Junho de 2013: imagens de um Brasil em disputa

Abstract

This thesis argues that the June 2013 demonstrations were an extremely visual event and that images played a fundamental role in their unfolding. The study is based on the analysis of the photographic images produced and published by the three largest newspapers in the country - O Globo, Folha de São Paulo and Estado de São Paulo - and by the media activist collective Mídia Ninja, taken as representative of the media activist groups that participated in the demonstrations. Two main hypotheses are postulated. In the first place, seeking to escape the polarization that predominates in the public and academic debate on the theme, it is argued that June was a multifaceted, contradictory, multicausal and polysemic event, and that this is due, at least in part, to the way images gained centrality in its course. The demonstrations were the meeting point of social groups of very different origins, motivations, and interests, not infrequently conflicting, that, long before 2013, showed signs of dissatisfaction and that, in a context of social effervescence, were decisively stimulated to participation by images. Produced, disseminated, and shared by the thousands, the images were instruments of information, denunciation, mobilization, sensitization, and affirmation of values. But they were also the object of dispute. The use of them to portray what was happening in the streets, who was in them, and what was being demanded, gave rise to a true communicational battle, led, on the one hand, by the hegemonic media, and, on the other, by media activist groups and independent demonstrators. It is precisely in this sense that the second hypothesis is stated: the battle to which it refers reflected not only a confrontation between distinct media models, but also the conflicting encounter between incongruous ways of conceiving, narrating, and representing politics, society, and the nation. While the traditional media, in a first moment, condemned the protests and, after their massification, started to portray the most conservative groups as their protagonists, the media activist groups - Mídia Ninja in particular - opted for a narrative of valorization of the protests and subaltern groups. Understanding, therefore, how this dispute over the meanings of June took place through images constitutes the major objective of this work.