1 Master Thesis
Sophie Pizzimenti S3827356
MA Media Studies, Journalism Programme University of Groningen
Supervisor: C. Dagoula, PhD Second reader: Dr. B. Hagedoorn
2 Dedication
This thesis is dedicated to my beloved flat mates in 45B, to my favorite Polish lady, and to all the favela residents.
3 Master Thesis Tables: ... 4 Introduction ... 5 1. Theoretical Framework ... 8
1.1 Foreign Corresponding as a representation of the World ... 8
1.1.1 Foreign corresponding and the economic crisis of the journalistic model: ... 9
1.1.2 Journalism and power: ... 13
1.2 Media, Power, and Marginalized Communities ... 14
1.2.1 Constructing the reality of marginalized communities through media: ... 15
1.2.2 The journalists and the reproduction of internalized discourses: ... 16
1.3 Discourse, the Media and the construction of identity ... 17
1.4. The case study, author’s positionality: ... 18
1.5. How is the discourse built? The case study of the Favelas of Rio de Janeiro ... 19
1.6 Conclusion ... 24 2. Methodology... 25 2.1 Sample Selection ... 25 2.2 Research Method ... 25 2.3 Limitation: ... 30 2.4 Conclusion ... 30 3. Findings ... 30 3.1 Textual Analysis ... 31 3.1.1. Use of quotes: ... 32
3.1.2 Sources cited and discrepancies: ... 34
3.1.3. Sources and contextualization: ... 36
3.2 Contextual Analysis ... 37
3.2.1. Language and the discourse of Rio de Janeiro as a city at war: ... 37
3.2.2. Favela residents and the discourse of victimhood: ... 40
3.2.3. The depiction of the favelas outside the negative discourses: ... 42
3.2.4. The Favelas and Rio de Janeiro: The Discourse of division ... 43
3.2.5. Ideological standpoint: Internationals are not Bolsonaro’s biggest fan: ... 44
3.4. Conclusion: ... 46
4. Discussion... 46
4.1 Conclusion ... 52
Conclusion ... 53
4
Articles from Research Sample: ... 61
Appendix ... 64
1. Note on terminology: The use of the word favela ... 64
2. Full Coding Sheet – Phase One ... 65
3. Full Coding Sheet – Discourse Analysis ... 66
4. Graphs of findings ... 67
4.1 Graph 1: Sources Article ... 67
4.2 Graph 2: Journalist... 67
4.3 Graph 3: Object/Theme ... 67
4.4 Graph 4: Favela Residents’ Role ... 68
4.5 Graph 5: Humanization VS No Humanization of Favela residents ... 68
4.6 Graph 6: Sources Cited ... 69
5. Example Analysis of Articles ... 69
5.1 Analysis of “Rhetoric trumps policy as Rio police kills more than ever” (Ruge 2019). ... 69
5.2 Analysis of “’It was execution’: 13 dead in Brazil as state pushes new gang policy” (Phillips D. 2019 a) ... 72
Tables: 1. Coding Scheme ...………26
2. Discourse and Ideology ……….28
5
Introduction
By consuming the news, we learn about the world, places we will probably never see and people we will probably never meet. International news is a tool that provides the audience with knowledge about the world (Wahutu 2018b, p. 33). Foreign correspondents are sent around the globe, they live and observe distant places and then report them to their countries of origin and to the global public arena. They become the intermediaries producing knowledge about the world (Allan 2010, pp. 46-47; Heinrich 2019). Their journalistic productions are strong in determining how people understand the reality surrounding them, as the media has the power to influence people’s perception of others (Cottle 2000, p. 2). Through language, images and narratives, journalists produce a specific depiction of the world that the international audience will perceive as reality (van Dijk 1995, p. 14). Therefore, the audience relies on foreign correspondents’ experience of the world to learn about it.
However, the sector of foreign corresponding is in a crisis (Atkinson 1999; Hannerz 2004; Otto, Meyer 2012; Spyksma 2019, p. 3). There are fewer and fewer correspondents being sent around the world as newspapers have no more resources to sustain foreign reporting. As a result, few journalists are on the ground reporting on vast regions, sometimes even entire continents (Hannerz 2004; Otto, Meyer 2012; Atkinson 1999). Moreover, newspapers will often just ‘parachute’ journalists into crisis areas, meaning that they will send a journalist abroad in a conflict area for a short period of time and with little notice. This results in the ‘parachutists’ having very little context or time to understand the dynamics of the conflict (Allan 2010, p. 107; Hannerz 2004; Otto, Meyer 2012; Atkinson 1999). Consequently, superficial and de-contextualized reporting of distant places becomes a common practice (Hannerz 2004; Otto, Meyer 2012; Atkinson 1999). What does this mean then, for the coverage of issues rising from a long history of complex historical and political dynamics? What does it mean for places that are not easily reachable and about which there aren’t abundant information online?
Several questions can rise about the quality and extent of the knowledge about marginalized communities that is accessible by parachuted journalists who might have little knowledge about the place they are reporting in, and might struggle to understand the various political, economic and social dynamics related to the marginalized community in question.
6 Countries might have layers of society which are not easy to access, more so if the person trying to gain knowledge about these spaces is a foreigner possibly ignorant to the contextual dynamics. In fact, the marginalized communities are one of the hardest to investigate and report on as poverty, social struggles and criminality create dynamics which might make it hard to access these spaces by outsiders. Subsequently, these communities often do not appear in international news, due to both mentioned marginalizing dynamics and lack of own local news production.
Nonetheless, in some instances the marginalized become the center of international attention, as it is the case of the favelas of Rio de Janeiro. The city of Rio de Janeiro counts around 763 favelas, hosting 22.03 percent of the city’s population, meaning 1,392,314 people (IBGE 2011). These spaces are not simply peripherical areas of the city, but are neighborhoods intertwined in the landscape, present in every part of the metropolis. Their centrality makes them impossible to ignore, and so when the eyes of the global public were pointed at the Marvelous City preparing for the Olympics, the favelas became a subject of interest. They became a symbol of the city of Rio de Janeiro, generating a fascination for these spaces haunted by a history of marginalization (Pizzimenti 2018, pp. 7-8).
One of the cases in which the favela of Rio de Janeiro gained international attention was with the movie City of God (2002) which narrated a story of crime and drug gangs in the Rio de Janeiro’s favela called City of God (Pizzimenti 2018, p. 9). Next, the favelas came to be a topic of interest for international news with the organization of the Olympic Games 2016 (Robertson 2016, p. 6). Despite all of this media attention, questions still arise about what type of knowledge does the audience have about these spaces through the work of journalists.
With a long history of stigmatization and marginalization of these spaces through media representation in Brazil, research shows how the discourse about the favelas in Brazilian news portrays the favelas uniquely as ‘spaces of violence’ (Arias 2011; Baroni 2013, 267; Davis 2015; Cardoso 2009; Fernandes & Costa 2012 ; Fleras 2016; Jaguaribe 2004; Paiva 2018; Palermo 2018; Rocha 2016; Souza 2018). These discursive dynamics have a strong influence in the construction of the image of the favelas, and the identity of the people inhabiting them, and can result in oppression and violence (Cottle 2000, p. 2).
