Islam Och Politik Red Goran Larsson Och Susanne Olsson, 2011
Inledningskapitel till antologin Islam och politik tillsammans med Susanne Olsson, Sodertorns hog... more Inledningskapitel till antologin Islam och politik tillsammans med Susanne Olsson, Sodertorns hogskola
Political crisis and presidential breakdowns are not merely political events. Such events are als... more Political crisis and presidential breakdowns are not merely political events. Such events are also elements of the narratives found in news media. This article argues that media construct or project endings for presidents in crisis, based on the cultural scripts available to newsworkers. Using the media scandals and political crises of the three latest Brazilian presidents Bolsonaro, Temer, and Rousseff, the article shows how media at a structural level search for solutions when covering politics in narrative forms. Some types of presidential crisis, e.g. those related to corruption scandals, have well-known scripts for resolving the crisis in the form of court cases, elections, or impeachment proceedings. The kinds of crises predicated on presidential incompetency, however, currently lack satisfying narrative endings.
Vidneudsagn og bevismateriale om systematisk korruption hober sig op imod den brasilianske regeri... more Vidneudsagn og bevismateriale om systematisk korruption hober sig op imod den brasilianske regering, ledet af præsident Dilma Rousseff fra Arbejderpartiet (Partido dos Trabalhadores). Selvom hele det politiske spektrum i Brasiliens kongres er under efterforskernes lup, har de nationale medier ensidigt fokuseret på Rousseff og hendes forgænger Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Ubønhørligt mediepres har givet vind i sejlene til oppositionens krav om præsidentens afgang og i marts måned har millioner demonstreret i Brasiliens storbyer mod korruption og mod regeringen. Men nu er regeringsstøtterne også kommet ud i gaderne. Iblandt disse er også demonstranter der ikke nødvendigvis er tilhængere af regeringen, men af demokratiet, og som er dybt bekymrede for demokratiets tilstand. Oppositionen og fraktioner internt i regeringens støttepartier har nemlig kastet alt ind på at få afsat præsidenten ved en rigsretssag. Den politiske magtkamp mellem regeringen og oppositionen har taget fokus fra de mange problemer Brasilien står overfor, foruden omfattende korruption. Lige nu er både landets økonomi, regering og befolkningens tillid til demokratiet i frit fald.
Journal of Religion, Media and Digital Culture, 2014
Marshalling scientific arguments and methods for religious ends is certainly not a new trend in r... more Marshalling scientific arguments and methods for religious ends is certainly not a new trend in religious expressions, but new modes of writing scientifically legitimated myths has developed online. Computer-mediated communication provides new tools for such a fusing of religion and science, and the present article asks what this entails for categories of religious authority and authenticity. Taking online expressions of the Neo-Pagan faith called Asatrú, a 9,500 year-old skeleton and an associated modern North American conspiracy theory as the starting points, a configuration of religious authenticity derived from scientific sources is analysed. The case is made that through hyperlinks, YouTube videos and discussion forums, religious communities such as the online Asatrú groups strategically assemble religious authority on a foundation of science, tapping into non-religious ecologies of knowledge available online. This puts into question theoretical premises such as notions of the ...
Analyzing the political consequences of the most extensive corruption investigation in recent Lat... more Analyzing the political consequences of the most extensive corruption investigation in recent Latin American history, Operação Lava-Jato, Media Leaks and Corruption in Brazil answers two central questions about the contradictory effects news media has on political systems. First, how can political actors in a seemingly well-functioning democracy quickly override checks and balances, and replace a head of state with a corrupt vice-president? Second, how can very active news media, while ostensibly performing the role of the watchdog, still fail to deliver media accountability to the public? Combining a quantitative view of the media sphere with case studies of the leaks, legal actions, and alliances forming and breaking in the Brazilian Congress, Mads Bjelke Damgaard demonstrates that the media’s attention to leaks and investigations of corruption paved the way for Dilma Rousseff’s impeachment. By timing the disclosure of information in scandals, actors with inside information were able to drive the media agenda and let some scandals escape from the limelight. The book delivers an in-depth study of how scandals become political weapons in a time of media personalities and post-politics. This book will interest scholars of Latin American Studies, and Brazil, and the broader fields of media studies, democracy studies, and journalism studies.
