News framing and narrative construction of Dilma Rousseff's impeachment in the newspapers Folha de S. Paulo, Estado de S. Paulo and O Globo

Abstract

This article analyzes how the narrative of Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff’s impeachment was constructed in the main Brazilian newspapers, evaluating both categories of the narrative and the news framing. The corpus consists of 2,272 news stories published by the three major Brazilian newspapers from the beginning of the procedure – December 2015 - to the definitive removal of Dilma Rousseff – August 2016. Using content analysis, we found that the prevailing judgment of the journalistic narrative blamed Ms. Rousseff and allies. There was a prominence of the idea that impeachment was the best solution. In relation to the identification of narrative roles, we noticed that the political actors related to Rousseff obtained greater prominence as victims or villains (not heroes). Finally, we conclude that journalism has not been able to escape everyday political narratives and could not demonstrate the real magnitude and complexity of this political event.