Behind some of these marginalizing dynamics, there are the journalists producing the news. Journalists in Rio de Janeiro generally are not familiar with the spaces of the favelas. They enter these neighborhoods embedded with the military police, and report on police operation through the information they are given by officials (Kurpius 1999, p. 3; Pizzimenti 2017). As a result, what journalists get to experience, is mainly the violence, and the voices they portray are rarely the ones of inhabitant (Kurpius 1999, p. 3; Pizzimenti 2017). These factors, along with more complex dynamics that will be explained later on, are behind the stigmatized representation of the favelas as
7 exclusive spaces of violence (Arias 2011; Baroni 2013; Davis 2015; Cardoso 2009; Fernandes & Costa 2012 ; Fleras 2016; Jaguaribe 2004; Paiva 2018; Palermo 2018; Rocha 2016; Souza 2018). If these affirmations are true for Brazilian reporters writing about their own country, questions can be raised on whether also international reporters are subjected to these dynamics.
The present research aims to understand the role of international reporters in producing knowledge about distant others and marginalized communities from foreign countries. With the rising global public sphere, and the possibility to consume news about different countries, the knowledge produced by the media and its content is more and more central. Therefore, it is of great importance to understand the origin of such knowledge, and its validity. The role of foreign reporters becomes central to the understanding of the constructed representations that form our knowledge of the world. As the literature analyzed in this paper shows, representation of minorities in media and violence are strongly related. Therefore, it is not an exaggeration to say that it is of vital importance to understand the underlying dynamics of such representations to move towards better practices of foreign reporting.
This thesis focused on the favelas of Rio de Janeiro as they are widely known communities that have been subjected to marginalizing dynamics. Moreover, the ever-rising violence in the militarization process that followed the election of Jair Bolsonaro, who has been accused of fueling discourses of violence against the favelas, gives to this topic even more relevance and urgency (Phillips, T 2019). The military police in Rio de Janeiro is said to kill an average of five people per day, and as it was be argued here, this is also partially due to the violent representation of the favelas in the media (Londoño & Andreoni 2019). Understanding the role journalists play in this complex political context can lead to understanding the degree of responsibility of reporters in supporting, or contrasting, violent marginalizing dynamics in Brazil, and towards marginalized communities in general.
Taking all of the above, this thesis addressed several core questions based on the case study of the favelas of Rio de Janeiro. Hereof, this thesis sought to understand (1) What are the discursive
dynamics in foreign news reporting of marginalized communities, such as favelas? and finally (2) What is the representation of the favelas dominating international news?
In order to answer these questions, the research adopted theories from representation of minorities in media, dynamics of power and discourse construction through news media. Applying Critical Discourse Analysis, several articles from international newspapers from the recent post-election period were analyzed to observe the dominant discourse about the favelas. Moreover, this research made use of the theories on positionality of the researchers, bringing into play the personal experience of the author in connection to the topic as point of strength rather than a weakness.
8
1. Theoretical Framework
This section presents the academic literature used to give a solid theoretical background to this research. Starting with an overview of the landscape of foreign correspondence, the working dynamics are combined with the analysis of the product of this type of reporting. The economic crisis in foreign corresponding, the focus on violence in foreign countries, the lack of contextualization and reliance on official sources for information are all elements explained in this section. Moreover, these aspects of foreign reporting are here combined with the power dynamics of representation of marginalized communities to show how the combination of all of these factors results in a partial representation of these communities’ reality. The example of the Favelas of Rio de Janeiro, observed with a historical perspective on the construction of its marginalizing discourse, shows how such partial representation, or misrepresentation, is complicit in the violent and oppressive dynamics these marginalized communities are subjected to.
Moreover, the personal experience of the author and the connection to the topic are also presented in the positionality section. Positionality is being introduced here as a possible addition of the journalistic practice, seeing the journalist’s personal experience, as the researchers’ personal experience, both as a limitation and an advantage.
Therefore, this summary of a wide range of literature brings together a multitude of concepts at the basis of the Critical Discourse Analysis that follows.
1.1 Foreign Corresponding as a representation of the World
We learn about the world through media. We learn about distant and different cultures, people and places through the words of journalists, foreign correspondents, who ideally had explored these distant realities, and narrate it to us (Allan 2010, pp- 46-47; Wahutu 2018a, p. 32; Wahutu 2018, pp. 465-466). New technologies, combined with an abundance of images being shared in a more and more immediate and continuous form, take distant others and ‘bring [them] to our living room’ (Atkinson 1999, p. 102). Emanuel Castells called it the Network Society, the current society we live in based on information flowing from one node to the other across the globe, bringing content to all
9 those connected to the networks (Castells 2004: p. 3; Castells 2010, p. XVII) These networks reached a global scale thanks to technological advancement, and are filled with information by nodes, which can be organizations, governmental structures, or people (Castells 2010, pp. XVII- XXXV). In this thesis we are interested in foreign correspondents as nodes bringing news about foreign places and distant others to the devices of the Western audience, in the span of seconds. As a result, space becomes hybrid, as communication is relieved from being tied to physical locations and is only depended on the spaces of the network where the information flows (Castells 2010, p. 408). Foreign reporters are part of this space and contribute in nourishing the network, bringing content that goes beyond national boundaries. Foreign correspondents witness distant realities and they can show it to their home audience by making use of the network.
Foreign reporting implies creating a link between foreign news and the home country of the journalist’s newspaper (Williams 2011, pp. 23 -24). Foreign news are simply events that happen outside the national borders of a specific country, that are captured by a foreign correspondent who then reports about them for the national audience (Williams 2012, pp. 23-24). This implies for the reporter to be familiar with the political, cultural and economic interests of the country in order to domesticate, hence ‘translate’ foreign topics in terms that can be understood and with which the audience from the home country can connect (Wahutu 2017, pp. 33-34).. This can be quite challenging when the journalists has to ‘translate’ in familiar terms a reality that is difficult to understand, such as the favelas of Rio de Janeiro. As it will be shown in the finding section, some of the way to domesticate the topic of the favelas might be the choice of language used to define these spaces, such as finding an English translation to the word ‘favela’, so that the audience might be able to connect such distant reality to something known to them. Moreover, foreign reporters have to be able to recognize stories that are most relevant for their home country (Wahutu 2017, pp. 33-34). Usually, a news outlet from a Western country will report on a fixed set of geographically close countries or politically relevant (Hess 1996, p. 30). Following, outlets shift between covering areas where crisis occur, while in some cases the coverages is continuous as it is a constant area of conflict (Hess 1996, pp. 30-31).
