Transmediatisation of the Covid-19 crisis in Brazil: The emergence of (bio-/geo-)political repertoires of (re-)interpretation

Abstract

This paper focuses on the centrality of media practices to discuss in a transdisciplinary way how the Covid-19 crisis has been framed and communicated in Brazil across different media spaces, whereas the country became the second in the world with most deaths due to the spread of the Covid-19 infection. This discussion mobilises Foucauldian genealogical and critical discursive perspectives (Foucault, [1970]1981, p. 73) to create intelligibility about how domains of media power-knowledge, such as professional journalism and social media, generate textual trajectories, discursive-semiotic and epistemic disputes through (re-)framings. Based on oligoptic decisions (Latour, 2005, p. 182; Souza Júnior, 2020, pp. 59–64), the article explores a multimodal corpus of transmedia texts. 11 posts have been selected for discussion, since they pave the way for tracing a set of interconnected and (in-)visible elements about the corona crisis. In turn, this paper seeks to: (i) give visibility and qualitatively discuss some of the perspectives that have circulated across media spaces along with their related repertoires of biopolitical and geopolitical (re-)interpretation and (ii) expose the dynamics of power and resistance that emerge through pandemic frames, and how the latter communicate a social event like the Covid-19 crisis.