The Black Press in Brazil: framing analyses of the content produced by the websites Correio Nagô, Mundo Negro and Nação ZABSTRACT
This paper aims to analyze the Black Press in Brazil and its role in the production of journalistic narratives from the perspective of Blackness, understanding the contemporary Black Press based on the fact of the content it produces, as well as based on content analysis and framing analysis. To this end, bibliographical and documentary research was carried out on Blackness and the Black Press, as well as an analysis of the content produced by the websites Correio Nagô, Mundo Negro and Nação Z, selected for their importance, to investigate three framings: how they are presented, their approaches and what they emphasize. It was possible to observe that the Black Press in Brazil makes contents that underline framing analyses in which the Black person is the main character of the journalistic narratives, contributing with inclusion from the point of view of Blackness to the open debate on several issues.
Keywords
Black Press; Blackness; Popular Communication; Framing; Journalism
Resumo
Este texto objetiva analisar a imprensa negra brasileira e seu papel na produção de narrativas jornalísticas a partir da perspectiva da negritude, compreendendo a imprensa negra contemporânea a partir da produção de seus conteúdos, por meio da análise de Conteúdo e do enquadramento. Para tanto, foram desenvolvidas pesquisas bibliográfica e documental sobre negritude e imprensa negra, bem como uma análise das produções dos sites Correio Nagô, Mundo Negro e Nação Z, escolhidos por sua relevância, com foco na observação de três enquadramentos: apresentação, abordagens e ênfases. Foi possível observar que a imprensa negra brasileira produz conteúdos que enfatizam enquadramentos noticiosos em que o negro é o protagonista das narrativas, contribuindo com a inclusão da perspectiva da negritude no debate público sobre os diversos assuntos.
Palavras-chave
Imprensa negra; Negritude; Comunicação popular; Enquadramentos; Jornalismo
Resumen
Este trabajo tiene como objeto de estudio la prensa negra brasileña y su papel en la producción de narrativas periodísticas desde la perspectiva de la negrura. Comprender la prensa negra contemporánea desde la producción de sus contenidos, a través de un análisis del conteudo y marco. Con este fin, se desarrollaron investigaciones bibliográficas y documentales sobre la negrura, la prensa negra, así como un análisis de las producciones de los sitios web Correio Nagô, Mundo Negro y Nação Z, centrándose en la observación de tres marcos: presentación, enfoques y énfasis. Se pudo observar que la prensa negra brasileña produce contenido que enfatiza los marcos de noticias en los que el negro es el protagonista de las narrativas, contribuyendo a la inclusión de la perspectiva de la negrura en el debate público sobre los diversos temas.
Palabras clave
Prensa negra; Negrura; Comunicación popular; Marcos; Periodismo
Introduction
Although limited in the traditional press, discussions of Brazilian ethnic-racial issues and the perspective of Blackness have played a prominent role in the Black Press throughout history and continue to do so. Since the first satirical newspapers made by Black people (called pasquim – in Brazilian Portuguese) were printed in the nineteenth century, one of the defining characteristics of the Black Press has been the production of content related to the agendas and issues debated by Blacks, based on journalistic narratives in which these individuals are presented as the main characters of their own history and protagonists in the formation of Brazil.
The correlation between the Black Press and the organs of the organized Black movement is a characteristic of Brazilian Black-owned newspapers. Many of these media were created by Black institutions, which contributes to the understanding of the closeness between the agendas of the Black Press and the positions of Blackness. We highlight Blackness from a perspective rooted in Africanity and Black sociocultural organization, in line with Munanga’s (1988) work on identity construction in Brazil.
Stories related to Blackness are also those that seek to denounce/expose systemic racism – the consequence of centuries of Black slavery and the absence of public policies aimed at redressing historical injustices – as well as to highlight Black protagonism in various fields as a way of combating racist thinking about the inferiority/lack of ability of dark-skinned people. Based on the understanding that the media has played and continues to play an important role in the racial debate, the Black Press stands out in emphasizing the Black perspective on these and other issues that are commonly debated in Brazilian society.
It is important to note that the aim of this research is to analyze the content and framing given to the aforementioned stories by the current Black Press. To this end, we considered a total of 49 articles published on the websites of Correio Nagô, Mundo Negro and Nação Z in November 2018 (Black Awareness Month), trying to observe the presentation of the content, the approaches of the texts and the emphasis of the articles. The information obtained from this part of our research, with the help of the concepts presented in the bibliographical discussion, made it possible to reflect on the contemporary Black Press and measure the contribution of these media to Blackness.
