Homeless people and public policies: Representations in Folha de Sao Paulo

Abstract

In this paper, we discuss the representation of homelessness in the news about public policies published in the Folha de S. Paulo (FSP) portal between 2011 and 2013. Our objective is to refl ect on how these representations infl uence the perception of the social problem as the focus of public action and its agenda in the public agenda. For this, we have mapped 105 texts on public policies of the 460 collected on homelessness. To analyse this corpus, we have used the software NVivo. Based on critical discourse studies, we mainly investigate which voices are summoned to speak about / in the name of this population and how the group is evaluated in this thematic context. The analysis allows to conclude that the representation of homelessness is prejudiced and to suggest that this vision can contribute to the defi nition of hygienist public policies and their social acceptance.