Through a content analysis of 8,800 news items and six months of front pages of three Brazilian n... more Through a content analysis of 8,800 news items and six months of front pages of three Brazilian newspapers, all dealing with corruption and political transgression, the present article documents the remarkable bias of media coverage toward corruption scandals. Said bias is examined as an informational phenomenon, arising from key systemic and commercial factors of Brazil’s news media: an information cascade of news on corruption formed, destabilizing the governing coalition and legitimizing the impeachment process of Dilma Rousseff. As this process gained momentum, questions of accountability were disregarded by the media, with harmful effects for democracy.
National stereotypes are terrible things. They are terrible in a double sense: Terrible as concep... more National stereotypes are terrible things. They are terrible in a double sense: Terrible as concepts to think through, as they tend to cloud and obscure the vicissitudes of humanity-and terrible, as in dangerous and not to be trifled with. While academics of the humanities in most cases do well to shy away from stereotypes such as "the Brazilian" or "all Brazilians", no scholar can stop such stereotypes from cropping up in everyday discourse, over and over. Like mushrooms, stereotypes sprout vast-ranging networks of roots, in bewildering and sometimes paradoxical formulations. One such paradox is condensed in the epigraph of this article: Brazilians are corrupt. I’m against corruption. I’m Brazilian. The stereotypical identification of Brazilian-ness with corruption is perhaps the most common prejudice held by outsiders, next to "sexual" and "fantastic football players". No amount of academic debunking seems to kill such cultural clichés.
Vidneudsagn og bevismateriale om systematisk korruption hober sig op imod den brasilianske regeri... more Vidneudsagn og bevismateriale om systematisk korruption hober sig op imod den brasilianske regering, ledet af præsident Dilma Rousseff fra Arbejderpartiet (Partido dos Trabalhadores). Selvom hele det politiske spektrum i Brasiliens kongres er under efterforskernes lup, har de nationale medier ensidigt fokuseret på Rousseff og hendes forgænger Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Ubønhørligt mediepres har givet vind i sejlene til oppositionens krav om præsidentens afgang og i marts måned har millioner demonstreret i Brasiliens storbyer mod korruption og mod regeringen. Men nu er regeringsstøtterne også kommet ud i gaderne. Iblandt disse er også demonstranter der ikke nødvendigvis er tilhængere af regeringen, men af demokratiet, og som er dybt bekymrede for demokratiets tilstand. Oppositionen og fraktioner internt i regeringens støttepartier har nemlig kastet alt ind på at få afsat præsidenten ved en rigsretssag. Den politiske magtkamp mellem regeringen og oppositionen har taget fokus fra de mange problemer Brasilien står overfor, foruden omfattende korruption. Lige nu er både landets økonomi, regering og befolkningens tillid til demokratiet i frit fald.
The emerging global awareness of corruption in organizations and politics, ubiquitous in the medi... more The emerging global awareness of corruption in organizations and politics, ubiquitous in the media and public discourse in recent decades, has launched multiple ways of condemning corrupt phenomena. Every mode of condemning and critiquing corruption articulates a marginal zone of action and forms a boundary in relation to a specific notion of the common good. The different notions at stake in mediatized discourse on corruption render the social construction of corruption contested, ambiguous, and multifaceted. This article establishes an analytical framework, using ideas from Boltanski and Thévenot’s On justification, Victor Turners theory of the liminal, and contemporary media theory. In this framework, the mediatization of corruption is analyzed as liminal, i.e. socially polluting and dangerous to the fabric of society, because corrupt actions represent transgression of the normal rules of conduct. As the media discloses such transgressions, processes of expulsion and discursive exclusion are triggered. In corruption scandals, corruption thereby discursively emerges as a shadow or a counter- concept of several different social orders, or several conceptions of the common good: As the dark side of the state, the law, economy, development, or other ordering principles of society. The multiplicity of concepts and the possible consequences of such multiplicity are explored here as a struggle between co-existing social orders or polities. Casting administrative or organizational practices as corrupt in the media, the polities struggle for boundary control of society through different modes of condemning corruption, and thereby shape public discourse and political reality.
