WHOSE SIDE IS THE PRESS ON? Political Parallelism of Print Newspapers During the Bolsonaro Government.

• Grant number: 24/00767-4
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: June 01, 2024
• End date: December 31, 2024
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Political Science
• Principal Investigator: Gleidylucy Oliveira da Silva
• Grantee: Eduardo Felipe Pagnan Vieira
• Host Institution: Centro de Educação e Ciências Humanas (CECH). Universidade Federal de São Carlos (UFSCAR). São Carlos , SP, Brazil

Abstract

The press in Brazil has been considered a significant political actor, particularly due to its political parallelism with liberal-conservative forces throughout its development in the 20th century and the first decades of the 21st century (Azevedo, 2017; Oliveira, 2017). However, Bolsonaro's election demands a continued analysis of this relationship. Given that he is a president classified on the far-right spectrum (Casarões; Barros Leal Farias, 2022), his contentious interactions with the press, characterized by attacks and attempts at delegitimization (Mazzoleni, 2014; Becerra, 2023), strain the prevailing explanation among the political parallelism of mainstream media and liberal-conservative ideas. Thus, the following project aims to understand how the national Mainstream Press - represented by major newspapers - positioned itself regarding the Bolsonaro government and its political agenda through the analysis of editorials published during this period. To support this proposal, this research project employs a combination of computational tools, including programming language (R) for initial data collection and analysis, as well as closed and human-coded software (Iramuteq and MAXQDA) for more qualitative and content analyses through lexicometry and Content Analysis, thereby enabling the analysis of a large N (big data). Finally, this project aims to contribute to contemporary debates about the mainstream press and its agency as a political actor, demonstrating the vitality and permeability of the concept of political parallelism in understanding the challenges of contemporary Brazilian democracy