“Cabulosa inversão, jornal distorção": uma pesquisa participante sobre as produções de sentidos de jovens frente ao discurso midiático criminal

Abstract

Media representations cross our lives and contribute to the production of our subjectivities. In Brazil, despite its particularities, the hegemonic media represents a political and economic power that ideologically uses the media discourse as a strategy for maintaining social order. The criminalization of certain social segments has been an important tool used in the production of consensus and in the perpetuation of subjective adherence to barbarism. In particular, when we refer to the reality of young people inserted in territories marked by poverty and criminalization, we must ask ourselves about the consequences of what we call criminal media discourse in their lives. Therefore, we propose to analyze the meanings produced by young people inserted in a context of violence and criminality in relation to this media discourse. This study is a participatory research, as suggested by the Colombian sociologist Orlando Fals-Borda, also based on Mikhail Bakhtin's concepts of language, dialogism and polyphony. The research was made in a period of 18 months, considering the insertion processes in the field, the approach, the negotiation of meetings with the research participants and the realization of seven discussion groups with six young people aged between 14 and 16 years. The approach with the young participants was made by contact with a local Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) in dialogue with the Reference Center for Social Assistance (CRAS). For the realization of the discussion groups, parts from journalistic programs from different media were selected, in which young people were associated with episodes involving acts considered as criminals. Subsequently, the material was discussed with the research subjects in the groups. From the dialogues made by the young people with the content presented, we observed that, according to them, the media discourse ignores the life stories of the subjects represented in the reports, producing violence and reifying the stereotype about the so-called “bandits” and “good citizens”. We also found that a power of indignation is produced, however, it may not find space for expression and action in the face of this cycle of criminalization and violence that is experienced in daily life by young people and expressed through the experiences of racism, police violence and humiliation. However, despite media violence, young people build forms of resistance based on a movement of creativity and restlessness, signaling the existence of alternative media that can contribute to emancipatory processes.