How is Corruption Portrayed in the Brazilian Media? An Analysis of Corruption in News Portals and Twitter

Abstract

Considering that the media influence the construction and deconstruction of reality to operate in social narratives. This article analyzes the representation of corruption in the Brazilian media, especially in news portals and on Twitter. The main aim of the study is to capture the representation of corruption in contrast with the news portals and social media, in order to map the recurrences, scandals, actors involved, convergences, and divergences between the two communication vehicles. Results show that there is a different representation of corruption in the two kinds of media, which despite dialogizing with each other through the news grid, have different approaches. In the portals, corruption refers to the denunciation of scandals involving political actors and investigations, whereas on Twitter the phenomenon stands for morality, religiosity, party disputes, 2022 elections, and old scandals. The relevance of the study occurs when addressing the different forms that corruption takes in both environments.