1.1.1 Foreign corresponding and the economic crisis of the journalistic model:
10 This type of reporting is among the most expensive to maintain for news outlets (Otto, Meyer 2012, pp. 205-206). As a result, foreign reporting is significantly suffering from the economic crisis1 journalism is facing nowadays which results in newspapers cutting the number of fix foreign reporters they have abroad (Otto, Meyer 2012, pp. 205-206; Spyksma 2019, p. 3). For instance, the Washington Post, a rather big editorial, has only two correspondents in Latin America (Otto, Meyer 2012, Atkinson 1999). Not being able to afford having bureaus abroad or reporters stationary in one country, news outlets ‘parachute’ their journalists in areas of specific interest, often being areas where a crisis is occurring. Meaning, journalists are sent to foreign countries and they have little knowledge about the place and the context of the conflict they are covering (Hannerz 2004, pp. 29-45, p. 169). The ‘parachutists’ stay just a few days and cover the events, without having a local network, a deep understanding of the political dynamics, nor access to different local sources (Hannerz 2004, p. 29-45, 169; Atkinson 1999). With little reporters on the ground, and so little time given to the ‘parachutists’, it is physically impossible for them to cover all of the events happening in these huge continents. This leads to a very narrow selection of the events worthy of reporting for Western outlets, which are the focus of this research (Allan 2010, p. 107; Atkinson 1999). As suggested by Hannerz (2004, pp. 44-45), Western outlets have a tendency to cover all the same topics. His research showed that most of Western correspondents were sent to the same areas and write about similar happenings being it Vietnam and Biafra in the 1960s-1970s, Tiananmen Square in 1989, Kosovo war in 1999 and so on. With even less journalists being sent on the ground, the reduction of issues covered by Western outlets means that the audience gets a narrower representation of what is happening in the world around them.
Moreover, foreign reporters are often enough sent by big news agencies. The Western World dominates in terms of production of knowledge about the world as the main news agencies are from Western countries, such as Agence France Presse from France, Associated Press from the US and Reuters from the UK (Atkinson 1999, 103; Boyd-Barrett 2000, pp. 14-15; Hannerz 2004, pp. 41 - 42). Content produced by these news agencies is used all around the world by all type of media outlets, meaning that there is an underlying sameness on which and how events are reported (Boyd-Barrett 2000, pp. 14-15; Wahutu 2018, pp. 32-33). Even when independent newspapers send their own journalists abroad, the coverage tends to converge. As a US-based research conducted by Hess (1996, pp. 31-33) shows, the locales reported on are often the same for different outlets within a country meaning, the national audience hears about the same topics in fairly similar ways.
1For the sake of space, it will not be explained here the particularities of the crisis of the journalistic economic model. This research simply starts from the acknowledgement of such crisis, and how it results in lower budget being available for foreign reporting (Otto, Meyer 2012, pp. 205-206; Spyksma 2019, pp. 2-3).
11 Consequently, certain parts of the world are seen rarely, and appear on Western media only if an important figure visits, a conflict explodes or a natural disaster occurs (Hess 1996, pp. 31-32). Such is the situation of the favelas. As it was previously explained, the favelas weren’t given much attention outside the Olympic Games. Once the mega sports events were over, the favelas fell back into oblivion, to become again a topic of discussion only when the death toll in the streets of Rio de Janeiro rose during the militarization. Therefore, the case study here chosen is an example of how these dynamics unfold.
There are several consequences to the reduction of foreign reporters on the ground, the first being the topics that are being reported for Western news. A grim pattern seems to be present in the framing of news about happenings in foreign countries, as foreign news is seen to be mainly negative, focused on violence, drug trafficking and crime (Atkinson 1999, p. 103; Hannerz 2004, p. 28; Hess 1996, pp. 32-33). According to Hess (1996, p. 28), this is due to the fact that “journalists speed to the world’s most current hot spot”, which often implies areas where a conflict of some sort is occurring. “The public get very brief but very intense images of strange places and often violent events. Then the spotlight moves on” (Hess 1996, p. 28). Little time is given to the contextualization of the events, either for lack of time or lack of knowledge, and events in faraway countries are presented in a vacuum of information (Atkinson 1999, pp. 102-105; Chouliaraki 2013, pp. 167-169). Moreover, in a world in which the news is mainly event driven, foreign reporting is said to focus mainly on violent and negative events. Foreign countries, especially Third World countries, are portrayed as places characterized by barbaric violence (Atkinson 1999: pp. 102-104; Giddens 1990: pp. 19-21). The portrayal of violence in Third World Countries often containing ‘bloody’ and harsh images and is more graphic compared to what is portrayed about Western countries (Atkinson 1999: pp. 105-108). This contributes to the construction of the idea that Third World countries are not only constantly torn by violence, but also that this violence is ‘barbaric’, characterized by the worst type of atrocities (Atkinson 1999: pp. 105-108). As explained above, attention is paid to conflicts. However, it is extremely difficult to explain the complex political dynamics behind a conflict in a faraway country of which the correspondents often know little about. As a result, correspondent’s portrayal of conflicts and wars is simplified for it to be digestible by the widest audience possible (Atkinson 1999: pp. 104-105). In the section below about the construction of the discourse about the favelas, articles from Brazilian researchers will show how dynamics of event-driven, covering mainly violence, and lack of contextualization are present in the Brazilian coverage of the favelas. For instance, it is easier to explain police brutality as a ‘war on drugs’, rather than try and portray in a clear and concise way complex political dynamics of a foreign country.
12 To compensate this lack of knowledge, network and context, ‘parachutists’ and foreign reporters in general often have to rely greatly on official institutions and organization, such as governmental officials or the police, to gather information about events (Hannerz 2004: pp. 165-167). However, being dependent on other institutions for sources also means that reporters digest information which have already been framed. Government and NGOs have often very clear agendas, and such agendas can be reproduced by journalists who, not being on the ground witnessing the events, don’t have the tools to contextualize the information. (Hannerz 2004: pp. 30-42, pp. 165-167; Otto, Meyer 2012: pp. 209-211; Spyksma 2019, p. 3). NGOs and advocacy groups are seen as having the objective to distribute their reading of events, as well as bringing forward transformative ideas with the intent to bring social change of different types, according to what the NGO stands for (Spyksma 2019: p. 4). It is the role of journalists to mediate the information received by these groups, however this job can be made difficult if the journalist lacks context and deep understanding of the topic (Spyksma 2019: pp. 4-5). Further in the theoretical section, it will be explained how governments, when it comes to power dynamics with marginalized communities, are complicit in the construction of marginalizing dynamics, which makes it delicate to rely on government officials as sources. Understanding the use of sources in the journalistic production is here considered extremely important as sources provide and interpretation of the events and confer credibility to the claims made by journalists (Gonen 2018: pp. 1-2). Moreover, according to which sources are used it is possible to understand whose voices are being heard and what pattern arise from the presence, or absence, of certain sources, and it also show patterns of dominance in the sources of information (Gonen 2018: pp. 2). Furthermore, ‘parachutists’ often have to gather information through internet and local newspapers. Nonetheless, such practices can work only in so-called ‘uncomplicated information environment’ where the information is widely available online (Otto, Meyer 2012: p. 209). As this paper focuses on marginalized communities which are often under-reported in the media and under-checked by governmental organizations, the problem of availability of information is clear. These communities are often ‘complicate information environment’, which are often subjected repressive and marginalizing dynamics from their governments, as it will be discussed in section 2.2 (Ungerleider 2007: pp. 159-160). Moreover, when it comes to marginalized communities it is important to highlight the power dynamics present within media and its connection to the environment outside the journalistic field. According to the Field theory (Benson 213: p. 25; Wahutu 2018: p. 468), foreign corresponding, just as most of journalism, is shaped by political, economic and social forces coming from outside the journalistic field (Chouliaraki 2013: pp. 104 - 105). This means that the frames used to narrate stories of distant others are shaped by external dynamics, possibly reproducing specific ideologies and dominant political narratives. As Gitlin states, “the production of news is a system of power” (1980: p. 251).
