Abstract

KOELZER, Larissa Papaleo  and  BOUSFIELD, Andréa Barbará da Silva. Social Representations of Social and Environmental Disasters in the Media. Rev. Subj. [online]. 2020, vol.20, n.2, pp.1-12. ISSN 2359-0769.  https://doi.org/10.5020/23590777.rs.v20i2.e9193.

In the last decades, the concern with environmental issues has gained worldwide visibility, with the planet's climate and its changes being one of the most debated subjects today. The resumption of the global debate is mainly due to the emergence of the theme of socio-environmental disasters. This research aimed to characterize the social representations of these disasters in the media. We sought to answer this objective through a retrospective documentary study, analyzing 264 reports from Veja magazine, published from 1968 to 2018, whose content evidenced the theme. The corpus was analyzed using a descending hierarchical classification. The social representation observed in Veja magazine presents representational aspects related to the dissemination of scientific knowledge, personal reports focused on tragedy and overcoming, and reports on political and economic issues related to disasters. It was also identified that, over the decades, there was a significant change in the approach to disasters. Above all, greater involvement of the role of society and governments giving more emphasis to the political and social issue. Even so, the social aspect could be debated deeply and more often so that it would not put aside until the next disaster. On the other hand, there is also widespread dissemination of a culture that considers most natural disasters just an expression of natural causes, disregarding social, political, and cultural factors.

Keywords : social representations; socio-environmental disasters; media.

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