SUICIDE IN TIMES OF CRISIS: THE JOURNALISTIC FRAMEWORK BETWEEN INDIVIDUAL RESPONSIBILITY AND THE SOCIAL DIMENSION
Name: CECILIA RIBEIRO MILIORELLI
Publication date: 04/09/2025
Examining board:
Name |
Role |
|---|---|
| EDSON THEODORO DOS SANTOS NETO | Examinador Interno |
| LIA DA FONSECA SEIXAS | Examinador Externo |
| RAFAEL DA SILVA PAES HENRIQUES | Presidente |
Summary: This dissertation analyzes the frames produced by journalistic coverage of
suicide in Espírito Santo during the COVID-19 pandemic. In this context, the research
focuses on
identifying whether there are elements that indicate individual
responsibility in the news
articles and how this reference is constructed within the journalistic text.
Data collection was carried out using SIGCovid-19, a monitoring tool that
tracks the
activity of 21 news portals in Espírito Santo during the health crisis. News
articles published
between March 11, 2020, and May 5, 2023, were mapped, resulting in an
analytical corpus of
147 texts, including both informative and opinion pieces.
The study was conducted in two stages. In the first stage, quantitative data
were collected
regarding the news portals and their respective regions of concentration, the
most frequent
publication dates, the sections with the highest number of articles, and the
most cited sources.
These findings help contextualize the production environment of these news
reports. In the
second stage, the following functions and their respective locations within
the journalistic text
were identified: problems, causes, solutions, and moral judgments, based on
Robert Entman’s
(1993) framing analysis framework.
The results point to a tendency to assign individual responsibility for
solving the issue,
mainly through the use of neoliberal discourses of self-management and
awareness.
Furthermore, the COVID-19 context stood out significantly in relation to the
coverage of
suicide, as did the frequent mention of mental health issues throughout the
analyzed texts, often
lacking connection between them. The data also reveal a limited number of
articles that
approach suicide from a broader social perspective, with few narratives that
move beyond
individual responsibility to offer greater context to the problem.
