Environment and Development in the discourse of economic journalism

Abstract

This thesis focuses on the relation between the environment and the concepts of growth and development in economic journalism. To do so, the newspaper Valor Econômico was chosen due to its position as the Brazilian main economic publication and the energy issues was selected as focus of analysis. Authors as Leff, Latouche and Georgescu- Roegen are used to give an overview of ecological thought linked to the economy. The concepts of development and growth are examined through the theories of Giddens, Sen and Furtado. The considerations of Berger and Luckmann and Park are employed in order to explain that this work considers journalism as a form of knowledge and construction of reality. There are also references to the theories of Foucault and Charaudeau about truth and journalistic discourse. On examination of the corpus, it was observed that the speech of Valor Econômico is fundamentally linked to the idea of the need for economic growth. The environment, when it appears, occupies second place and there is no questioning about the current development model.

Keywords: Journalism, Environment and Development.