A "nova política" na mídia: discursos da imprensa brasileira sobre um candidato "não político"

Abstract

In 2016, Brazil was experiencing moments of effervescence in its political history: major corruption investigations, protests and President Dilma Rousself's controversial impeachment process. All this, spectacularized by the media, contributed to reinforce discourses of rejection to the political class. That year, elections would take place in public executive and legislative positions within the Brazilian states and municipalities. To conduct an effective campaign in such a scenario, it is not surprising that many candidates have invested in building a self-image representing a “new politics”. So did João Doria, candidate for mayor of the São Paulo city who, being better known in his career as a businessman in private enterprise than for his actions in public life, chose to repeat tirelessly that he was not a politician but a “manager”. Given this electoral strategy, media coverage may or may not adhere to labels created by the candidate during the campaign. In dealing with political agents and events in the electoral context, the major media of the national press addressed aspects and facets of these agents and events and thus contributed to the construction of certain events and certain meanings. The events and meanings produced could have been different, if the ideological positions were different, the aspects and other focused dimensions of the involved subjects in that electoral campaign were different, and the resumption, reformulation and erasure operations were still others. The same for the refutation of the memories inscribed in the constitution of that electoral context. It is from this assumption that we are proposing here a better understand what the great vehicles of the national press are talking about when dealing with João Dória's campaign. In the midst of this purpose, we also intend to describe and interpret the ways of saying that characterize the media statements in which the discourses of the great press materializes. Therefore, our work is based on the postulates of Discourse Analysis of Michel Pechêux and his group. It is also on this basis that we extend our reflection to the analysis of the comments of the readers of these press texts dealing with João Dória, as a candidate and as elected, also seeking to understand the properties of what is said in these comments and their ways of saying it. In this way, we will consider the relations between politics, media and society from the discursive perspective. More attention will be given to the recurrence of statements that theorize the alleged non-political condition claimed by Doria himself, the press mentions of his social class and the reception of these statements by readers. For this, our object of study will be the media utterances extracted from texts of major press communication vehicles. The material that makes up the corpus includes, in addition to texts from the journalistic sphere - from the Folha de São Paulo and GGN newspapers, and from the IstoÉ and Carta Capital magazines - the comments posted by the readers of these newspapers and magazines. Through our analysis of these data, we believe to be possible to support the thesis that the mediatization of politics has as its counterpoint the politicization of the media and society. More precisely, the last one comprises both political awareness and a more or a less direct action in public life, when it contributes to the consolidation of anti-political discourses and the depletion of public space.