13 1.1.2 Journalism and power:
One of the ways the media2 can be perceive as a system of power is they ability to hold to glue different groups of society together providing them with shared experiences. Regardless of who are the people consuming the information, they are all consuming the same representation of reality, possibly generating a common understanding and vision of what surrounds them (Curran 2002: p.77). While having the power to bound people together through a shared understanding of reality, media productions can also separate specific groups from the ‘us’ who lives through the shared experience (Curran 2002: p.77). Those who hold the media production resources can produce the narratives about the ‘other’, installing a relation of power between ‘us’ and ‘them’, determining what is seen as normal and what is not (Hall 1997: 258). Curran (2002: p. 77) compares these dynamics of ‘othering’ a group to the mediaeval witch hunting: using moral basis for its claims, the church stigmatized a group within society to generate a moral panic in order to encourage people to follow the dominant social norms and unify in the face of a threat. The same is done through an exercise of power of the media over society: disproportionate attention is given to an ‘outsider’ group that is stigmatized in order to portray it as a menace and unify the audience towards accepting certain policies and measures in order to face a dangerous threat to their reality (Curran 2002: p.77; Hall 1978). These dynamics can result in justification of practices as ‘necessary’ to protect a certain reality considered the norm, which will be seen more concretely in the case of the favelas of Rio de Janeiro. Moreover, the audience when consuming these stories and representations of ‘others’, absorbs and digests them. When talking about stigmatizing dynamics, those producing these representations are using aspects of the ‘other’ as a negative feature to the benefits of members of the dominant group in society (Medina-Rivera, Wilberschied 2013: p. 61). Consequently, media representation of distant others produces simplified representation, hence it produces stereotypes by portraying only negative features of a place or of a group of people who are considered different, putting them in a condition of inferiority (Barker 2012: pp. 271-272; Hall 1997: 258).
When it comes to representation of minorities and marginalized communities within a country, power dynamics are a determining factor in the interaction between these communities, the rest of society, and governmental organizations, which are often at the very center of the marginalizing dynamics these communities suffer from (Ungerleider 1991: p. 159). Therefore, if
2 Here understood as a combination of different means of mass media representation, including newspaper production.
14 foreign correspondents rely on official organization, they might reproduce in their reporting the dominant marginalizing discourse.
1.2 Media, Power, and Marginalized Communities
Taking now a step back, this section will look at the general power dynamics that are observed in the media representation of the social group this thesis intends to focus on, marginalized communities, in order to try and understand the relationship between the power dynamics in media representation and foreign corresponding. The dynamics explained in this section are applicable to Western media, as most of the research comes from western countries, and to the specific context of Brazil, as part of the literature chosen is voluntarily from Brazil, in order to avoid using only European-North American analytical models to explain dynamics in a country from the Global South.
Van Dijk identifies talks about themedia representation of marginalized communities as an exercise of power through media production. Van Dijk defines power as the action of control of dominant actors over a less powerful group of people. Therefore, the control over people’s understanding of reality, and even changing what is considered the reality, can be seen as an exercise of power (1995: pp. 10 – 15). Consequently, having access to media production resources gives the possibility to exercise this power by producing certain representation of the world, called models, that justify the actions of those who hold this power. Models are mental representation of events and, just as Baudrillard’s simulacra, these representations are acquired through consumption of information, for instance through media (Van Dijk 1995: p. 14; Zou 2018: p. 383).
This brief summary of the theories of Van Dijk and the power dynamics in the media representation of reality are crucial to understand the process of marginalization of communities through inclusion and exclusion of certain groups from what is understood, and for who belongs to society and falls under the definition of citizen (Cottle 2000: p. 2; Rocha 2016: p. 2).
Looking a the existing research on media representation of marginalized communities around the world, researchers often point at a tendency of misrepresentation of such communities, as explained by Van Dijk’s theory (Fleras 2016: pp. 21-22; Ungerleider 2007: pp. 158-159). This dynamic is said to be due to two main factors already addressed in this thesis: the reliance on governmental institutions for information, and the economic and political power of having easy access to centres of information (Ungerleider 2007: pp. 158-159). This thesis wants to combine this claim with what has been discussed above, the limited, violence-oriented and de-contextualized representation of foreign countries in foreign reporting. Therefore, bringing the discussion about representation of distant
15 realities not only in terms of geography but also in terms of ‘realities’ experienced. Marginalized communities and minorities often have political and social inner dynamics, and relationships with the outside world that can be strange to the reality of most outside reporters (Cardoso 2009: p. 2; Kurpius 1999: p. 3). An example is the relationship favela residents have with criminality. Gangs are part of the fabric of the favelas, there is a coexistence between regular residents and criminal,, which does not imply acceptance of the criminality. This coexistence comes with rules that are complex to understand for an outsider, such as not talking about the drug gangs because this could lead to negative repercussions for the person who speaks. In one instance, the author while working as a journalist in the favelas found herself taken to the corner of a room with no windows while the interviewee whispered her opinion on the drug gangs, and then asked to have these information off the record because the interviewee feared for her life. It is with this reflection in mind that this section moves forwards to analyze the power relations and representation of marginalized communities in the media, considering foreign correspondents as contributors of such dynamics3.
1.2.1 Constructing the reality of marginalized communities through media:
Journalists, in their process of representation of events in news, and in different forms of media, select what information about specific subjects, places and people, will be known to the audience (Gitlin 1980: p. 259; Berglez 2008: p. 852; Stevenson 1997: p. 42). As explained above in the section about the role of foreign reporters in bringing knowledge about the world to Western consumers, journalists construct reality for their audience. Therefore, when observing the reality portrayed in the news and in media in general, what we see is a representation, hence a version of reality that has been selected and that is presented through a language that naturalizes it, making that version of reality universal, and possibly the only one known to the audience (Fleras 2016: p. 22; Pizzimenti 2019: p. 6; Seib 2005: p. 602). Journalists can determine what is known to people by selecting the topics to cover over others, which is a process called agenda setting. They can also determine how something is known or understood by people, which is called framing (Rocha 2016, 1-2). Therefore, framing enables journalists to channel the audience’s attention towards some aspects of a topic rather than others, leaving a whole part of reality outside of the frame which slowly becomes invisible, inexistent (Cottle 2000: p. 2-4; Fleras 2016: p. 21; Entman 2007: pp. 51 – 58; Rocha 2016: p. 2). As highlighted by Atkinson, and others, foreign reporters select conflict and violence as events to be known about distant places, and these conflicts are represented as barbaric, simplistic, and un-3 As a clarification, when talking about media, it refers to mainstream media here defined as such: “Mainstream media consist of those private (commercial) or public-service outlets that cater to the widest affluent audience” (Fleras 2016, p. 28). Mainstream media is characterized by language, images and representation that are easily understood by the majority of the population (Fleras 2016, p. 28; Atkinson 1999, pp. 104-105; Pizzimenti 2019).