Coming to a close in the last days of 2012, the trial of the so-called mensalão network was heral... more Coming to a close in the last days of 2012, the trial of the so-called mensalão network was heralded as Brazil's trial of the century. Involving corruption in the top ranks of the business world and the former government, the process ended with an exceptional result in the sense that severe sentences were meted out to 25 of the 38 defendants, thereby breaking an established pattern of impunity for corrupt politicians in Brazilian courts.
As a scandal potentially harmful for the governing party and the former president Luis “Lula” da Silva, the eyes and spotlights of the national media were fixed on the trial. However, the varying and contested ways in which the case was presented by media from the outbreak of the scandal in 2005 until the end of the trial bears witness to the fact that narratives concerning corruption scandals can potentially encompass a broad range of political and social actors besides those on trial. Viewing corruption as the thematic focus of the media texts, this wider scope of enquiry into the mensalão affair allows us to see that media, political actors and institutions use cases of corruption for much more than mere condemnation of transgressions: The narratives constructed in the Brazilian media reflect but also produce a series of salient political and social developments in the nation's self-imagination and political arena.
Islam Och Politik Red Goran Larsson Och Susanne Olsson, 2011
Inledningskapitel till antologin Islam och politik tillsammans med Susanne Olsson, Sodertorns hog... more Inledningskapitel till antologin Islam och politik tillsammans med Susanne Olsson, Sodertorns hogskola
Political crisis and presidential breakdowns are not merely political events. Such events are als... more Political crisis and presidential breakdowns are not merely political events. Such events are also elements of the narratives found in news media. This article argues that media construct or project endings for presidents in crisis, based on the cultural scripts available to newsworkers. Using the media scandals and political crises of the three latest Brazilian presidents Bolsonaro, Temer, and Rousseff, the article shows how media at a structural level search for solutions when covering politics in narrative forms. Some types of presidential crisis, e.g. those related to corruption scandals, have well-known scripts for resolving the crisis in the form of court cases, elections, or impeachment proceedings. The kinds of crises predicated on presidential incompetency, however, currently lack satisfying narrative endings.
Vidneudsagn og bevismateriale om systematisk korruption hober sig op imod den brasilianske regeri... more Vidneudsagn og bevismateriale om systematisk korruption hober sig op imod den brasilianske regering, ledet af præsident Dilma Rousseff fra Arbejderpartiet (Partido dos Trabalhadores). Selvom hele det politiske spektrum i Brasiliens kongres er under efterforskernes lup, har de nationale medier ensidigt fokuseret på Rousseff og hendes forgænger Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Ubønhørligt mediepres har givet vind i sejlene til oppositionens krav om præsidentens afgang og i marts måned har millioner demonstreret i Brasiliens storbyer mod korruption og mod regeringen. Men nu er regeringsstøtterne også kommet ud i gaderne. Iblandt disse er også demonstranter der ikke nødvendigvis er tilhængere af regeringen, men af demokratiet, og som er dybt bekymrede for demokratiets tilstand. Oppositionen og fraktioner internt i regeringens støttepartier har nemlig kastet alt ind på at få afsat præsidenten ved en rigsretssag. Den politiske magtkamp mellem regeringen og oppositionen har taget fokus fra de mange problemer Brasilien står overfor, foruden omfattende korruption. Lige nu er både landets økonomi, regering og befolkningens tillid til demokratiet i frit fald.
