Comment’s anatomy: corruption, newscasts and audience

Abstract

Within corruption and media studies, this research study aims at identifying how
television pundits comment on two of the most mediatized corruption cases of the
past years (Freeport and Face Oculta), relating both news and opinion narratives, and acknowledging who is pundits imagined audience and how they position themselves in the democratic communicative process. Actors and institutions related with both cases were mainly debated from a strategy and performance angle; the definition of problems, explanations and recommendations were built from the establishment point of view, where inner conflicts and conflicts between different fields of power involved in both cases were also evident in the opinion sphere; whereas some pundits have articulated the intra and inter‑elite horizontal communication process together with the vertical communication process, comprising the general audience, this research study concluded that the opinion space it still a sector dominated by the traditional Portuguese elite, who communicates mostly to its inner circle, which means that this sector keeps a high level of immunity to social and media change. Analyzing both pundits narrative and rhetoric style also allowed one to understand better how power struggles are performed in the Portuguese public sphere.