Against stigmas and generalizations: the right to speak and the strategies of erasure and invisibility of the otherness in journalistic narratives

Abstract

In this article, we developed a critical observation about the identity representativeness of otherness in the media from a transdisciplinary approach. We start from sociological and cultural analysis of the engineering of consent system in which journalistic practice is inserted to identify structures underlying it. Methodologically, our approach follows the structuralism paradigm. Then, we compared the treatment and construction of the subject’s ethos in two reports: the first, an unfolding of the rupture of the Vale dam, in the municipality of Brumadinho – Brazil, showing how the mining company’s victims were presented in the narrative; the second, a profile of Ricardo Corrêa da Silva, pejoratively called Fofão da Augusta, due to his physical characteristics (similar to those of a stereotyped character on Brazilian television) and to his habit of frequenting the famous São Paulo’s street (Rua Augusta). In the end, we propose a discussion about the possibilities including the sidelined subject, the other, showing that he can be individualized and that this avoids prejudiced stereotyping.