Media Representations of Race Cue the State of Media Opening in Brazil

Tania Cantrell Rosas-Moreno

Abstract


This study examines non-white candidate textual and visual framing (Reese, 2003) in the context of a local election, as informed by print national press and a telenovela, to assess the current state of media opening in Brazil. It analyzes a sample of 313 newspaper and newsmagazine reports and 292 photos concurrent with when municipal campaigns were gearing up for October 2008 elections to determine how Brazilian leaders and local election candidates are framed. Likewise, this study examines 31 episodes of the concurrent TV Globo 8 p.m. telenovela Duas Caras to understand telenovela local election candidate portrayal. Two salient latent frames surface: One is Brazilian democracy is more social than racial. The other is Black men can succeed. Together, these two frames indicate that telenovelas are more progressive storytellers than print national news.

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