16 human (Hannerz 2004: p. 28; Hess 1996: pp. 32-33). In this way, the audience learns about specific aspects of faraway realities, and the rest becomes invisible, it is outside the frame, other realities fall outside the discourse created about places and people and therefore becomes unintelligible (Cottle 2000: pp. 2-4; Fleras 2016: p. 21; Entman 2007: pp. 51 – 58; Rocha 2016: p. 2)., According to Baudrillard’s theory of simulacra, once these representations reach a hegemonic fix state in society, it is no longer relevant whether they are a correct depiction of reality or not, because they have become the reality, ‘substituting’ the real (Baudrillard 1994: p. 4). Baudrillard’s theory affirms that in today’s society where media representations portray a version of reality, the distinction between what is a representation and what is the reality is blurred. Through time and constant reproduction of such representations of reality to the audience, the spectator will see such representation as ‘the reality’. In the end, the representation takes over, become the real, leaving the rest of reality to be unseen (Baudrillard 1994: p. 4). The process by which misrepresentations of marginalized communities become the reality in the eyes of the outsiders, and at times of the insiders as well, it is here seen as similar to the process of simulacra. Despite the existence of counter-hegemonic representation of these communities, the dominant ‘reality’ is hard to dismantle in the eyes of the audience which sees it as the true one. Examples of this can be seen in the findings of the research in the United States which shows a tendency in portrayal of Mexican immigrant, African American and Latino communities through lenses of violence and crime, marginalizing such communities through the negative representation of their reality (Cortés 1993; Limón 1992; Wenzel et al. 2017). As a result, following Baudrillard’s process of simulacra, these representations become the reality for those who do not know and do not access these communities, and the negative connotation of a community becomes a fix element, reaching hegemonic state in society’s understanding.
When talking about marginalized communities, researchers have found that the construction of a discourse of violence about such communities justifies practices of violence and repression (Palermo 2018: pp. 222-229). These practices starting from a verbal/discoursal exercise, can lead acts of physical and systematic repression of such communities (Cardoso 2009: p. 2; Palermo 2007: p. 227). In countries is which the media production is still very centralized and strongly tied to governmental organizations, those in power have even greater hegemonic influence over people’s understanding of reality and their opinion. This includes the journalists writing for media conglomerate, who might establish or reinforce the opinion of dominant groups through their journalistic production
1.2.2 The journalists and the reproduction of internalized discourses:
Therefore, journalists are at the very centre of these complex and marginalizing dynamics of representations. The misrepresentation of marginalized communities is most of the time not an
17 intentional process in the media, rather it is simply the reflection of internalized discourses present in the author (Van Dijk 1995: p. 14). It is a common difficulty encountered by researchers working with minority groups they are not part of, about which they might have pre-conceived ideas, with which they might be in conflict with because of the personal background of the researcher, and on which they might project power dynamics (England 1994: p. 82). Therefore, researchers are adopting the concept of positionality and insider and outsider positioning (England 1994; Milligan 2016; Merriam et al. 2001). Coming from feminist research theory, this approach challenged the very idea of objectivity (England 1994: p. 80). Positionality is the process by which the author of the research reflects on their connection – or lack of connection, to the topic, reflecting on how their background, and position in society, power relations with the group as a researcher, outsider or insider position to the group, might affect their perception of the community and their way of interacting with them (Milligan 2016: pp. 235-236; Merriam et al. 2001: p. 13). By taking into consideration the author itself, and their positioning, it is then possible to look at the possible discourses preventing the researcher from accessing some aspects of the researched group, or the characteristics of the researcher that might help them to be better accepted as an outsider (England 1994; Merriam et al. 2001; Milligan 2016).
1.3 Discourse, the Media and the construction of identity
In order to understand how the representation of minorities in the media affects the constructed identity of these communities and consequently, the way these communities are treated in society, it is necessary to understand the strength of discourses. Borrowing from the definition of Foucault, a discourse is a conjunction of language, images, and structures within texts that ‘construct, defines, and produces objects of knowledge in an intelligible way while excluding other forms of reasoning as unintelligible’ (Barker 2012: p. 91). This definition is here combined with the process of 'interlinking different signifiers in the networks of meaning' explained in the terms of Laclau and Mouffe (1985, p. 105; Van Brussel, Carpentier, De Cleen 2019: p. 5). In their understanding of the construction of a discourse, the relationship between elements and their identity is modified and re-defined in this process of articulation (Van Brussel, Carpentier, De Cleen 2019: p. 5). The attention the authors pay to identity is of importance for this thesis, as it will later on focus on the construction of the identity of the favelas and its residents through discursive dynamics. Moreover, this paper keeps in account the non-essentialist stance of the authors, as they claim that meaning is always subjected to change, making the discourse contingent (Van Brussel, Carpentier, De Cleen 2019: pp. 5-6). There are, however, elements that acquire fixed meaning, called nodal points by Laclau and
18 Mouffe (Carpentier 2010: p. 254). Once the meaning of these elements becomes fix and acquires social dominance it reaches, borrowing from Gramsci, a hegemonic state as this specific meaning becomes dominant and shared through the population (Carpentier 2010: p. 254). This process takes time, which is why discursive dynamics are as having a strong historical dimension (Carpentier 2010: p. 252-254). The media plays a crucial role in the construction, negotiation and establishment of meaning within society (Carpentier 2010: p. 252-253). Through the use of language to define various realities, and the process of framing and selections of topics, media constructs identities and discourses about these identities.
1.4. The case study, author’s positionality:
Following the process of positionality, I believe it is relevant for me, as the researcher in this paper, to state my position in regard to the topic. I have worked as a journalist in the favelas for a period of three months publishing for the online newspaper Rio On Watch. I have worked as a journalist in the favelas and conducted several small researches in the field of community journalism and solution-oriented journalism in the favelas as counter hegemonic strategies and tactics to change the negative discourse in the Brazilian media. I was myself a solution-oriented journalist and during my work in Rio de Janeiro, I spent hours listening to favela resident’s accounts of how they believe the discourse in the media in Brazil justified the heavy repression and violence the police exerted on them. From this experience arises my interest in understanding the way international media might represent marginalized communities.