Journal of Religion, Media and Digital Culture, 2014
Marshalling scientific arguments and methods for religious ends is certainly not a new trend in r... more Marshalling scientific arguments and methods for religious ends is certainly not a new trend in religious expressions, but new modes of writing scientifically legitimated myths has developed online. Computer-mediated communication provides new tools for such a fusing of religion and science, and the present article asks what this entails for categories of religious authority and authenticity. Taking online expressions of the Neo-Pagan faith called Asatrú, a 9,500 year-old skeleton and an associated modern North American conspiracy theory as the starting points, a configuration of religious authenticity derived from scientific sources is analysed. The case is made that through hyperlinks, YouTube videos and discussion forums, religious communities such as the online Asatrú groups strategically assemble religious authority on a foundation of science, tapping into non-religious ecologies of knowledge available online. This puts into question theoretical premises such as notions of the ...
Analyzing the political consequences of the most extensive corruption investigation in recent Lat... more Analyzing the political consequences of the most extensive corruption investigation in recent Latin American history, Operação Lava-Jato, Media Leaks and Corruption in Brazil answers two central questions about the contradictory effects news media has on political systems. First, how can political actors in a seemingly well-functioning democracy quickly override checks and balances, and replace a head of state with a corrupt vice-president? Second, how can very active news media, while ostensibly performing the role of the watchdog, still fail to deliver media accountability to the public? Combining a quantitative view of the media sphere with case studies of the leaks, legal actions, and alliances forming and breaking in the Brazilian Congress, Mads Bjelke Damgaard demonstrates that the media’s attention to leaks and investigations of corruption paved the way for Dilma Rousseff’s impeachment. By timing the disclosure of information in scandals, actors with inside information were able to drive the media agenda and let some scandals escape from the limelight. The book delivers an in-depth study of how scandals become political weapons in a time of media personalities and post-politics. This book will interest scholars of Latin American Studies, and Brazil, and the broader fields of media studies, democracy studies, and journalism studies.
Through a content analysis of 8,800 news items and six months of front pages of three Brazilian n... more Through a content analysis of 8,800 news items and six months of front pages of three Brazilian newspapers, all dealing with corruption and political transgression, the present article documents the remarkable bias of media coverage toward corruption scandals. Said bias is examined as an informational phenomenon, arising from key systemic and commercial factors of Brazil’s news media: an information cascade of news on corruption formed, destabilizing the governing coalition and legitimizing the impeachment process of Dilma Rousseff. As this process gained momentum, questions of accountability were disregarded by the media, with harmful effects for democracy.
National stereotypes are terrible things. They are terrible in a double sense: Terrible as concep... more National stereotypes are terrible things. They are terrible in a double sense: Terrible as concepts to think through, as they tend to cloud and obscure the vicissitudes of humanity-and terrible, as in dangerous and not to be trifled with. While academics of the humanities in most cases do well to shy away from stereotypes such as "the Brazilian" or "all Brazilians", no scholar can stop such stereotypes from cropping up in everyday discourse, over and over. Like mushrooms, stereotypes sprout vast-ranging networks of roots, in bewildering and sometimes paradoxical formulations. One such paradox is condensed in the epigraph of this article: Brazilians are corrupt. I’m against corruption. I’m Brazilian. The stereotypical identification of Brazilian-ness with corruption is perhaps the most common prejudice held by outsiders, next to "sexual" and "fantastic football players". No amount of academic debunking seems to kill such cultural clichés.
