Sound and Politics: The Audio Archive of the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies

Abstract

The Câmara dos Deputados, the lower house of Brazil’s National Congress, is a leader in the digitization and online dissemination of audiovisual recordings of legislative sessions. Its website hosts the Arquivo Sonoro, an initiative of the Câmara’s audiovisual department, which contains over 120,000 hours of recordings of speeches, votes, and committee meetings spanning over half a century. The Câmara also makes available online complete video of sessions dating back three years. This research note explores the methodological, historical, and pedagogical opportunities that these audiovisual sources offer scholars and educators. It employs as examples the research of a faculty member, a doctoral candidate, and three undergraduate students, all of whom are among the contributors to a digital humanities project that showcases this remarkable resource. By highlighting ambient noise, volume, emotion, body language, grammatical errors, regional or ethnic accents, and discrepancies with the written record, the authors demonstrate some of the ways that aurality and visuality can enrich and complicate humanities and social science research. They also reveal the multifaceted benefits of institutional support for the digitization of archival material and its free dissemination online to scholars and the public.