one, hopefully. And a funny one, also!
E-democracy – it’s the way you have to engage people to participate in the democracy, through social media. When you empower people to participate you are making e-democracy.
You have a relationship between power and people with no intermediary, so if there is no political parties, you can speak directly to the people, and the people can speak directly to you. This is a huge change – you don’t have a press, you don’t have political parties, you don’t have institutions. The contact is direct, so that’s e-democracy.

Question: When a politician has a blog, it seems that we can contact him directly, but really – can we, if he is having thousands and thousands of readers and followers?
Rodrigo Moita de Deus: Yes, of course you can, and if you establish your own blog and speak directly to the MP or to the Minister, and you'll probably change his view on several issues, so that’s the best way to participate.

The appeal is that armada means War Navy, so, as you know, almost every revolution starts with the Armada. Cause they have a lot of time to read in the boats!

They become special revolutionaries, like Che Guevara – exporting the revolution; yes I would very much like to be invited to other countries, but with a happy end, not like Che Guevara.

You can speak about serious things in a funny way.

I think the main achievement was that changing of the flag in this Lisbon city hall and the consequences that it had – it’s my Case Study. So, we, one night and we changed the flag in the Lisbon city hall, with police watching… So it’s not very funny – you cannot have revolution online, you have to… the revolution has to be offline.

Question: That is an interesting question: why can’t we have revolution online, because revolution is inside your head – I mean it’s free.
Rodrigo Moita de Deus: No, it’s taking power – so, for you to take power you have to get off your couch and your living room and go to the streets. Social media will only help you transmit the message.

Question: But influencing people’s minds – don’t you consider that to be a power of any kind?
Rodrigo Moita de Deus: Yes, but it’s not enough – the power is in the streets. The only thing that Social media does is: telling you when to go to the streets.

Question: How many followers do you have on your blog?
Rodrigo Moita de Deus: A lot of… thousands… yes. It’s not only a blog you have, but it’s a multi-channel broadcast platform, so we have youtube channels, we have twitter channels, we have facebook channels, we have the blog, of course, but we write for newspapers, so it’s a huge network – in a couple of years, in two years, yes, definitely.

Question: Do you think that a forum like this should become a tradition?
Rodrigo Moita de Deus: Yes, cause it’s a great way to cross experiences and to further your knowledge about communication. Different countries have different experience and this is the best way to share them – it’s a huge Facebook – a real 0.1 Facebook!