JOURNALISTIC NARRATIVESABOUTTHE “DAYOFFIRE”: a Luso-Brazilian perspective on the Amazon

Abstract

The “day of fire” in the Amazon refers to forest fires allegedly caused by farmers in the state of Pará, Brazil, in 2019. This article aims to identify and understand the strategies for constructing journalistic narratives about this event. Folha de S.Paulo (Brazil) and Público (Portugal) were the newspapers selected for the observation and analysis of the case. As data collection techniques/tools, an analysis grid was used (direct observation), and semi-structured interviews with journalists involved in the case coverage (indirect observation). The pragmatic analysis of the journalistic narrative was applied to the discoursive analysis. The results show that, in the Brazilian newspaper, the conflict was structured with a beginning, middle, and end, and produced the sense that environmental crimes in the Amazon remain unpunished. In the Portuguese newspaper, the conflict ended in anticlimax and created the feeling that it was necessary to save the Amazon for the next generations.