CENARIUM participates in the 3i Festival, event that recognizes Innovative and Inspiring Journalism
07 de June de 2025
By Ana Pastana – From Cenarium
MANAUS (AM) – The Digital Journalism Association (Ajor) is promoting, from June 5 to 8, the 6th national edition of the Festival of Innovative, Inspiring and Independent Journalism (Festival 3i), at ESPM Vila Aymoré College, in Rio de Janeiro (RJ). The schedule includes around 100 activities, with over 120 speakers from various regions of the country and the world, among them journalists from CENARIUM.
The event promotes debates about the future of Journalism through innovations, diversity, contemporary and ancestral technologies, collaboration, and freedom. CENARIUM, one of the collaborators of the 6th edition and invited to participate in the event, will be represented by journalist and social media analyst Maria Eduarda Furtado and general director Paula Litaiff, who will also be a speaker.
Maria Eduarda will take part in a case study with the theme “The arrival of Brazilians deported from the USA.” The video published exclusively by CENARIUM in January this year showed immigrants deported from the U.S. disembarking at Eduardo Gomes International Airport in Manaus (AM), in handcuffs.
Maria Eduarda stated that she will share with the audience the behind-the-scenes of the report, which gained national and international repercussion. The presentation will take place this Friday, June 6, starting at 5 p.m. (Brasília time).
“I didn’t expect so many people to want to know the behind-the-scenes of that investigation. Not that I’m downplaying my work, but it was unimaginable that an institution like Ajor would want me to address the subject at such a big event. I was very honored, and I think it’s important to talk about the human rights violations that occurred when the deportees arrived here [in Manaus],” she said.
CENARIUM’s general director, Paula Litaiff, is participating in the panel “Data & Trends: Political and Gender Violence against Indigenous Women in Manaus.” Founder of CENARIUM, a news outlet specialized in socio-environmental topics with a focus on traditional peoples, Paula will discuss the journey of female leaders from various ethnic groups who live in Parque das Tribos, one of the largest Indigenous neighborhoods in Brazil, located in Manaus (AM).
“The research arose from reports carried out by CENARIUM, which revealed the reality of women responsible for founding an Indigenous community in Manaus, from the perspective of the ‘body-territory’ concept, coined by Brazil’s first Indigenous writer, Eliane Potiguara, in 2004,” Litaiff explained.
Ajor’s project coordinator, Gessika Costa, highlighted the importance of the event and what the participation of CENARIUM, a news outlet from the Amazon, represents at the 3i Festival.
“Festival 3i is the festival of opportunities, as it brings together, over three days, media entrepreneurs, students, and researchers who seek to exchange experiences, learn new practices, and chart paths to ensure that innovative, inspiring, and independent journalism remains alive, telling stories and inspiring other professionals,” she stated. “The presence of CENARIUM at the event is crucial because it helps inspire other Amazonian initiatives to grow, thrive, and occupy space,” she concluded.
Festival 3i
With tickets sold out, the 6th edition of 3i Festival features Artificial Intelligence (AI) as one of its themes. The opening panel, which took place this Thursday, June 5, brought in experts to discuss possible innovation scenarios and the use of this tool in newsrooms.
Participating in the opening panel were Karen De La Hoz, Product Lead and AI leader at the Colombian outlet La Silla Vacía; Ana Paula Valacco, program manager and engagement leader at JournalismAI; and Juan Pablo Marín Díaz, data scientist and founder of Datasketch, which creates AI tools to assist journalists.
In addition to traditional formats from past editions of 3i Festival —such as panels, case studies, workshops, data, and trends—Festival 3i 2025 also introduces a new activity called “Dialogues and Trends,” in which two debaters address a specific topic based on research and experience.
One of the highlights of the format will be the session “Influence, opinion, and journalism: new paths in algorithmic times,” with journalist Guilherme Amado, publisher of Amado Mundo and columnist at Platô, and journalist and researcher from the Fluminense Federal University, Gilberto Scofield. The experts will discuss the role of “newsfluencers” in the spread of information and how algorithms shape public opinion.
The workshops offer participants hands-on experience, including building audience conversion and monetization models, creating content for YouTube and TikTok, financial management, newsletter best practices, audience-centered content strategies, and character research for journalistic material production.
All panels on the event schedule, held in the ESPM Auditorium, will be broadcast live on the 3i Festival’s YouTube channel. The full schedule is available on the event’s website: festival3i.org.
The event is supported by companies such as: Cenarium; Ford Foundation; Serrapilheira; Great; International Fund (IF); Institute of Technology & Society of Rio (ITS); Institute for the Development of Journalism (Projor); CFPJor ESPM; ESPM; and Aos Fatos. Additionally, Google News Initiative, Luminate, ICFJ, JournalismAI, Pulitzer Center, Sembramedia, and Greenpeace are partners in this 6th edition.
Ajor
The Digital Journalism Association, Ajor, promotes the journalistic field by strengthening its members and advocating for a freer, more diverse, and plural press, with the aim of promoting quality journalism in the public interest, freedom of expression, and freedom of the press. It acts as a discussion center to promote the institutional and financial strengthening of its members, as well as providing legal and digital security support.
Ajor was founded through the union of a group of organizations that had jointly promoted 3i Festival – Innovative, Inspiring and Independent Journalism – since 2017. Between 2017 and 2019, the two national editions and three regional editions of the festival welcomed over 1,300 professionals and students and reached an online audience of more than 140,000 people.
In 2020, with support from the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas, through a Google grant, the founding organizations of Festival 3i began discussions on the need to create an association not only to defend their interests but also to promote and protect the field of Journalism in Brazil. Ajor was founded on May 3, 2021, World Press Freedom Day.