Journalistic Narratives about the Day of Fire in the Amazon: The Case of Folha de S. Paulo (Brazil) and Público (Portugal)

• Main Author: Thaís Braga
• Publication Date: 2021
• Other Authors: Sandra Marinho
• Format: Article
• Language: por
• Source: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Download full: https://doi.org/10.36367/ntqr.9.2021.56-65
• topic: Amazon; Depth Hermeneutics; Pragmatic Analysis of the Journalistic Narrative; Folha de S. Paulo; Público; Amazônia; Hermenêutica de Profundidade; Análise Pragmática da Narrativa Jornalística; Folha de S. Paulo; Público

The day of fire in the Amazon refers to forest fires that spread from Brazil to other countries in South America, in August 2019. The article aims to identify and understand what the journalistic narratives about the day of fire in the Amazon were and how they were produced. The Portuguese-language newspapers Folha de S. Paulo (Brazil) and Público (Portugal) were selected for the observation and analysis of the case. As a theoretical-methodological support, depth hermeneutics (DH) was used, which combines three individual and interdependent analytical stages: socio-historical analysis, formal or discursive analysis and reinterpretation. In the socio-historical analysis, the following were characterized: 1) the Amazon, as a socioeconomic border; 2) journalism, due to the ability to articulate events in the form of a narrative; 3) the newspapers Folha de S. Paulo and Público, due to their importance in each country. In the formal or discursive analysis, the methodological procedures were operationalized: constitution of the corpus by non-probabilistic sampling of typical cases; direct observation (analysis grid) and indirect observation (in-depth semi-structured interview with the main journalists in the case); and pragmatic analysis of the journalistic narrative. From the six movements foreseen by this technique (recomposition of the story; identification of the conflicts and functionality of the episodes; construction of journalistic characters; communicative strategies; communicative relationship and the “cognitive contract”; metanarratives), it was observed that the narratives produced by Folha de S. Paulo and by Público had their own characteristics. While the Brazilian newspaper configured a conflict with beginning, middle and end, in the Portuguese one the narrative ended in an anticlimax. In Folha de S. Paulo, the idea of impunity for environmental crimes in the Amazon prevailed, while, in Público, the sorrow was evident in the face of the loss of biodiversity.