The first phase of our research consisted of bibliographical and documentary research, through which we discussed the concepts, events, and historical documents related to Blackness, the issue of institutional racism, and the Black Brazilian Press. Based on this research, we present conceptual discussions on these topics, with contributions from authors who highlight the point of view and/or perspective of Black people.
For the empirical part of our work, we developed methodological procedures to analyze the content and framing of the productions of websites made by Black people based on the aspects of presentation, approach, and emphasis of the media. First, we analyzed all media content published in 2018, and second, we focused our research on the articles published in November using content analysis and framing. According to Bardin (2016, p. 42), content analysis can be understood as a “research technique that aims to interpret the same communication through an objective, systematic, and quantitative description of the manifest content of the communication”. At this stage, it was possible to visualize the main publications in order to create the categories used in the following analysis.
For this purpose, we tried to understand the media framing based on the theoretical contributions of Goffman (2012), Porto (2004) and Entman (1933), which allowed us to reflect extensively on the emphasis of the content. The framing analysis, in turn, made it possible to identify the approach of a given topic in the different media. This was done by observing the framing through which the content is produced.
Despite its recent use in communication research, framing analysis has allowed the “dynamization” of the scientific process in this field of study, especially in the field of Political Communication, because it offers a broader perspective for understanding the role of the media (Porto, 2004). This theoretical-methodological approach, called framing by Goffman (2012) and Entman (1993), can be used in the study of news messages to highlight implicit themes in the content produced by the media. According to Porto (2004), framing is used to understand patterns that may be related to the presentation, selection, and emphasis of content.
We therefore carried out a framing analysis, looking at the presentation, approach (in terms of selection) and emphasis of their publications. In the first, we identified the main theme chosen for the presentation of the journalistic production. In the second, we looked at the type of approach used in the story, whether it was explanatory, denunciatory, critical or other. Finally, we looked for publications that were highlighted as favorable or unfavorable to Blackness.
Using the theoretical-methodological approach of framing, we were able to further investigate the media content produced by the contemporary Brazilian Black Press, reviewing the content and verifying the purpose and unity of these publications. Thus, we built the analytical part of our research related to the production of content by the Brazilian Black Press.
Blackness as Black people’s standpoint
Discussions about race in Brazil are based on undeniable facts, such as the enslavement of African peoples and their descendants, as well as marginalization, violence, and a scenario of social indicators worse than those of white people in different regions of Brazil. Throughout history, Brazilian society, especially the political classes and the (mostly white) economic elites, have refused to discuss racial issues. Black people, on the other hand, have been mobilizing since the time of slavery (resistance) to demand better living conditions for the Black population from the standpoint of Blackness.
The meaning of Blackness used in this paper necessarily refers to the collective aspect of an ethnic-racial group of people – Africans and their descendants – who seek to raise awareness and value the culture, identity and memory of Black people in Brazilian society. According to Munanga (1988, p. 59), the meaning of Blackness has to do with the “originality of the sociocultural organization of Black people, so that their unity can then be defended through a policy of counterculturation, in other hands, authentic disalienation”.
The defense of Black protagonism in the construction of Brazilian society is important for understanding a scenario that is so diverse that it cannot be understood only from the perspective of white Europeans and their descendants. The concept of Blackness is related to the need to rethink racial issues based on the set of historical and cultural values that come from African peoples and their descendants, that is, through Black awareness. Almeida (2018, p. 60) reminds us that racial classification is a racial construction, and he emphasizes its importance: “Black people become human with Blackness and Black awareness, which is the intellectual and political response to the contradictions imposed on them by racism”.
The prominence of Black people in racial issues is based on the diversity of problems they face in Brazil and the way this population deals with these problems. The denial of racism and even the minimization of racial issues are not exclusive discourses of the white population, since part of the Black population has assimilated this perspective. However, when we speak of Blackness, we are necessarily referring to Black segments that seek this dialogue with the Black past as a way of rediscussing the role attributed to Black people in Brazilian history and, consequently, building a critical view of racial structures.