Vidneudsagn og bevismateriale om systematisk korruption hober sig op imod den brasilianske regeri... more Vidneudsagn og bevismateriale om systematisk korruption hober sig op imod den brasilianske regering, ledet af præsident Dilma Rousseff fra Arbejderpartiet (Partido dos Trabalhadores). Selvom hele det politiske spektrum i Brasiliens kongres er under efterforskernes lup, har de nationale medier ensidigt fokuseret på Rousseff og hendes forgænger Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Ubønhørligt mediepres har givet vind i sejlene til oppositionens krav om præsidentens afgang og i marts måned har millioner demonstreret i Brasiliens storbyer mod korruption og mod regeringen. Men nu er regeringsstøtterne også kommet ud i gaderne. Iblandt disse er også demonstranter der ikke nødvendigvis er tilhængere af regeringen, men af demokratiet, og som er dybt bekymrede for demokratiets tilstand. Oppositionen og fraktioner internt i regeringens støttepartier har nemlig kastet alt ind på at få afsat præsidenten ved en rigsretssag. Den politiske magtkamp mellem regeringen og oppositionen har taget fokus fra de mange problemer Brasilien står overfor, foruden omfattende korruption. Lige nu er både landets økonomi, regering og befolkningens tillid til demokratiet i frit fald.
The emerging global awareness of corruption in organizations and politics, ubiquitous in the medi... more The emerging global awareness of corruption in organizations and politics, ubiquitous in the media and public discourse in recent decades, has launched multiple ways of condemning corrupt phenomena. Every mode of condemning and critiquing corruption articulates a marginal zone of action and forms a boundary in relation to a specific notion of the common good. The different notions at stake in mediatized discourse on corruption render the social construction of corruption contested, ambiguous, and multifaceted. This article establishes an analytical framework, using ideas from Boltanski and Thévenot’s On justification, Victor Turners theory of the liminal, and contemporary media theory. In this framework, the mediatization of corruption is analyzed as liminal, i.e. socially polluting and dangerous to the fabric of society, because corrupt actions represent transgression of the normal rules of conduct. As the media discloses such transgressions, processes of expulsion and discursive exclusion are triggered. In corruption scandals, corruption thereby discursively emerges as a shadow or a counter- concept of several different social orders, or several conceptions of the common good: As the dark side of the state, the law, economy, development, or other ordering principles of society. The multiplicity of concepts and the possible consequences of such multiplicity are explored here as a struggle between co-existing social orders or polities. Casting administrative or organizational practices as corrupt in the media, the polities struggle for boundary control of society through different modes of condemning corruption, and thereby shape public discourse and political reality.
Coming to a close in the last days of 2012, the trial of the so-called mensalão network was heral... more Coming to a close in the last days of 2012, the trial of the so-called mensalão network was heralded as Brazil's trial of the century. Involving corruption in the top ranks of the business world and the former government, the process ended with an exceptional result in the sense that severe sentences were meted out to 25 of the 38 defendants, thereby breaking an established pattern of impunity for corrupt politicians in Brazilian courts.
As a scandal potentially harmful for the governing party and the former president Luis “Lula” da Silva, the eyes and spotlights of the national media were fixed on the trial. However, the varying and contested ways in which the case was presented by media from the outbreak of the scandal in 2005 until the end of the trial bears witness to the fact that narratives concerning corruption scandals can potentially encompass a broad range of political and social actors besides those on trial. Viewing corruption as the thematic focus of the media texts, this wider scope of enquiry into the mensalão affair allows us to see that media, political actors and institutions use cases of corruption for much more than mere condemnation of transgressions: The narratives constructed in the Brazilian media reflect but also produce a series of salient political and social developments in the nation's self-imagination and political arena.
Analyzing the political consequences of the most extensive corruption investigation in recent Lat... more Analyzing the political consequences of the most extensive corruption investigation in recent Latin American history, Operação Lava-Jato, Media Leaks and Corruption in Brazil answers two central questions about the contradictory effects news media has on political systems. First, how can political actors in a seemingly well-functioning democracy quickly override checks and balances, and replace a head of state with a corrupt vice-president? Second, how can very active news media, while ostensibly performing the role of the watchdog, still fail to deliver media accountability to the public?
Combining a quantitative view of the media sphere with case studies of the leaks, legal actions, and alliances forming and breaking in the Brazilian Congress, Mads Bjelke Damgaard demonstrates that the media’s attention to leaks and investigations of corruption paved the way for Dilma Rousseff’s impeachment. By timing the disclosure of information in scandals, actors with inside information were able to drive the media agenda and let some scandals escape from the limelight. The book delivers an in-depth study of how scandals become political weapons in a time of media personalities and post-politics.
