Discursos de actores sociais sobre alterações climáticas

Que discursos sobre as alterações climáticas são formulados por diferentes actores sociais em Portugal? Que visões e propostas são avançadas face ao problema? A construção social das alterações climáticas depende da informação, argumentos e perspectivas disseminadas por cientistas, Governo, ONGs e outras entidades. Este capítulo produz uma análise da forma como vários actores sociais ‘pensam’ as alterações climáticas e os riscos e responsabilidades associados à questão. Centrando-se sobre a documentação disponível no ciberespaço português, o capítulo recorre à análise de conteúdo e à análise de discurso para examinar comparativa -mente o que dizem diferentes entidades e conclui que as alterações climáticas são construídas sob o prisma dos discursos do desenvolvimento sustentável e da modernização ecológica numa abordagem predominantemente técnico-gestionária.'A Política das Alterações Climáticas: Discursos e Representações’, financiado pela Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (POCI/COM/56973/2004

Angolan politics and the portuguese press : media-politics interaction in a context of political crisis

The goal of this paper is to examine the role of the Portuguese press in Angolan political dynamics during 1991/1992 and in the political relations between Portugal and Angola at two main levels: the effects of press on political decision-making and on political action and the ways political actors use the media. In order to fulfill these objectives I interviewed about 20 Portuguese and Angolan political decision-makers, diplomats and journalists, and analyzed around 200 news articles. The views of those politicians and journalists about the interaction between media and politics will be presented in the paper

Ideological cultures and media discourses on scientific knowledge

Prova tipográfica (In Press)Focusing on the representation of climate change in the British “quality press,” this article argues that the discursive (re)construction of scientific claims in the media is strongly entangled with ideological standpoints. Understood here as a set of ideas and values that legitimate a program of action vis-à-vis a given social and political order, ideology works as a powerful selection device in deciding what is scientific news, i.e. what the relevant “facts” are, and who are the authorized “agents of definition” of science matters. The representation of scientific knowledge has important implications for evaluating political programs and assessing the responsibility of both governments and the public in addressing climate change.Universidade do Minho.Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia.Centro de Ciências Históricas e Sociais da Universidade do Minho

Discourse analysis and media texts: a critical reading of analytical tools

Comunicação apresentada na International Conference on Logic and Methodology - International Sociology Association, 33, Germany, Köln, 3-6 October 2000.Under the label of discourse theory and analysis we can find a vast number of standpoints and research programmes. The aims, assumptions and conceptual tools of different works vary widely, with important consequences for the outcomes of research. The main aim of the paper is to discuss and critically assess various strands of discourse analysis and their applicability to media discourse, as well as to present some results of a study of the British press representation of climate change. I will draw on a range of authors such as van Dijk, Fairclough and Gamson, who have promoted discourse analyses of the media, and Hajer and Liftin, who have used discursive approaches to investigate policy-making on environmental issues. A multifaceted analysis of news texts will be conducted. The combination of a theoretical critique with empirical work will lead to proposing a re-assessment and revision of various models. The empirical basis of the paper is a corpus of over 2 000 articles published in the Guardian, Times and Independent between the mid-eighties and 1997

Audiências, usos e práticas sociais

A noção de audiência - da co-presença espácio-temporal à presença media(tiza)da. Do que os media fazem às pessoas àquilo que as pessoas fazem com os media. O papel da opinião pública

Techno-scientific control or apocalypse? Media visions of man’s relationship with nature