A critical view of racial issues in Brazil cannot and should not be the specific prerogative of the Black population, but the naturalization of this issue is certainly more comfortable for white people who, for historical and cultural reasons, find it more difficult to understand that they belong to a specific racial group, even from a social perspective. “To be white is to attribute identity to others and to have an identity. It’s a race that has no race. […] some white people think it is legitimate to call other social groups ‘identities’”, Almeida notes (2018, p. 60).
We can emphasize that the perspective of Blackness has not only a summary meaning for the Black population, but also an important role in helping society to rethink racial paradigms that are ingrained in subjectivities. For this reason, it is important to talk more about Blackness based on three concepts discussed by Munanga (1988): biological or racial nature; sociocultural nature of class; and psychological nature.
The biological or racial nature of Blackness would be that related to racial belonging and awareness, in other words, it would be the sense of solidarity. This vision of “Black unity” is widely criticized because of the different interests of Black groups inside and outside Africa, but the same understanding emphasizes the importance of sharing the experience of these different peoples identified as Black. “If from a political, social, economic and geographical point of view it is not possible to conceive of a unity between all the Blacks of the world, it can be historically and psychologically established”, says Munanga (1988, p. 57), recognizing the need for different forms of struggle against racism due to the differences faced by Black people in different countries.
On the other hand, the sociocultural concept of class in relation to race is one of the most controversial, even in discussions within the progressive field, which, from a global perspective, tends to defend the intersection of the class issue with other issues such as race. For Munanga (1988, p. 52), the “reduction of race to class” is a mistake and a way of “denying the glaring social reality of Blackness”, because studies from this perspective show that the problem of Black people in Brazil and in different parts of the world is not only economic, but also racial. For Ribeiro (2017, p. 38), the issues of “race” and “class’, as well as “gender”, should not be superimposed on each other, but are all equally important for discussion, as pointed out by important authors such as Patricia Hill Collins and Bell Hooks.
An assertive understanding of Blackness can be related to what it really means to be Black in a society like Brazil. Blackness is not only an association with skin color and characteristics, but also a set that includes the critical observation of the racial structure, based on the existence of classes and their structures that disenfranchise non-whites, and an understanding that even includes the observation of the psychological characteristics of Black people from a historical perspective. From this understanding, it is possible to better reflect on racial issues, considering the specificities of the Black population.
Brazilian racism as an institutional problem
In Brazil, as in other countries with a tradition of slavery, racism played a crucial role in the implementation of a logic of exploitation of Black people and continued to play an important role after the end of slavery, because despite the force of a law that prevented the enslavement of Black people, they were, and in many cases still are, considered “second class” people. Brazilian racism must be understood as institutional, in other words, it is everywhere and in everything (or almost everything): in the educational system, in the press, in literature, on television, in the judiciary, in party politics, and all of this is disguised by the misconception that our society lives in a racial democracy.
Institutional racism is the understanding that the problem cannot be solved by individual actions. One of the contemporary Black thinkers who defends the argument that racism is institutional is the lawyer and current Minister of Human Rights and Citizenship, Silvio Almeida. For this author, institutional racism can be understood as a historical and political process that creates social conditions aimed at systematic discrimination in direct or indirect ways, and therefore, even if “individuals who commit racist acts are held accountable, the structural view of race relations leads us to conclude that legal accountability is not enough” (Almeida, 2018, p. 39).
Brazilian racism is mainly masked by the ideology of racial democracy. The definition of this concept stems from the understanding of a group of Brazilian scholars who presented a very particular interpretation of the racial issue. These thinkers, of whom Gilberto Freyre is one of the most cited, broke with the eugenicist idea of whitening Brazil in his book Casa-Grande e Senzala (Big House and Slave Quarters, in a free translation from Brazilian Portuguese to English), first published in 1933, and began to defend the thesis that race relations in Brazil, even during the period of slavery, were different from other experiences in the world. Thus, racial democracy proposed a discussion based on the idea of a mixed Brazil, unified by these racial confluences of Europeans, Africans, and Indigenous peoples.
With the end of slavery in Brazil and a majority Black or mixed-race population, even after the strong wave of European emigration that took place in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the Brazilian State found in the scholarly works of racial democracy the arguments it needed to construct a national discourse that would free it from the obligation to make reparations to the formerly enslaved and their descendants. According to Schwarcz (2012), from the 1930s onward, the idea of the mestizo as a national icon was widely defended by the State, political, economic, and artistic elites, and the press. Although all of these spaces were dominated by white people, the idea was defended that race relations and, consequently, racism (when admitted), were special and less cruel than in other formerly segregated societies of the same period, such as the United States and South Africa.
