Elos, temporalidades e narrativas: a experiência contemporânea do medo no jornalismo de O Globo

Abstract

fear under the phenomenological perspective of the French philosopher Paul Ricoeur, on the basis of 27 police reports published by Rio's newspaper O Globo in 2003 is the theme of this dissertation. The narrative analysis focuses on the first five days of the press covering of an assault to a subway station in Tijuca, in which died Gabriela do Prado Ribeiro, 14 year-old, and of a bullet attack against Estácio de Sá University in Rio Comprido, in which left wounded the student Luciana de Novais, 19 year-old then. Crimes had occurred in March 25th and May 5th, 2003. This dissertation evidences mnemonic bonds established by writing and editing links in order to produce an effect of continuum narrative, in a sensationalist way, specially based on fear. It emphasizes the similarity between space and time configurations in both coverages, reminding feelings of fragility in urban environment, fear of death, uprising and the other, identified as the drug dealer. The way the newspaper articulates temporally urban experience in Rio points out to an understanding of the past as a time of naive crimes, opposed to an increasingly violent future and a present in suspension. It highlights the use that this newspaper does to a series of elements concerning violence, that belong to the imaginary of Rio's elites, its conflicts with other social groups and its worldview in order to configurate its mediatic fears. The main resources are the concepts of memory and threefold mimesis (prefigurating, configuration and transfiguration or refiguration), with emphasis in the conduction from the prefigured world to the narrative configuration. The conclusion is that mediatic fear works as a kind of memory device in the dispute and maintenance of one determined shared symbolic structure by part of Rio' s inhabitants.