Continuity and innovation: conservatism and the politics of communication in Brazil

Abstract

The article tries to show that mass media communication constitutes mechanisms of power that exert a fundamental function on the historical resistance of political conservatism in Brazil. The specific contribution of this work is the formulation of a methodology based on the discourse theory - post-structuralist theory of communication and deconstruction - that contrasts political strategies in party manifestos and party broadcasts on television. Through this methodology, the author presents evidence that political mobilisation depends on a type of secondary or connotative discourse. Based on the theoretical approach of Derrida and Laclau discourse theory, the author develops the proposition that the electronic media contributes to a non-adversarial dynamics in the Brazilian politics through the weakening of clear-cut political frontiers.

Political strategies; Mass media; Post-structuralism; Politics of communication; Conservatism