It is while working for Rio On Watch that I entered in contact with the idea of introducing positionality within the journalistic practice. Rio On Watch, an American-Brazilian collaboration that writes uniquely about favela issues, is seen to apply the concept of positionality, insider/outsider dynamics, in its ways of reporting about these communities. Many of the articles are written by collators from the favelas, therefore bringing firsthand knowledge, however many journalists are outsiders who, like me, had little tools to understand the complex reality of the favelas. I had just finished my second year of Latin American Studies and had researched about the favelas before heading to Rio de Janeiro. However, I was a 21-year-old white, middle-class, educated, young woman, who had never left Europe before. Therefore, my ability to understand and portray correctly the complex reality of the favelas was likely to be very low. Therefore, the Rio On Watch had adopted the policy of writing under each article written by journalists not from the favelas “outside observer”, to position the journalists in regard to the reality of the favelas. However, despite
19 being an outsider, I am fluent in Portuguese, feature that was highly appreciated by the interviewees, and I physically went myself in the favelas (which is part of the newspaper’s policies). Moreover, sometimes I had a privileged access to the interviewees, for instance when I worked with a group of women who suffered from PTD because of violence in the favelas. They trusted me more because I am a woman, while they didn’t trust the young man accompanying me. In other instances, a woman was a disadvantage. However, when I worked with a community leader who is a black woman who experienced homelessness for years, even if I was a woman, I was clearly an outsider to her, which shows the different shades of positionality and how the notions of insider/outsider can shift (Merriam et al. 2001: p. 13). I believe this example to be interesting to keep in mind for the continuation of this research.
Moreover, my personal experience as a journalist working in the favelas with a newspaper bringing forwards an interesting journalistic model for the coverage of these communities is the reason behind the choice of focusing on the favelas as a case study. I developed a connection to these places and their people, after having heard their stories and seen a little of their lives, and as I was repeated by favela residents over and over again that the media play an important role in the construction of their situation as marginalized communities, I thought it was a topic worth looking into. Moreover, the personal experience on the ground, the knowledge I gained about these communities, the talks with different people I met working in public security, journalism and much more, and the ability to navigate Brazilian academic literature about the topic, made the favelas the most logical choice.
The case study of the favelas of Rio de Janeiro is a strong example of the power dynamics explained in this section, and of the production of a dichotomy of us and them, insider and outsider through the Brazilian media, generating a discourse of violence (Palermo 2018: p. 227).
1.5. How is the discourse built? The case study of the Favelas of Rio de Janeiro
In this section, media representation and the use of discourse by the media will be discussed through the history of favelas favelas in order to understand the rise of the current discourse about these spaces.
According to Carvalho, discourses exist in the space of politics, society and history, and therefore cannot be understood separate from them (Carlvalho 2008: pp. 161-162). The case of the favelas of Rio de Janeiro certainly reflects such claim.
The way the favelas are perceived today is related to their history and how, politically, they have been regarded throughout the last century and a half. The first favela of Rio de Janeiro appeared
20 in 1898, when a group of military veterans from the state of Bahia came to settle after fighting against the rebel Antonio Conselheiro (Silva 2010: p. 62). They settled on the hill Morro da Providência, which was then renamed Morro da Favela4. At the time, the favelas were not yet a phenomenon the government gave too much attention to. In fact, records from the time show that between 1850 and 1870, 50% of Rio de Janeiro’s population lived in big block buildings around the city, built for the low income-working classes, not in favelas which didn’t really exist yet (Silva 2010: p. 62). Then, in the 1930s the city adopted what was called at the time ‘Ideology of hygiene’, a process to re-shape the center of the city of Rio replacing the low-income housing with luxurious buildings, under the pretext that they were centers of diseases. This set the first stone of the discourse: the people from these lower social classes are dirty, and in order to have a hygienic city it is necessary to push them away (Silva 2010: p. 62). However, the public transport network of Rio de Janeiro was oriented towards the South Zone, leaving the peripheries disconnected, and as these people worked in the city center, they could not afford being sent hours of walking away from their working place. As a result, they started settling on the hills of the city center, where the favelas still exist today (Fernandes, Costa 2013: p. 121; Silva 2010: pp. 62-66). In these years started Getúlio Vargas5's urbanization process of
the city, which required a large amount of labor, calling immigrants from all over Brazil and especial the North-East of the country. However, once again, there was no urban planning in place to welcome such large number of immigrants. As a result, they started settling in the favelas, enlarging them and expanding them even outside the city itself to the metropolitan area in a process called “favelização” (Fernandes, Costa 2013: p. 121; Silva 2010: pp. 62-70).
The image of the favelas in these years was rather romanticized. They were seen as places where the poor but pure in their soul lived. The favela residents were seen as people who weren’t corrupted by the modern world, and that in their misery they always found ways to be happy. It is in these years the iconic Brazilian music style of Samba was born in the favelas close to the Pedra do Sal, in the very center of Rio de Janeiro (Jaguaribe 2004: p. 4; Williams 2008: p. 484). Quickly enough, samba became a central feature of the Brazilian culture, and the favelas were the center of it. Representation about the favelas started to highlight their rustic beauty and the poetic verses of Samba’s lyrics. They became the metaphor for Brazil, a country that knows how to adapt to the problems it faces, always moving forward (Jaguaribe 2004: p. 13).
However, with the rise of the military dictatorship, which lasted from 1964 to 1985, the policy of eradication and repression of the favelas started (Palermo 2018: pp. 226-227). Through the use of the 4 Translation: Hill of the favela
5 Getúlio Vargas was president of Brazil from 1930 to 1934, then dictator from 1937 to 1945, and was a democratically re-elected president from 1951 until his suicide in 1954.
21 then fully centralized media, the military government put in place a propaganda campaign to portray the favelas as the center of communist activities, criminality, sexual debouche and total lack of moral values (Paiva 2018: p. 102). The discourse moved towards the favelas as center of criminal activity. The idea of the favelas as a space where people are working against the country, as communists, and therefore are not part of the definition of citizenship was starting to root in the Brazilian society, and it never left (Paiva 2018, p. 102). After the end of the dictatorship, the favelas’ image shifted from something to eradicate all together, as ‘something else’ from the rest of the city and that, depending on the political atmosphere, had to be either integrated or destroyed (Fernandes, Costa 2013: p. 121). The favelas became the “emblem of Brazil’s uneven modernization” (Jaguaribe 2004: p. 327). Incomplete public policies, attempts of building legal frameworks, and the establishment of countless social projects in the favelas became part of the game of political parties and their campaigns, resulting in leaving the favelas in a ‘juridical grey zone’ (Fernandes, Costa 2013: p. 126). Through time, the label of the favelas changed, from being the symbol of Brazil’s resilience to being the emblem of inequality. However, they always remained perceived as something different and separate from the Marvelous City.
Despite the democratization process the country was going through, the media landscape remained centralized, with only about eleven families owning the majority of the mainstream media channels (Amaral, Guimarães 1994: p. 29; Ansel, Bahia 2013: p. 14; Paiva 2018: p. 101; Pizzimenti 2018 a: p. 9). Brazil’s concentration of means of media production in the hands of few people who are part of the elite and have strong ties with governmental institutions results in a “oligopoly of the interpretation of events, culture and politics” (Pizzimenti 2018 a: p. 9; Pizzimenti 2019 ; Oliveira 2012: p. 81; Ansel and Bahia 2013: p. 5). This raises yet another question about the risk of relying on local newspapers and media outlets for information for foreign reporters.
