“Advances and setbacks of racial quotas: an analysis of journalistic narratives in 2012”
affirmative action; quota law; narratives; media racism; journalism.
The thesis analyzes how major media outlets, Correio Braziliense, Folha de S. Paulo, and O Estado de S. Paulo, constructed and framed the process of institutionalizing affirmative action policies throughout 2012. To this end, we adopted the concept of the journalistic field as our theoretical-methodological framework, articulated with critical narrative analysis. We start from the premise that journalistic narratives are not neutral; rather, they reflect and reproduce positions situated within the political and symbolic disputes that permeate society.The investigation focuses on the narrative level, aiming to uncover the storyline produced by these newspapers in the face of the social and political conflict reignited by the Quota Law. In light of the notions of institutional racism and media racism, we examine how these narratives selected and shaped versions of events and, in some cases, perpetuated racist practices, even after the legal and institutional consolidation of this public policy.Our hypothesis maintains that the communicational strategies of these outlets were directly influenced by transformations in the political field, which reverberated in both the form and content of the messages delivered to their readership. By investigating these dynamics, we seek to understand not only the role of journalism in covering affirmative action policies but also its concrete implications for either reproducing or confronting racial inequalities in Brazil.