Além do que se vê: transformações dos sentidos e dos imaginários da morte na circulação midiática sobre as mortes por Covid-19

Abstract

This dissertation investigates how the media circulation about deaths by Covid-19 transforms the meanings and imaginaries of death and how the mediatization logics are mobilized in the representation of death. The choice of this problem is due to the importance of discussing the impacts that were caused by the Covid-19 virus in Brazil, which had its first appearance in March 2020. In the Brazilian scenario, the virus, in addition to triggering major problems in the field of health, it also caused an alarming number of deaths, emphasizing the gaps in the economic, social, and mainly political scenario. In this way, this research reinforces the role of communication in the face of an event that affected all social areas. To explore this study, the news portals G1 and Folha de São Paulo will be used as research objects, along with the Instagram profile COVID Photo Brazil, which presents a diary of the pandemic in Brazil. Faced with a complex event, the empirical materials will be explored and analyzed together with theoretical studies of mediatization (Couldry and Hepp, 2020; Fausto, 2009), of the event (França, 2012; Verón, 1995), of death (Elias, 2001; Ariès, 1982), circulation (Rosa, 2019; Ferreira, 2017), image and imaginary (Rosa, 2008; Said and Calado, 2021). As a result, it can be understood that from the production of news and publications on Instagram, the images stood out and influenced the construction of different media imaginaries.