O humor na cobertura da campanha eleitoral

: as legislativas de 2015 na rubrica "Isso é tudo muito bonito, mas"

Abstract

In the last decades, journalism has changed the way it represents politics. The
economic pressure, the increasing commercialization of the editorial line, the population’s disinterest in the theme and the modification of the audiences’ tastes, explain the changes in the news coverage, each time more focused towards a soft news approach with appealing contents and therefore more commercial. Thereby, the journalistic coverage of politics starts to integrate strategies to entice and retain the voters, particularly during election periods.
The use of humor and satire were fundamental on the approach between politicians and voters in infotainment programs, providing context and topics to discuss in the public sphere. In Portugal, these programs have been carried out by a group of humorists called Gato Fedorento. In this context, the investigation here presented aims to identify the strategies of representing politics in the humoristic speech, through the analysis of its format, framework, the sketch’s tone and identify its connection with the journalistic narrative by the analysis of dominant themes and the coverage of parties and political actors. For such, it was analyzed the TVI’s (Independent Television) sketch “Isso ́ tudo muito bonito, mas” and it was used the method of content analysis. It was also used in this
investigation the complementary method of the interview performing it with the
protagonists of the sketches and with politic journalists for a better understanding of the sketch’s strategies and goals. This investigation allowed to conclude that the sketch proposed a distinct vision of the campaign in a television broadcast format that made the daily coverage of the
campaign activities in a conventional registry, but following closely the journalistic agenda, as well as the traditional noticeability criteria. We conclude as well that the sketch’s format itself constitutes a critic to journalism through a “coverage of seconddegree”.

Date of Award	26 Jan 2018
Original language	Portuguese
Awarding Institution	Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Supervisor	Rita Figueiras (Supervisor)