In this paper, we refer to racial democracy as an ideology because we understand that this term, like the meaning of “racism”, stems from a misrepresentation of the Black people’s scenario. The ideology of racial democracy was the main justification for the denial of racism and the inertia of the State and society in recognizing the unhealed wounds left by centuries of slavery (Munanga, 1988, p. 79). For Moura (2014, p. 252), instead of collaborating with the racial democratization of Brazilian society, this ideology ended up contributing to “Black people remaining in the position of those who expect benefits from the Big House”.
The state, the political and economic elite, and even the traditional press began to use the discourse of racial democracy to justify the weak discussion of racism and the need for affirmative action policies, thus contributing to the naturalization of prejudice against Black people. This situation began to change with the Brazilian Constitution of 1988, considered a great step forward in the fight against racial prejudice in Brazil, as it criminalized racism and established the role of the State in social promotion and guaranteeing the rights of different groups, leaving behind a liberal model on racial issues.
Since 1988, it has been possible to propose specific legislation to combat racism, since the Racial Equality Statute was created and the implementation of affirmative action policies, including quotas at federal public universities and student aid programs at private institutions. The Racial Equality Statute (2010) provides a guarantee for the discussion of racial issues and draws attention to the importance of this issue, especially for the Black population.
Racism makes Black people much more vulnerable than other groups in Brazil, and perhaps the cruelest example is that young Black people are the most affected victims of police brutality (law enforcement) in Brazil (Araújo; Silva, 2017). In this way, we have a State that sometimes acts with total inertia, failing to implement policies that reduce the social and economic gap between white and Black people in Brazil, and sometimes acting (through the police) to punish the blackest part of the population more severely.
This situation places Brazilian society as an example of the concept defended by the Cameroonian Achille Mbembe (apud Almeida, 2018) of the existence of necropolitics, which would be a contemporary form of subjugation of life to the power of death. Almeida (2018) uses this concept to speak about the situation of Black people in the slave colonization under the regimes of “racial democracy”, Jim Crow laws and Apartheid, as experienced in Brazil, the United States and South Africa, respectively, or even in the scenarios of wars, murders and even suicides of Black people today. “Necropolitics is therefore established as a necessary organization of power in a world where death relentlessly advances over life” (Almeida, 2018, p. 96).
Based on the concept of necropolitics, we can think about the relationship between Black men and women and the Brazilian scenario, which is forged by a racist understanding of the inferiority of African descendants and, at the same time, a denial of racist practices through the ideology of racial democracy. Thus, racism in Brazil needs to be understood institutionally, as it is part of the entire economic, political and social organization of Brazilian reality.
Black Press – an unfinished concept
Based on the understanding that the media can play an important role in the development process of a society, the search for the concept of the Black Press is necessarily linked to its role in contributing to Blackness and society. The concept of the Black press varies according to its format (independent or mainstream press) and location (Brazilian or North American), but, as we have previously argued (Araújo, 2019, p. 213), they have in common that “they are communication channels specialized in racial issues, in the fight against racism, and committed to constructing Black narratives on different topics (economics, politics, sports, culture, among others)”.
The Brazilian Black Press emerged in the 19th century, with the first four periodicals produced by Black people (called pasquins, which were satirical newspapers), still during the period of slavery (Pinto, 2010). After the abolition of slavery in Brazil in 1888, the first decades of the twentieth century witnessed the creation of countless newspapers made by Black people, published by the various institutions of the Black movement that flourished at that time (Bastide, 1983; Nascimento, 2003). The Black Press suffered during periods of democratic interruption (Estado Novo, which literally means “New State” in English) and military dictatorship, but reemerged in the 1970s and 1980s, collaborating with the Black movement in the inclusion of Black agendas in the discussion of the 1988 Constituent Assembly. Today, the Black Brazilian Press is self-sustainable, mainly through the Internet, with websites or web pages that offer journalistic content focused on the Black perspective.
