Autonomia relativa e disputa por hegemonia na televisão pública: a participação dos movimentos sociais na TV Brasil

Abstract

This dissertation analyses the participation of social movements in the television news programme of the Brazilian public television, TV Brasil, in order to think about the relative autonomy of this broadcasting station and the possibilities of dispute for hegemony through and inside it. It starts based on Marxist authors regarding the determinations and reproductions of the Cultural Industry in the democratic capitalist context as well as regarding the possibilities for resistance and contestation in this sphere. With the purpose of comprehending the particularities of the domination and dispute processes in Brazil, a brief historical reconstitution of the development of the communication system in the country is also presented, pointing the marketing and political influences as well as situating the public model in this context. From the theoretical reflections and the historical contextualization, there is an attempt to understand the configuration of TV Brasil and its managing company, Empresa Brasil de Comunicação (EBC). In this sense, the institutional design of the company and the forces that conform and transform the inside of TV Brasil are addressed, especially regarding the telejournalism production, in order to empirically analyze the way in which the relative autonomy is established and how the disputes for hegemony are exercised. Thus, the study moves from a macro perspective to a micro observation, by including the analysis of the main instance of participation from the civil society in the EBC – the Board of Trustees – and the, a priori, less autonomous field – the journalistic one –, causing tension, thereby, between the determinations and the resistances. In this way, the results of the documentary research, interviews, content analysis of the Board of Trustees meetings are presented, with the objective of explaining its configuration, its dynamics and its influences on journalism. While in the journalistic field, field research is adopted – with interviews, the application of questionnaires, and observations – associated with the classic theories about journalism and the audiovisual material analysis of the reports about social movements in Repórter Brasil – the main news programme from TV Brasil. With the aim of enriching the observation and adding a relational perspective to the content analysis, as well as considering the influences of the commercial model in the conception of the Brazilian journalism, the results of Repórter Brasil was compared with the coverage done by Jornal Nacional, in the same period. It was possible, with theses theoretical reflections and empirical observations, to notice a correlation between organized civil society participation, relative autonomy of the channel and possibilities of dispute for hegemony. In the same way, a correlation between institutional configuration and conflicts in the journalistic production and displayed content were noticed.