Then came the rise of cocaine and drug trafficking of the 1980s, and with it, the rise of urban violence (Rocha 2016: p. 7). In a country in which the military never lost its grip on power, the ‘war on drugs’ became the dominant discourse in relations to the favelas (Pavia 2018: p. 102). The division built over the years between the favelas and the rest of the city became deeper and deeper, rooting into the Carioca’s language (Palermo 2016: p. 227, Rocha 2016). The favelas came to be known as the morro, juxtaposed to the asfalto6, ‘the city within the city’7 (Rocha 2016: p. 4). The Marvellous City was symbolically called the ‘Cidade Partita’, Divided City, in the homonymous book by the journalist Zuenir Ventura (Ventura 1994; Palermo 2016, 227; Rocha 2016: pp. 4-7). Zuenir Ventura witnessed 6 Morro means hill, used to identify the favelas as originally they were built on hills, and asfalto translates as asphalt, to indicate the city center where there are asphalted streets and concrete buildings.
22 as a journalist the rise of drugs in the favelas, and the beginning of the dynamics of the ‘urban war’ Rio de Janeiro would be suffering for years, and he writes:
“The exclusion came to be the biggest social problem. Until from the hills only the sounds of samba were audible, there didn’t seem to be any problem. However, now we hear gunshots. It’s not a civil war, as some may think, but it’s an economic post-modern war, which depends on the “war arts” as well as the laws of the market, it’s a type of trade.”8
From then on, the media coverage about the favelas became almost uniquely related to violence and crime, as these factors were now defining of their identity (Felix 2009,6; Ansel: p. 8; Pizzimenti 2018b: p. 10). The processes explained above are an example of the discursive dynamics identified by several authors in the previous theory sections. The discourse constructed over the favelas as spaces of violence, and the inclusion of the favelados in the media mainly as criminals, slowly but surely erased the rest of the reality of the favelas (Palermo 2018: pp. 226-229; Felix 2009: p. 6; Ansel, Bahia 2013: p. 9; Robertson 2016: pp. 39-40; Rocha 2016: p. 8; Pizzimenti 2018b: p. 10). The favelados became lazy, criminals, dirty, immoral, who are guilty of their own condition of marginalized and poor, and in some cases, they became the enemy (Cardoso 2009: p. 5). A reality in the favelas beyond violence was excluded in the discourse in the Brazilian media, making it unintelligible to the audience. This happened also because journalists from outside the favelas would not enter those spaces, or if they would enter, they were embedded with the military during an operation, hence getting to see only moments of violence (Kurpius 1999: p. 3; Pizzimenti 20179). Moreover, as journalists relied on the police for information, their military language was adopted in the media that started calling conflicts ‘wars’, and innocents civilians killed in the conflict ‘collateral casualties’, using expressions such as ‘sunrise of terror’, ‘Gaza strip’ (Cardoso 2009: p. 6; Palermo 2018: p. 227; Rocha 2016: p. 8). The language adopted by the media to describe these conflicts has a strong value, as if there is a war, killing is justified for the safety of the rest of the city, and collateral casualties are inevitable, just as in the witch hunt described by Curran (2002: p.77; Cardoso 2009: p. 6; Palermo 2018: pp. 227-228). Following the process of simulacra, by presenting such representation of the favelas to the audience for enough time, the population of Rio de Janeiro, and of Brazil, started adopting such representation as reality (Cardoso 2009: p. 7.). Reaching what can be called a hegemonic state of the discourse over the favelas, meaning that the discourse becomes the dominant
8 “A exclusão se transformou no problema social maior. Enquanto dos morros só se ouviam os sons de samba, parecia não haver problema. Mas agora se ouvem os tiros. Não se trata de uma guerra civil, como às vezes se pensa, mas de uma guerra pós-moderna, econômica, que depende das artes bélicas mas também das leis do mercado, é um tipo de comércio.” (Ventura 1994, 14). Translation of the author.
23 one in society becoming hegemonic. This can result in the justification of police’s brutality in the name of the eradication of such violence (Cardoso 2009: p. 6; Palermo 2018: pp. 227-228). Thaís Cavalcante, a young journalists from the favela Complexo da Maré, who corresponded for the Guardian during the Olympics to narrate the police violence, said in an interview two years ago: “The favelas build this city during the industrial era, the favelas built parts of all of this, so then why are we at the margins of the city? Why are we [favela residents] marginalized? No, we are not marginalized, we are not outside, we did this [building the city of Rio de Janeiro], we did it together” (Pizzimenti 2018 a: pp. 34-35). It is the discourse established by the Brazilian media that marginalizes them, as Brazilian academic Felipe Pena explains: ‘The press doesn’t reflect reality but helps constructing it’ (2013, in Rocha 2016: p. 11).
It also important to note that between the 1990s and 2000s, the government established a special military police unit, called the UPP, which would have a stronger presence on the ground in the favelas for what the government has called a process of ‘pacification’ of these spaces (Davis 2015: p. 227; Rocha 2016: p. 10). However, the UPP was often accused of arbitrary violence, violation of human and citizen’s rights, and of preventing the diffusion of information about their work through media. Therefore, journalists who do not enter the space of the favelas and rely on information from the police risk to lack a part of the information (Davis 2015: p. 227; Rocha 2016: p. 10). The same could be the case for foreign correspondent who are likely to rely on officials.
In these years of violence, the favelas reached the big international screen with City of God10, a movie based on the book Cidade de Deus from the anthropologist Paulo Lins (1997) researching the homonymous favela where he is originally from (Jaguaribe 2004: p. 333; Pizzimenti 2018: p. 8). A fascination was created about the gang violence, mixed with the vibrant culture of Samba, Funk and Hip Hop, and several movies, tv shows started portraying it for entertainment, however maintaining the lenses of violence. During the mega sports events of 2016, when the World Cup and the Olympics came to Rio de Janeiro, the city of Rio adopted the favelas as part of what makes the city so unique. On the background, violent evictions and occupations were going uncovered by the media (Robertson 2016). However, research by the NGO Catalytic Communities on the topics covered by international newspapers during the year of 2016 shows that the majority of the news focused on: drugs crime, police intervention/occupation or pacification and violence (Felix 2009: p.6; Ansel, Bahia 2013: p. 9; Robertson 2016: pp. 39-40, Pizzimenti 2018b: p. 10; 2019b). With one important feature: rarely the residents were portrayed as victim of violence, or simply as residents of the spaces and separate
24 entities from criminality, reproducing the same dynamics visible in the Brazilian media coverage of the favelas.
Completing the analysis of the context of the favelas, it is important to highlight the current political scenario in Brazil, as it is relevant in order to position the current articles here analyzed.