Most of the Brazilian newspapers produced by Black people throughout history have been built in alternative/independent and non-commercial formats. Thus, the alternative/independent model is commonly found in the Brazilian scenario of the press produced by Black people, based on a specialized approach to the various issues related to the Black population. For Peruzzo (2008, p. 49), alternative and popular communication is related to the characterization of an expression of popular struggles with “critical-emancipatory” and “vindicatory” content and has the “people” as the “main character”. According to Alakija (2012, p. 148), “one of the first characteristics of the Black Press in Brazil was a constitution based on solidarity networks and associations”. One of the few representatives of the commercial model was Revista Raça (Raça Magazine), founded in 1996 and renamed Afro Brasil in 2016.
For Peruzzo (2008, p. 5), the meaning of alternative journalism is more associated with communication channels that offer differentiated or specialized content: “what characterizes journalism as alternative is the fact that it represents an option as a source of information, due to the content it offers and the nature of its approach”. In this sense, much of the Brazilian Black Press is considered alternative because of its commitment, which is treated in a subordinate way by society, and the traditional press, with a predominance of narratives published by white people (Ramos, 2002).
In order to better understand the Black Press, it is important to present the concepts of some scholars. Moura (2014, p. 249) emphasizes that the Black Press “has an alternative language and should be considered part of Brazilian culture within the structure of representation”. For Bastide (1983, p. 34), “the Black Press was born out of the feeling that Blacks were not treated as equals to whites; its first task, therefore, would be to be an organ of protest”. For his part, Pinto (2010, p. 19) points out that “Black newspapers [are] produced by Black people, for Black people, and address issues of interest to the Black population”.
Based on these contributions, it was possible to propose a conceptualization of the Black Press, defended by Araújo (2019), in terms of the concept of communication channels focused on the production of journalistic content in which Black people are presented as protagonists of events and discussions, even if these are not directly related to racial issues, highlighting the expression and worldview of Black people on various issues, thus contributing not only to the visibility of Blackness, but also to the plurality of ideas in the public debate.
It is possible to consider the role of the Black Press based on the concept of media specializing in issues related to Blackness, which currently emphasizes: i) the struggle against the historical marginalization of Black personalities; ii) racial discrimination; iii) the need for an ethno-racial discussion in order to make the population, or part of it, aware of the demands of the Black population, such as the need for affirmative action; and finally, iv) the importance of narrating other issues (economic, political, sports, fashion or behavioral) in which the Black person is presented as the protagonist of the discussion.
However, we argue that the concept of the Black Press is broad, plural and in a stage of concretization. Nonetheless, we reiterate our understanding of it as a medium that produces journalistic content in which Black people are presented as protagonists of events and discussions on racial and non-racial issues. Understanding the history of the Black Press is an important step in expanding the horizons of this conceptualization.
News frames in the Black Press
Based on the perspective that the news frames of communication channels influence individuals’ understanding of events (Entman, 1993, p. 2), we sought to present the themes, textual approaches, and emphases of 49 articles published on the Correio Nagô, Mundo Negro, and Nação Z websites. These Black channels were defined on the basis of an exploratory study of the Brazilian Black Press, which identified the oldest media in their respective regions – the Southeast, the Northeast and the South (we did not identify Black newspapers in the other regions). These channels are considered journalistic because of their similarity to other media, despite their focus on the Black individual and their explicitly anti-racist proposal.
The Mundo Negro website was created in 2001 in São Paulo (SP), in the Southeast region of Brazil. Nação Z was created in 2003 in Porto Alegre (RS) and works in conjunction with a print publication of the same name, produced by Ilu Editora. Correio Nagô, although the youngest of the three, is the oldest website made by Black people in the Northeast region, created in 2008 in Salvador (BA) by the Instituto Mídia Étnica (Ethnic Media Institute).
Based on the perspective that journalistic articles are presented based on thematic references – here referred to as “themes” – we sought to identify the main themes addressed in the texts, based on a content analysis of the 49 articles published by the three websites during the month of November 2018.
In the content analysis of the 49 articles published by the three websites during November 2018, we identified the recurring words (excluding articles, prepositions, verbs, names of media channels and authors of the texts) with the help of Atlas.ti and grouped them into six recurring categories: “Culture”, “Race”, “Politics”, “Economics”, “Religion”, and “Women”, as shown in Graph 1.