This book will interest scholars of Latin American Studies, and Brazil, and the broader fields of media studies, democracy studies, and journalism studies.
Car Wash, Crisis, and Political Cataclysm: Corruption Narratives in the Brazilian Mediascape, 2018
Abstract
A wave of corruption disclosure, leaks, and media exposés engulfed the Brazilian democra... more Abstract A wave of corruption disclosure, leaks, and media exposés engulfed the Brazilian democracy in the period 2014-2018. Below the surface of an uncommonly successful investigation into high-level corruption, undercurrents of political crisis swept President Dilma Rousseff from office through impeachment proceedings. Rousseff was ousted in 2016 by members of the political elite - themselves embroiled in the scandal going by the name of Operação Lava-Jato or “Operation Car Wash” – long before she even became indicted in the corruption case. Thus, the scandal featured a curious temporality and a displacement of crisis that dragged Rousseff, her popular presidential predecessor Lula and their party with it in the undertow. The media built up a crisis of increasing complexity as the investigations became ever more wide-spread in an avalanche of evidence and plea bargains. This thesis analyzes the Lava-Jato scandal as a textual system, unfolding in the Brazilian mediascape and governed by a set of narrative structures. Countering the existing hesitance of media studies to draw in narrative theory, the thesis constructs a theoretical and methodological foundation to analyze intertextual narrative structures emerging in a distributed manner across a system of news texts dealing with scandal. With this, the thesis attempts to answer why the Lava-Jato scandal ended with such surprising and self-contradictory results, and how, theoretically, narrative theory can contribute to the field of scandal studies. Inspired by Frederick Jameson’s reading of Greimas, it is argued that the intertextual narratives that underpin the production of news texts on scandal constrain and co-constitute the field of political action. Thus, to understand the outcomes of the Lava-Jato scandal, it is necessary to analyze how the disequilibrium of Brazilian democracy was symbolically solved in the narratives interpreting the scandals and the impeachment.
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Papers by Mads Damgaard
Brazilians are corrupt.
I’m against corruption.
I’m Brazilian.
The stereotypical identification of Brazilian-ness with corruption is perhaps the most common prejudice held by outsiders, next to "sexual" and "fantastic football players". No amount of academic debunking seems to kill such cultural clichés.
da Silva.
Ubønhørligt mediepres har givet vind i sejlene til oppositionens krav om præsidentens afgang og i marts måned har millioner demonstreret i Brasiliens storbyer mod korruption og mod regeringen. Men nu er regeringsstøtterne også kommet ud i gaderne. Iblandt disse er også demonstranter der ikke nødvendigvis er tilhængere af regeringen, men af demokratiet, og som er dybt bekymrede for demokratiets tilstand.
Oppositionen og fraktioner internt i regeringens støttepartier har nemlig kastet alt ind på at få afsat præsidenten ved en rigsretssag. Den politiske magtkamp mellem regeringen og oppositionen har taget fokus fra de mange problemer Brasilien står overfor, foruden omfattende korruption. Lige nu er både landets økonomi, regering og befolkningens tillid til demokratiet i frit fald.
As a scandal potentially harmful for the governing party and the former president Luis “Lula” da Silva, the eyes and spotlights of the national media were fixed on the trial. However, the varying and contested ways in which the case was presented by media from the outbreak of the scandal in 2005 until the end of the trial bears witness to the fact that narratives concerning corruption scandals can potentially encompass a broad range of political and social actors besides those on trial. Viewing corruption as the thematic focus of the media texts, this wider scope of enquiry into the mensalão affair allows us to see that media, political actors and institutions use cases of corruption for much more than mere condemnation of transgressions: The narratives constructed in the Brazilian media reflect but also produce a series of salient political and social developments in the nation's self-imagination and political arena.
Brazilians are corrupt.
I’m against corruption.
