A ocupação pela TV : mediações televisivas e a operação das forças de segurança pública no complexo de favelas do Alemão e Vila Cruzeiro

Abstract

In contemporary democratic societies, fear has produced important effects in the ways public perceives issues related to crime and public safety. More than a simple emotion, in such societies the fear of crime became a perspective, a take-for-granted form through which people see the world, define reality in which they live and direct their conducts. Under the guidance of Symbolic Interactionism, this work analyzes the role of mass media in this changing process of fear of crime in a way to comprehend the world. The media are understood as privileged symbolic sources by which the public defines situations and constructs the reality. The mediation between the representations of crime in the media and the perceptions of the audience is made by communicational formats based on fear and insecurity prospects, which, according to sociologist David Altheide, leads to a social process he calls "politics of fear": the naturalization of a definition of reality in which crime is perceived as a factor out of control, a constant threat to the personal safety of individuals who, in turn, begin to demand government interventions tougher e more punitive in relation to crime, and support typical measures of penal populism. In order to identify the existence of characteristic elements of this process in Brazil is made an interpretive analytics of the TV Globo coverage of police occupation of Alemão and Vila Cruzeiro slums in Rio de Janeiro in 2010. The research approach follows the set of methodological guidelines suggested by David Altheide to the realization of what he calls "Ethnographic Analysis of Documents", and leads to the conclusion that the fear of crime occupies important place in the brazilian public's perception of reality, what reflects on important aspects of social life, notably in State‘s actions in public safety.