Banca de DEFESA: CAROLINA LUIZA TELES RAMOS DE VASCONCELOS

Scientific dissemination in Jornal do Commercio: a study on the coverage of the triple epidemic of dengue, zika and chikungunya in Pernambuco

zika; dengue; chikungunya; scientific divulgation; journalism; health.

This paper makes a study about the scientific dissemination in the Press, using the context of the dengue, zika and chikungunya epidemic, in Brazil, among the years of 2015 and 2017 and, also, the discovery of the cases of microcephaly and other congenital malformations in babies caused by the virus of Zika. During this period, Pernambuco was the state in which attention turned due to the number of cases and the role of local scientists in undertaking research that could explain the causes and consequences of the triple epidemic. Based on the reflections on Bakhtin and Charaudeau's discourse, this study analyzes how the coverage of Pernambuco press was at the time. For this, the news and reports from Jornal do Commercio were selected in a period that comprises two years: from June 2015 to June 2017. Based on the work of selection and thematic categorization of the collected material, the objective was to identify which space was given to science in the periodical and which speeches on the subject of arboviruses were produced by Jornal do Commercio at the time. With the analysis, we observed that the coverage of the newspaper followed a logic aligned with the discourse coming from the health authorities of the state, without deepening the social issues that cause the mosquito’s proliferation, in addition to promoting an educational action, however superficial, which failed to provide a change in perspective in the treatment of science on the newspaper pages.