Paper presented at the Workshop 3 of the AHRC Research Network – The Cultural Framing of Environmental Discourse – on ‘Normalizing Catastrophe’, University of Bath, 16-17 June 2011At a time when humanity’s possibility of knowing and intervening upon the world is greater than ever, the public face of science, as constructed by the media, is a sort of collective mirror. By looking into it, we should be able to (re)discover our vision of the future and (re)make our choices. This paper focuses on media representations of science, technology and the environment and assesses how Man’s relation with nature is constructed. Empirical data consists of reports from BBC online, one of the world’s most popular information websites, over the course of several years. I argue that there is a dual picture of our relation with nature in the media. On the one hand, an image of unrelenting scientific progress associated to the idea of conquest and control is put forward by news on genetics research, biological engineering, astrophysics and space exploration. Our capacity to understand and manipulate the body is regularly highlighted in the media. Also, the human possibility of observing and acting upon life is stretched to other species, with animals often being the protagonists of technical experiments, such as when genetic crossing yields a new type of fish. Moreover Planet Earth is no longer the limit as reports on astronomy and space exploration enhance an image of visibility and dominion at the universe level: we can examine other worlds in detail and send probes to other planets. On the other hand, there is an image of imminent environmental tragedy, possibly of cataclysmic proportions. The threats of biodiversity depletion and climate change, for example, with associated sea-level rise, widespread disease and the possibility of mass extinction of species, are often brought into sight as the possibilities of detecting and modelling them become more sophisticated. In short, science, technology and ‘progress’ appear to be leading to a near-omniscient humankind but also imperilling its mere survival. Such strong sense of awareness of our damaging impact on nature, coupled with the immense knowledge and manipulation skills mentioned above, appear profoundly contradictory and call for reconciliation

Media(ted) discourse and society: rethinking the framework of critical discourse analysis

The analysis of journalistic discourse and its social embeddedness has known significant advances in the last two decades, especially due to the emergence and development of Critical Discourse Analysis. However, three important aspects remain under-researched: the time plane in discourse analysis, the discursive strategies of social actors, and the extra- and supra-textual effects of mediated discourse. Firstly, understanding the biography of public matters requires a longitudinal examination of mediated texts and their social contexts but most forms of analysis of journalistic discourse do not account for the time sequence of texts and its implications. Secondly, as the media representation of social issues is, to a large extent, a function of the discursive construction of events, problems and positions by social actors, the discursive strategies that they employ in a variety of arenas and channels ‘‘before’’ and ‘‘after’’ journalistic texts need to be examined. Thirdly, the fact that many of the modes of operation of discourse are extra- or supra-textual calls for a consideration of various social processes ‘‘outside’’ the text. This paper aims to produce a theoretical and methodological contribution to the integration of these issues in discourse analysis by proposing a framework that combines a textual dimension with a contextual oneCOMPETE: POCI-01-0145-FEDER-00756

Análises de discurso em política ambiental: conceitos, instrumentos e implicações

O campo da análise de discurso propõe conceptualizações e instrumentos que em muito contribuem para compreender a construção e funcionamento das realidades políticas. Com base na comparação de três abordagens a questões de política ambiental, este artigo sugere uma reflexão sobre a diversidade de perspectivas e pressupostos teóricos neste campo. Começa-se por debater a noção de discurso adoptada por diferentes autores, seguindo-se uma análise da relação entre agentes e estruturas. Os conceitos empregues nesta área como instrumentos analíticos, tais como ‘frame’, história e ‘story-line’, merecerão uma atenção detalhada. Finalmente ilustra-se o valor da teoria e análise de discurso para analisar práticas e processos políticos

‘‘Governmentality” of climate change and the public sphere

Comunicação apresentada no Seminário Internacional "Prova científica e justiça internacional : disputas e paradoxos na protecção ambiental e comércio internacional", Universidade do Minho, Braga, 12 de Abril 2005.The paper discusses the politics of climate change from the emergence of the problem as a public issue to the development of a form of ‘governmentality’ that implicates science, economic enterprises and individuals. I aim to understand the role of the media – as the main arena of the contemporary public sphere – in the construction and maintenance of various forms of power-knowledge. The paper starts by analysing the position of science in the management of climate change and points out that while it shaped the media’s framing of the issue in the early years, politicians and other social actors later attempted to appropriate science as a legitimatory tool for options of regulation or deregulation. I then discuss the cultural and political roles of economic growth in democratic societies and its articulation within discourses on environmental protection. This is followed by an analysis of discourses on globalization and how they are embedded in the science and politics of the greenhouse effect. Finally, the paper looks at the paradoxical positioning of citizens in relation to the greenhouse effect and concludes that discourses on techno-science, sustainable development/ecological modernization and globalization have contributed to the privatization and dissemination of responsibility and weakened the political debate in the public sphere