Contributions of Paulo Freire and Muniz Sodré to the cultural wars’ confrontation: an analysis of the indigenous agenda at Agência Brasil 2015-2023

Abstract

Using concepts from theories of everyday life and mediatization, we will work in these article with authors such as Agnes Heller (suspension of everyday life), Michel de Certeau (tactics and strategy), Patrícia Saldanha (Latin mediatization), Jairo Ferreira (mediatization as a social construction and deconstruction of the real) and Jesús Martín-Barbero (mediation) to dialogue with the mediatization brought by Paulo Freire and the mediatization of which Muniz Sodré speaks. The objective is to put these theories in dialogue with the practice of public communication in Brazil. We will bring as an example the resistance tactics of the workers of Empresa Brasil de Comunicação (EBC), together with civil society, to keep public communication active, even under strong censorship and surveillance during the governments of Michel Temer and Jair Bolsonaro. As a practical example, a sample analysis will be made of the indigenous agenda at Agência Brasil, with coverage of the 2015 World Indigenous Games, the erasure in subsequent years and coverage of the Yanomami humanitarian crisis in Roraima in early 2023. Both relevant coverages demonstrate the importance of public communication to counter hegemonic discourses of cultural erasure experienced by indigenous peoples