Brazil : a política externa ambiental do governo Bolsonaro (2019-2022) no The New York Times

Abstract

During the Cold War, the political world was constrained by security dilemmas and the media focused on political and war propaganda. With its end, there was an expansion of political themes such as environmental issues, the environmental impacts of economic development, and later, the climate crisis. In the mass media arena, there was an increase in actors and a fragmentation of discourses. In this scenario, driven by its vast biodiversity, Brazil positions itself as an important actor on the global environmental agenda. However, during Jair Bolsonaro's government (2019-2022), the country was heavily criticized for its environmental policies. This work analyzes the news coverage of Bolsonaro's environmental policy by The New York Times during his entire term (2019-2022), observing the narratives, framings, and sentiments expressed. The research aims to fill the theoretical gap in the relationship between media and politics in International Relations, focusing on media representation and its influence on policy formulation. For data analysis, Categorical Content Analysis based on Sampaio and Lycarião (2021) was used. Additionally, the Python programming language was employed using the VADER library for sentiment analysis and WordCloud to observe the most frequent words. Within the research scope, 55 news articles were found covering the following themes: politics, wildfires, deforestation, environmental disasters, and indigenous issues. The results indicate the predominance of the Amazon in all previously mentioned categories, a framing that places the then-president as a strong influence on the increase in deforestation and wildfires in Brazil, and reveal a predominantly negative sentiment in the reported messages