Mass media influence in Dilma Rousseff’s impeachment

Importance. Nowadays, the mass media are an important tool of the political process, influencing the formation of political preferences of citizens, as well as playing the role of coordinator of information flows.

The purpose of the research is to determine the influence of the mass media on the impeachment of Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff in 2016. In Russian historiography, quite little attention is paid to the place of the media in the impeachment process, hence the importance of its study.

Materials and methods. The analysis of publications affiliated with the largest Brazilian media concern “Grupo Globo” mass media, as well as influential newspapers “Folha de São Paulo” and “Estado de São Paulo”, a comparative analysis of political events in Brazil and their assessments in the media.

Result and Discussion. It is established that the leading Brazilian mass media regularly published materials about the inefficiency of the authorities’ activities without attempting to objectively assess it: the complex nature of political events and problems in the country was ignored, readers’ opinion was formed about the allegedly universal nature of discontent with the president and the inevitability of impeachment, despite the preservation of Dilma Rousseff’s significant number of supporters.

Conclusion. According to the results of the research, it can be noted that the owners of the largest Brazilian media consistently defended their own interests and did not fail to use the opportunity to push the objectionable center-left Workers’ Party from power in order to avoid the risks of economic policy unfavorable to the oligarchy within the country.

1. Okuneva L.S. (2019). Brazil: radicalization of the political process (2013–2019). Iberoamerikanskie tetradi [Ibero-American Notebooks], no. 3, pp. 7-11. (In Russ.) https://doi.org/10.46272/2409-3416-2019-3-7-11

2. Reginaldo Prandi, Joao Luiz Carniero. (2018). Emnomedo P: Justificativas do voto dos deputados federais evangélicos e não evangélicos na abertura do impeachment de Dilma Rousseff. Revista Brasileira de Ciências Sociais, vol. 33, no. 96. (In Por.) https://doi.org/10.17666/339603/2018

3. Teun A. Van Dijk. (2017). How Globo media manipulated the impeachment of Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff. Discourse and Communication, vol. 11, no. 2, pp. 199-229. https://doi.org/10.1177/1750481317691838

4. Tiago Roberto Pinheiro. José Carlos Vieira. (2018). A mídia brasileira no impeachment de Dilma Rousseff. Caderno da Escola Superior de Gestão Pública, Política, Jurídica e Segurança, vol. 1, no. 2, pp. 151-180. (In Por.). Disponível: https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/268170481.pdf

5. Francisco Paulo Jamil Marques, Camila Mont’Alverne, Isabele Mitozo. (2019). Editorial journalism and political interests: Comparing the coverage of Dilma Rousseff’s impeachment in Brazilian newspapers. Journalism, vol. 22, issue 11, рр. 2816-2835. https://doi.org/10.1177/1464884919894126