Healthcare-associated infections and media narratives in Brazil: political discourse, commotion and epistemological aspects

• Grant number: 21/04551-8
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: September 01, 2021
• End date: August 31, 2022
• Field of knowledge: Health Sciences - Medicine
• Principal Investigator: Carlos Magno Castelo Branco Fortaleza
• Grantee: Laís Ferreira Oliveira
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Medicina (FMB). Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus de Botucatu. Botucatu , SP, Brazil

Abstract

This project aims to analyze media narratives about the occurrence of Related Infections to Health - IRAS in Brazil. In this sense, we built our analysis from the following axes: the way in which the public sphere is affected by these narratives; the commotion impulsed by news about this topic; the spread of opinions about IRAS and how they affect the public credibility of science and epistemology in the country. For that, we started from the analysis of the repercussion of Tancredo Neves' death in the press - and the hypothesis of nosocomial infection raised at the time; contemporary reverberation of the IRAS in the main newspapers of the five macro-regions Brazil; and how media narratives created contribute to the acceptance and public credibility of the science. Furthermore, we analyze the influences of the spread of scientific discourse on media on science concepts, regarding epistemological elements. To discuss the mechanisms and impacts of IRAS in the public sphere, we return the theories of Michel Foucault (2012; 2014) on the relationship between discourse and power; Judith Butlher's (2015) thinking about commotion; and the work of James Robert Brown (2004) about the epistemology of science, among other authors. (AU)