A imagem pública de Bolsonaro na gestão da pandemia de COVID-19 sob a ótica de veículos de imprensa internacionais

Abstract

The objective of this work is to analyze titles and subtitles of articles published in international newspapers in order to identify the public image built for the Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro, under the socio-historical context of the Covid-19 pandemic. For this purpose, three media outlets were selected, the American newspaper The New York Times and the French newspaper Le Monde, and the Chinese news agency Xinhua, from which we extracted publications that cited the ruler of Brazil. The Covid-19 pandemic began in January 2020 and by the end of 2021 had caused the death of about 5 million people worldwide, more than 600,000 in Brazil alone. This period proved to be a challenge for everyone, especially for government officials who had to quickly devise control strategies for the unexpected health crisis. Observing this context, we applied the Discourse Analysis methodology of the French school to analyze the meanings attributed to the actions of the Brazilian president, through journalistic discourses from other countries. This analysis reveals that Bolsonaro had his public image deteriorated during the pandemic, when he was often portrayed in a negative light, presented as a negligent manager. The Brazilian population also received negative representations, being occasionally identified as a victim of the lack of diligence of its head of government.