Jornalismo policial e violência urbana: estigmatização das classes populares, repressão e controle social

Abstract

This thesis analyzes how the police journalism practiced by the newspaper O Estado do Maranhão discursively constructed the phenomenon of urban violence. Due to its interdisciplinary nature, the research is anchored in studies of the Sociology of Violence, which understands urban violence as a diffuse component that penetrates almost the entire social field; the Sociology of Journalism, which considers information as an object of dispute and social asymmetry; and Discourse Analysis, which elevates the text to the category of discourse with its forms of enunciation. In methodological terms, a random sample of editions of the aforementioned newspaper, published during the 2010s, was constituted and analyzed. The analysis highlighted two sets of discursive orders: on the one hand, the journalistic medium and its sensationalist way of spectacularizing urban violence; and, on the other, the stigmatization of social agents involved in situations of urban violence, as well as the maintenance of the image of the police as an institution of repression and social control.