Since January 1st, Jair Bolsonaro is the new president of Brazil. Bolsonaro is a far-right conservative who has always been harsh in regards to the favelas, made racist comments (which is relevant as a the majority of casualties in the favelas are young black man), and claimed to free the country from the favelas and augment the power of action of the military police (Pilliphs T. 2019; Phillips D. 2019 c). This year, Bolosonaro was sentenced to pay a fine for making racist and homophobic comments such as: ‘[afro-decedents] don’t do anything! I don’t think they are even good for breeding anymore’ (O Globo, 2019).11 Moreover, already during the election campaign, Bolsonaro visited the BOPE
(Special Operations Batallion) and stated: “ the captains [of BOPE] are going to be in charge of Brazil” (Fenizola 2018). During his presidency, Bolsonaro repeatedly made comments such as:
‘“These guys [criminals] are going to die in the streets like cockroaches [if such protections are approved] – and that’s how it should be,” […]’ (Pilliphs T. 2019).
Moreover, in the same period a new city governor was put in place in Rio de Janeiro, Wilson Witzel. Witzel supports Bolsonaro, and shares many of his views on how to tackle criminality, being a strong supporter of giving more freedom of action to the military, and more impunity (Pilliphs T. 2019; Phillips D. 2019 c).
1.6 Conclusion
This theoretical framework offers the base of knowledge for the research. The academic works summarized here aim at explaining the working dynamics of foreign correspondence and the representation of the world, combined with the difficulty of representing marginalized communities. talk about power dynamics as it is done in this research. Power is seen as intertwined with the social, political and historical dynamics behind a marginalization of a community. The case study of the favelas is introduced in this section through a historical point of view, to understand the evolution of the discourse and its roots within the Carioca society.
25
2. Methodology
2.1 Sample Selection
To select the sample of international news articles to analyze for this research, it was necessary to rely on Rio On Watch as the online newspaper has a Facebook page on which it posts almost daily articles about the favelas published by international newspapers. In fact, the team of Rio On Watch looks at all the articles published by major newspapers about the favelas from international newspapers and rates the best and the worst in terms of accuracy and negative/positive framing of the articles. Moreover, Rio On Watch has a section on their website where it offers suggestions of better practices for international journalists that arise from the analysis of international coverage. Therefore, it was here considered a good source to find the greater number of publications necessary for this research. Only the articles that were specifically about the favelas of Rio de Janeiro were selected among the articles posted by Rio On Watch. In order to select properly, the introduction of the articles was read to make sure they indeed focused on the right subject.
The time frame chosen was from the 1st of January, when president Jair Bolsonaro took office, and the 3rd of June, when the proposal for this research was concluded. By starting from the beginning of Bolsonaro’s presidency, the publications all belong to the same political period, defined by Carvalho as ‘critical discursive moment’ (2008: p. 166), and reflected the implementation of Bolsonaro’s new public security policies. Not more than 33 articles were analyzed as most of the articles resembled each other in theme, tone and structure. Therefore, it was considered that adding more articles would probably not lead to new findings. Therefore, it was here considered more valuable to perform a more in depth analysis of a smaller sample size, instead of enlarging the sample size as a saturation of the findings could already be noticed (Wood & Kroger 2000: pp. 77-78). At the moment of the analysis of the article, some of the pieces previously selected before June 3rd were no longer available. Moreover, few articles were also discarded from the analysis as during a complete reading of the piece it was understood that they did not talk about the favelas or that they were in a video or audio format, which made them too different to analyze with the rest of the sample. Therefore, during the analysis of the articles occurred in August, 8 more articles were added from outside the time frame. In this search articles were found on Rio On Watch’s Facebook, but a search was also conducted directly on Reuters and Al Jazeera as they are more likely to publish about the topic due to their focus on global news.
2.2 Research Method
As this paper works with theories of power dynamics, language and the historical construction of the discourse in media in regard to marginalized communities, it was decided to follow Van Dijk’s
26 use of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) as method of research. According to Van Dijk: “Critical Discourse Analysis is a type of discourse analytical research that primarily studies the way social power abuse, dominance and inequality are enacted, reproduced and resisted by text and talk in the social and political context” (1995: p. 1). As Van Dijk states, when using this type of analysis method, the researcher already states a critical position towards the subject of analysis (1995: p. 1). This highlights the relevance of stating the positionality of the researcher in order to better understand what are the factors that lead the author to have a critical position towards the representation of the favelas in the media.
CDA looks specifically at power dynamics, and takes a strong historical look, and positions the texts in the historical, institutional and sociocultural contexts. Moreover, CDA of news items moves beyond the understanding of language as a descriptive tool and sees it as intertwined with issues of power and ideology present in news reports (Carvalho 2008: 162). As highlighted in the previous sections, the exercise of power through news media is fundamental to understand the dynamics of media coverage about the favelas.
Following Van Dijks’ and Carvalho’s highlight of the relevance of the historical timeline of discourse, this paper has highlighted the evolution of the way in which the favelas have been represented in Brazilian media. Moreover, both Van Dijk and Carvalho highlight the importance of taking into consideration the supra-textual elements , meaning elements beyond the specific items in the page such as political events, which is why the political position of Jair Bolsonaro and his new presidency have been introduced above (Carvalho 2008: p. 161; Van Dijk 1995).
According to Carvalho’s framework, these two main steps are followed: Textual Analysis and Contextual Analysis. The textual analysis looks at the layout and structural organization of the article, for example whether there are picture and where or if the quotes are put in bold and made stand out. Following, it looks at the object or topic of the article. This means understanding what the main focus is, whether it is a police intervention, the death of Marielle Franco, or other. Next is the analysis of themes, as in the general broad focus, for example if the article’s object is police intervention, the theme is violence. Language is one of the factors observed here, in order to identify recurrent rhetoric, and ways in which the author portrayed the event, for example whether an English translation was used for favelas, and what it implies. Always part of the textual analysis is identifying the discursive dynamics used by the author to convey a specific message, for instance in the article it is possible to see how numbers are used to reinforce certain quotes about rising violence or how victim’s quotes are put right next to the police’s ones to negatively portray armed forces. Finally, ideological standpoints are the overarching messages of the text, which help transmitting certain ideas making
27 them seem and feel natural, for example making it seem as if the militarization of the favelas is a necessary measure (Carvalho 2008: pp. 167-172).
Once this first phase is completed, the final step is the contextual analysis which consists in a comparative-synchronic analysis of the findings making overall considerations about the main differences and similarities in the themes and findings in general (Carvalho 2008: pp. 167-172).
In order to complete the textual analysis in an organized manner, a table was created with several variables to analyze the different elements of the articles. In a first reading of the article, these elements will be highlighted in order to give a first understanding of the factors that contribute to the construction of the discourse.
Table 1. Coding scheme Categories Variables Reporter Insider (Brazilian/fro m the favelas) Outsider Sources of the article News Agency Foreign Correspondent Journalist on place in the country/from the country Outlet Foreign Journalist based in the country Sources cited Police Officials Government officials Favela Residents NGO Local Media Other Article Type Short News Article Long News Article (500 + words) Long Read/Feature Object/The me Violence Related Non-Violence Related Role Favela Residents
Victims Perpetrators Other
Military Language
Present Non-Present Title Type Negative
Framing
Positive Framing
Neutral Other
The first step is to categorize understand the origin and role of the author of the article. This is to asses who is the author of the piece and their relationship and understanding of Brazil. In the theory section it was hypothesized that outsiders, meaning foreign journalists, would possibly have a
