Green that turns brown, reputation that turns into mud: mineral extraction, disasters, and the images of the “invisible”

Abstract

Mining corporations invest significant financial and human resources in advertising and marketing campaigns on television, in the written press and on social media. By doing this, they not only propagate their "good" social and environmental actions, but also disseminate the belief in mining as a sustainable and risk-free economic activity. In the article we discuss the political strength presented by the images (photographs, videos, memes, etc.) broadcasted after the disasters caused by the rupture of mining dams, such as those that occurred in Brazil in 2015 and 2019, to soil the reputation of mining corporations such as Vale. To answer these questions, we resort to the concepts of invisibility policies and political potential of catastrophes formulated by Ulrich Beck. We conclude that critical mining groups and movements have a fundamental role in establishing causal links between what happened (the “present” of the images) and the social, economic and political processes (the “past” of the images) that preceded the disasters and explain them.