Media Parallelism Beyond the Political World: How Newspapers Push Economic Agendas Through Editorial Journalism

Abstract

Over the last decade, political communication research has scrutinized the characteristics of media systems beyond the developed world. To understand new façades in media/political connections, this article examines how the notion of parallelism unfolds in the O Estado de S. Paulo (OESP) editorials—one of the most influential Brazilian newspapers. We investigate (a) the arguments raised, (b) the policies suggested, and (c) the news companies’ evaluation of the political performance of the Lula, Temer, and Bolsonaro administrations regarding pension reform approval. A content analysis of 341 editorials revealed that the OESP adopts a parallelism that strays from the literature’s traditional definition. For the newspaper at stake, the contrasting ideologies underpinning the three governments matter less than their willingness—and political strength—to approve liberal economic reforms. The article reinforces its claim for de-Westernizing media research by empirically demonstrating singular dimensions of media parallelism that have not been fully explored to date.