Representation of poverty by the on-line media

Abstract

The subject in this study is the linguistic-discursive representation of poverty by online media. The theoretical and methodological support used is that of Critical Discourse Analysis (FAIRCLOUGH, 2001) and the transitivity system of the Systemic Functional Grammar (HALLIDAY; MATTHIESSEN, 2004). The corpus comprises ten stories published between May and November 2011 in online editions of renowned Brazilian newspapers: Zero Hora, Correio do Povo, O Globo, O Estado de São Paulo and Folha de São Paulo. Two news were selected from each newspaper and submitted to a qualitative, interpretative analysis. Initially, how each newspaper represents poverty was identified, and then it was observed how online media represents poverty. We found three representations for poverty: as an object susceptible to human action, as an entity that acts on individuals, and as a situation faced by many people.