Between the dispute and the co-production: the image of the Brazilian Army in the Complexo da Maré

Abstract

During 2014 and 2015 the Armed Forces were involved in the operation of pacification of the Complexo da Maré shantytown, in Rio de Janeiro. This event establishes a tense atmosphere that offers conditions for a dispute for production of meaning. On the one side, the Army, a non-mediatic institution; on the other the journalism institutions, producing discourses on and images of the fact. However, a third element is aggregated with this circulating scenery, the social actors, who also begin to produce and develop the pacification in the mediatic aspects to which they have access. Based on the concepts of mediatization and circulation, one has a configured dispute. Thus, one investigates the process of construction of the image of the Army during the operation, based on the gathered materiality relative to the period of occupation of the Complexo da Maré . Finally, the correlation of these evidences reveals elements that go beyond the dispute, which causes the circulation of mediatized imagism.