A imagem ambiental do Brasil no exterior por The Economist e The New York Times: uma análise de notícias (2019-2020)

Abstract

The purpose of this dissertation is to analyze the news from The Economist (United Kingdom) and The New York Times (United States) related to the theme of the environment, present in the agenda of the international community. The focus is on how such foreign media outline the environmental image of Brazil in the context of the Jair Bolsonaro Government (2019-2022). The successive burnings of the Amazon rainforest and the Pantanal in the country have attracted the attention of the external and foreign media, sensitive to the ongoing climate changes. In this sense, due to its ability to provide visibility and mobilize/influence internal and external public opinion on different subjects, the international media can operate as a “thermometer” (Marcelino, 2013, p. 102) of the public image of a State or government in the face of of a theme – in this case, the environment – informing about the meaning of the ongoing processes in the country (Lafer, 2004) regarding the agenda. Thus, the question that guides the research is: how was the environmental image of Brazil built abroad, in the period from 2019 to 2020, according to the news from foreign media The Economist and The New York Times? To answer the question, the qualitative, exploratory and documentary research is based on the news collected in the referred periodicals, submitted to the similarity analysis by the Iramuteq software and the method adopted is the discourse analysis, by Fairclough (2003, 1995, 1989) to understand the meaning of textual content. It is also a bibliographical research, as it is based on the bibliographic reference (doctrine and documents) of secondary sources of media authors and constructivist approach to international relations. In this sense, discussions about the role of the media as a maker of international public opinion and its discursive power in international relations are woven. Then there is the identification of selected foreign media and qualitative analysis of their reports. Finally, an analysis of the environmental image of Brazil conveyed by selected foreign media portals is carried out under the constructivist perspective, in which the discursive representations of the subjects are compared between the selected press portals in relation to Brazil in terms of the environment. It was concluded that in the period analyzed from 2019 to 2020, under the context of the Bolsonaro government, there was the construction of a discredited environmental image of Brazil, which did not convey confidence abroad, whether for political leaders, governmental and non-governmental organizations , as well as for the international market, concerned about the environment.