From 'suicide' to 'barbarian terror': Media and exclusion in Brazilian foreign policy - September 11 according to O Globo and Folha de S. Paulo

Abstract

The main purpose of this article is to examine, from a post-structuralist perspective, the coverage of the attacks of September 11, 2001 by O Globo and Folha de S. Paulo, the newspapers with the largest circulation in Brazil, on the day after the attacks. The central argument is that the performance of such papers has been fundamental in the definition of exclusionary practices at the international level, because, when they locate Brazil as an insider due to its approximation to the US and Western values after the end of the Cold War, they develop a 'foreign policy' in which societies and groups that are not adapted to this standard are classified as 'dysfunctional' and 'anomalous' in an order of 'civilized' actors. Thus, the understanding of difference - in this case, terrorist organizations and their sponsors - as otherness is consolidated and hierarchies between identity and difference are naturalized.