Journalism and political public sphere: critical monitoring of communication freedoms and other principles of the free press in Brazil

• Grant number: 15/20163-7
• Support Opportunities: Regular Research Grants
• Start date: February 01, 2016
• End date: January 31, 2018
• Field of knowledge: Applied Social Sciences - Communications - Theory of Communication
• Principal Investigator: Vitor Souza Lima Blotta
• Grantee: Vitor Souza Lima Blotta
• Host Institution: Escola de Comunicações e Artes (ECA). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• City of the host institution: São Paulo
• Associated researchers: Esther Solano Gallego

Abstract

This project aims to develop a research line in the group Journalism, Law and Freedom, a transdisciplinary group newly registered in the Department of Journalism and Publishing at the School of Communications and Arts and the Institute for Advanced Study at the University of Sao Paulo. The research line is called "Monitoring critical press on legislation in Brazil and the state's duty to inform." This line seeks to give continuity to my investigations about human rights discourses in the media, although now in a larger group, and focusing on monitoring the ethics and legal rules related to journalism, the media and public communication, including freedom of information, and the States duties well informing the public. The methodology advances previous doctoral and postdoctoral studies conducted at the University of São Paulo, with internships at JW Goethe University of Frankfurt and the University of Nottingham, and promotes content analysis of news and articles published in the press and state communication channels, having as criteria the normative claims of informative and economic discourses, and moral-political and cultural and expressive discourses. The project analyzes discourses published in printed formats, digital, television and other media outlets. The theoretical bases are classics in the theory of communication, journalism and the public sphere, such as Lippmann, Koselleck and Habermas, in dialogue with national and international interlocutors, such as Rainer Forst, Klaus Günther Julian Petley Des Freedman, Wilson Gomes, Rousiley Maia, Venício of Lima and Mayra Rodrigues Gomes, among others. The hypothesis is that discourse analysis of social and state actors in the press about communication freedoms, normative standards of journalism and the state's duty to inform, can give access to the main features of the legitimacy of those principles. With these analyzes, we can provide diagnoses of the Brazilian public sphere, distinguishing the tangled claims and problematizations that social and state actors vociferate about journalism and communication freedoms. (AU)