In Mundo Negro, the most recurrent theme was “Culture,” with 53% of the publications, followed by “Economics” and “Race”, with 21% each, and “Politics”, with 5%. To talk a little about “Economics,” we highlight the articles with recurring words such as “shopping,” “fair,” “business,” “entrepreneurship,” such as the texts related to the Feira Preta (which is a Brazilian event that is the largest celebration of Black culture and entrepreneurship in Latin America. This annual event brings together Black entrepreneurs in the fields of fashion, music, gastronomy, audiovisual, design and technology, among others), which takes place annually in São Paulo. One example is the article “Without listening to the Black community, Estadão summarizes Feira Preta as a fiasco and controversy,” from November 25, 2018, in Mundo Negro.
Nação Z, on the other hand, published content on three main topics: “Race” (50%), “Culture” (34%), and “Politics” (16%). “Race”, a prominent theme on this site, includes articles related to racial issues, with the recurrence of terms such as “Black men” and “Black women”. An example is the text “November 20: Black lives matter”, published on Nação Z on November 20.
On the subject of “Politics”, which can be found in all three websites, the most recurrent terms were “meetings”, “mobilization” and “elections”. The other themes were identified only in Correio Nagô: “Religion”, with the recurrence of the terms “religion”, “Candomblé” and “Umbanda”, and “Women”, with the recurrence of the terms “Black woman” and “female”.
The prominence of the theme of “Culture” in the presentation of content (more than 50% of all articles analyzed) reinforces a characteristic of the Black Press of highlighting the experience and expression of Blackness. This understanding is close to what Alakija (2012, p. 144) argues, in the sense that the Black Press plays a fundamental role “in the construction and as an instrument for the affirmation of Black identity”.
Finally, it is important to highlight the diversification of topics covered by the Black Press, with content on “Politics”, “Economics”, “Religion” and “Women”, while articles on “Race”, i.e., those highlighting racial issues, represented only 18% of the total number of publications analyzed. This data underscores the diversity of topics covered by the Black Press. This leads us to say that channels produced by Black people cannot be understood only as specializing in the production of racial content, but as media channels that highlight Black people or the Black perspective in their narratives on different topics.
In the second stage of our investigation, based on the understanding that news framing also includes observations about the structural modes of the content, we analyzed the approaches proposed in each story produced by the selected websites, looking at the division into explanatory, denunciatory or critical approaches. According to Graph 2, the explanatory approach was observed in 59% of the total number of articles, 67% in Correio Nagô, 42% in Mundo Negro and 83% in Nação Z. The denunciative approach accounted for 18% of the texts, with 12% in Correio Nagô, 32% in Mundo Negro and 17% in Nação Z. Finally, the critical approach accounted for 23% of the stories, with 21% in Correio Nagô, 26% in Mundo Negro and no occurrences in Nação Z.
We understand explanatory stories as texts that use an explanatory and/or clarifying approach to construct journalistic narratives. This textual framework was used in articles that dealt with different topics from an explanatory perspective. An example is the publication on November 12, 2018, in Correio Nagô: “O que ainda vai rolar no Novembro Negro em Salvador?” (“What’s still going on during Black November in Salvador?”), in which we identified aspects of an explanatory approach when discussing the meaning of “Black November” due to the month of Black Awareness, as well as presenting information about a cultural program.
The denunciatory approach, on the other hand, includes articles with frames that expose facts or situations experienced by Black people. Mundo Negro’s November 17 publication, “For the Brazilian Society of Dermatology, Black skin is insensitive to sunlight”, is an example of this type of approach. The article denounces a misconception about Black skin’s sensitivity to sunlight based on a post by the Brazilian Society of Dermatology (Figure 1, below) on its social networks, and uses an expert source to challenge this understanding in relation to Black skin, which also needs care and protection when exposed to sunlight.
Finally, the critical approach was used in texts that aimed to evaluate, judge or weigh a particular subject or event. This type of approach was common in texts dedicated to plays, films or music, as in the article “Antonio Pitanga and Nando Cunha star in the show ‘Filho do pai’ in Gávea”, published on November 1 in Mundo Negro. This text highlighted not only the service information about the play (show period, venue, time and prices), but also the story, the authors’ perspective, the audience’s interpretations and a critical evaluation of the show.
The analysis of the approaches used in the framing of the stories allowed us to see that there is an emphasis on explanatory texts in the Black Press, with elucidating and clarifying perspectives. On the other hand, as we have already mentioned, it is important to highlight the diversity of approaches in the texts, especially in the Mundo Negro website, which can be considered positive, since the denunciative and critical approaches can contribute more incisively to a more assertive understanding by society of the issues related to Brazilian Blackness.
