The 2016 Presidential Impeachment in Brazil : An analysis of the coverage of protests pro and against in national newspapers

Sammanfattning: Scholars have long argued that mainstream media tends to illustrate protest events and protesters highlighting the aspects of drama, violence and deviant behaviour in the events (Harlow and Johnson, 2011: 1361). Such aspects are referred to as “protest paradigm” which can be considered as the patterns of coverage that expresses disapproval regarding protests (Lee, 2014: 2727). Many studies have investigated the international coverage of other nations’ protests (see Boyle et al, 2012; Harlow and Johnson, 2011; Lee, 2014), but not many have investigated how protests are covered in the national media. Moreover, studies on the protest paradigm have largely been applied in the Western context, leaving aside an opportunity to investigate the theory in other parts of the world. Therefore, relying on the protest paradigm theory, and focusing specifically on the marginalization elements that constitute the paradigm, the present study analysed the characteristics of the Brazilian newspapers’ coverage of the protests that took place during president Dilma Rousseff’s impeachment process. Hence, to fill such research gaps, this study investigated two of the most read Brazilian daily newspapers, Folha de São Paulo and O Estado de São Paulo with the help of Content Analysis and Critical Discourse Analysis. The analysis helped establishing to which extent the newspapers covered the protests for or against ousting of president Dilma Rousseff, and whether they positioned themselves for or against the impeachment. Finally, the present study raised important results such as: both newspapers devoted more than half of the coverage to articles about protests supporting president Dilma’s impeachment and most importantly, that they took a position regarding the impeachment process, although not in an obvious and explicit way.