Produção de riscos, consumo, necropolítica e desigualdades: expressividades midiáticas da pandemia no contexto brasileiro

Abstract

The new coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic produced and continues to produce, several meanings around the life of the Brazilian population, where the communication media remain present in the news about the developments of this situation. This study aims to analyze information conveyed in the context of the pandemic, seeking to understand and explain aspects anchored in the production of the speeches, the meanings produced, as well as the materialities expressed through consumption and accumulation behavior of the population, raised by the pandemic. Ten journalistic articles, published on the Internet between March and April 2020, were analyzed in the light of risk psychosociology, inspired by authors such as Ulrich Beck and Mary Jane Spink; consumer behavior, mainly from Jurandir Freire Costa, and under the necropolitics' lens of Achille Mbembe. The analyzed behaviors expose chronic social problems, where the exacerbated consumption seeks to sustain the illusory scenario of security face the advance of the virus, emptying shelves, in acts that neglect those who do not have financial resources to guarantee their inputs, operating in favor of necropolitical technologies. In media activity, there are incitements to consumption and amplification of the feeling of fear in the face of the supposed shortage announced.