The study of news framings also consists of observing the aspects that are highlighted in the construction of narratives that establish a relationship with the structures and references that are favorable or unfavorable to Blackness. Based on the observation of the aspects framed in the texts and considering the position of Blackness, it was possible to analyze the emphasis of the 49 articles published by websites on Black people’s culture in November 2018.
The majority of the articles analyzed can be considered positive (78%), with a minority of unfavorable publications (22%) (Graph 3). When looking at this framing by media channel, there were no major changes: 83% of the articles in Correio Nagô, 68% in Mundo Negro and 83% in Nação Z had a favorable emphasis, while 17%, 32% and 17%, respectively, had an unfavorable emphasis.
In the articles classified as favorable, the framing analysis identified constructive aspects of Blackness, such as proactive actions by the Black population or highlighting the Black perspective on various issues. The publication “Yuri Marçal: 90% of my audience is composed of Black women”, from Mundo Negro on November 15, 2018, illustrates this type of emphasis. On the other hand, the publications classified as unfavorable to Blackness identified narratives related to violence, discrimination, inequality, among other difficulties experienced by Black people, in other words, they consist of narratives built on negative aspects. We can see this kind of emphasis in the November 15, 2018, publication of Correio Nagô: “Violence against Black and marginalized youth is the subject of a theatrical performance”. In the article, we see that the perspective on the reality of violence against Black youth is highlighted more than the show itself, which made this classification possible.
Besides that, by producing most of its content with a positive emphasis, even when dealing with issues that are critical to the reality of the Black population, the Black Press demonstrates a position that is shared by Black people, in the sense that it does not limit its narratives to denunciation and justification, despite the importance of these aspects being reflected. Thus, the emphasis on Black protagonism presents itself as a more collaborative form of expression on the part of the press toward Black people.
Conclusion
Based on the discussion proposed in the literature review and the content and framing analyses carried out on the production of the websites of Correio Nagô, Mundo Negro and Nação Z, it was possible to establish some reflections on the contemporary Black Brazilian Press. It is worth noting that our study helped to strengthen the characterization of the Black Press, based on the commitment of the analyzed media to anti-racist bias and to contribute to the visibility of Black people.
The bibliographical discussions made it possible to establish some fundamental considerations about the historical role of the Black Press, especially with regard to the importance of denouncing racism and black protagonism, which is not always correctly portrayed in history books. From the role of Black people in resisting slavery, mainly through the quilombos (a community organized by fugitive enslaved people), to the important contribution of the Black movement to the construction of what we understand as Brazilian society. From the very beginning, the Black Brazilian press defended the idea of the Black person as a “human being”, during a period of slavery when many newspapers advertised the “sale” of enslaved people.
Thus, the concept of the Black Press must necessarily be built on studies that have pointed to the role of Black newspapers throughout history, such as the research done by Pinto (2010), Moura (2014), and Bastide (1983). The role of these Black Press narratives, which by highlighting the figure of Black people in society, contributed to increasing the visibility and appreciation of Black people. All of these findings from the literature review contributed to our analysis of the content of websites made by Black people.
Through the content analysis, it was possible to observe several important aspects from the point of view of good journalistic practices, which allowed us to infer the existence of a differentiated approach to the journalistic narratives produced by the Black Press. In the framing analysis, it was possible to highlight the diversification of topics covered by the Black Press, which reinforces the position that these channels are not only specialized in racial issues, but rather offer narratives that value Black people or the Black perspective when dealing with different topics, with a mostly explanatory approach and an emphasis on black protagonism.
In short, our research allows us to consider that the Black press on the Internet produces content that emphasizes news frames in which Black people are the protagonists of the narratives, confirming the initial hypothesis of this work. Thus, it was possible to contribute to the concept of the Black Press by considering contemporary websites made by Black people as a set of media aimed at producing and disseminating journalistic content that emphasizes Black issues and the Black perspective. The communicative experience of the Black Press plays an important role in building a more assertive understanding of Blackness in struggles on behalf of Black people, contributing to more plural and diverse discussions.
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Responsible Editors:
Marialva Barbosa e Sonia Virgínia Moreira
Created by the author
Created by the author
Reproduction: Mundo Negro, 2018
Created by the author