The Brazil that Jornal Nacional wants: dynamics of public agenda in the project “The Brazil That I want”

Abstract

Based on the agenda setting theory, which helps to understand the work of news selection and public opinion scheduling by the media, this paper analyzes the relationship between the news selection of Jornal Nacional, TV Globo, and the scheduling dynamics promoted by the project “The Brazil That I Want”. The aim of the project, which was shown in all Globo news programs during the 2018 election period, was to give people a voice in order to understand in which country the Brazilians would like to live. In this text, we intend to critically read the project, based on the hypothesis that the videos shown had a very close relationship with the news selection of the day, corresponding to an agenda of the newscast about Brazil, instead of being a space for the genuine projection of the public agenda. Empirically, the study developed a content analysis, based on the studies of Bardin (2011), which allowed the creation of thematic categories of organization of news and video contents, during a two-week period during the electoral campaign.