The discovery of Brasil in the Portuguese press: looking at the future

Abstract

The present paper has two main aims. The first aim is to describe the image of the Commemoration of the 500 years of the discovery of Brasil transmitted through the Portuguese press between 1999 and 2000: contents, sources and subjects that were privileged in the texts published, in order to examine themes and main characters as well as those that remained in the shadow. The second aim was to examine the treatment given to the articles published, once it is possible to organise our narratives in very different ways. This second aim was accomplished through Moscovici's (1976) proposal that identifies three communicator modalities--diffusion, propagation and propaganda--a useful framework to study the different treatment given to the texts published by newspapers. The present paper presents the analyses run on every text published between January 1st 1999 and July 30th 2000 in four Portuguese newspapers concerning the discovery of Brasil and the Commemoration of its 500 years. Two of these newspapers are daily papers (Público and Correio da Marthã) and the other two are weekly newspapers (O Expresso and O Independente). The total number of articles published by these newspapers during this period was 528, and these texts were analysed with the same list of categories used in a Brazilian sample of newspaper articles.

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.17575/rpsicol.v17i2.454