I’m Brazilian.
The stereotypical identification of Brazilian-ness with corruption is perhaps the most common prejudice held by outsiders, next to "sexual" and "fantastic football players". No amount of academic debunking seems to kill such cultural clichés.
da Silva.
Ubønhørligt mediepres har givet vind i sejlene til oppositionens krav om præsidentens afgang og i marts måned har millioner demonstreret i Brasiliens storbyer mod korruption og mod regeringen. Men nu er regeringsstøtterne også kommet ud i gaderne. Iblandt disse er også demonstranter der ikke nødvendigvis er tilhængere af regeringen, men af demokratiet, og som er dybt bekymrede for demokratiets tilstand.
Oppositionen og fraktioner internt i regeringens støttepartier har nemlig kastet alt ind på at få afsat præsidenten ved en rigsretssag. Den politiske magtkamp mellem regeringen og oppositionen har taget fokus fra de mange problemer Brasilien står overfor, foruden omfattende korruption. Lige nu er både landets økonomi, regering og befolkningens tillid til demokratiet i frit fald.
As a scandal potentially harmful for the governing party and the former president Luis “Lula” da Silva, the eyes and spotlights of the national media were fixed on the trial. However, the varying and contested ways in which the case was presented by media from the outbreak of the scandal in 2005 until the end of the trial bears witness to the fact that narratives concerning corruption scandals can potentially encompass a broad range of political and social actors besides those on trial. Viewing corruption as the thematic focus of the media texts, this wider scope of enquiry into the mensalão affair allows us to see that media, political actors and institutions use cases of corruption for much more than mere condemnation of transgressions: The narratives constructed in the Brazilian media reflect but also produce a series of salient political and social developments in the nation's self-imagination and political arena.
Combining a quantitative view of the media sphere with case studies of the leaks, legal actions, and alliances forming and breaking in the Brazilian Congress, Mads Bjelke Damgaard demonstrates that the media’s attention to leaks and investigations of corruption paved the way for Dilma Rousseff’s impeachment. By timing the disclosure of information in scandals, actors with inside information were able to drive the media agenda and let some scandals escape from the limelight. The book delivers an in-depth study of how scandals become political weapons in a time of media personalities and post-politics.
This book will interest scholars of Latin American Studies, and Brazil, and the broader fields of media studies, democracy studies, and journalism studies.
A wave of corruption disclosure, leaks, and media exposés engulfed the Brazilian democracy in the period 2014-2018. Below the surface of an uncommonly successful investigation into high-level corruption, undercurrents of political crisis swept President Dilma Rousseff from office through impeachment proceedings. Rousseff was ousted in 2016 by members of the political elite - themselves embroiled in the scandal going by the name of Operação
Lava-Jato or “Operation Car Wash” – long before she even became indicted in the corruption case. Thus, the
scandal featured a curious temporality and a displacement of crisis that dragged Rousseff, her popular presidential
predecessor Lula and their party with it in the undertow. The media built up a crisis of increasing complexity as
the investigations became ever more wide-spread in an avalanche of evidence and plea bargains.
This thesis analyzes the Lava-Jato scandal as a textual system, unfolding in the Brazilian mediascape and governed
by a set of narrative structures. Countering the existing hesitance of media studies to draw in narrative theory,
the thesis constructs a theoretical and methodological foundation to analyze intertextual narrative structures
emerging in a distributed manner across a system of news texts dealing with scandal. With this, the thesis attempts
to answer why the Lava-Jato scandal ended with such surprising and self-contradictory results, and how,
theoretically, narrative theory can contribute to the field of scandal studies. Inspired by Frederick Jameson’s
reading of Greimas, it is argued that the intertextual narratives that underpin the production of news texts on
scandal constrain and co-constitute the field of political action. Thus, to understand the outcomes of the Lava-Jato
scandal, it is necessary to analyze how the disequilibrium of Brazilian democracy was symbolically solved in the
narratives interpreting the scandals and the impeachment.