Visibility of Political Actors

This monograph seeks to analyse how visibility is distributed among political actors at the centre of national political visibility: in Brazil's prime-time television news programme, Jornal Nacional, and in the country's leading newspaper, Folha de S.Paulo. The objective is to demonstrate the distribution of visibility among politicians in television and print news in recent years through a comparative analysis of the two media, identifying differences and similarities between the distribution of visibility and other ways in which this process occurs in different media. To this end, five Brazilian politicians were analysed: President Lula, former Minister Dilma Rousseff, former Governor José Serra, Finance Minister Guido Mantega, and Alagoas Senator Renan Calheiros. We took as our corpus of analysis 200 (two hundred) editions of Jornal Nacional, corresponding to the months of August to December 2007 and 2009; and 350 editions of Folha de S.Paulo, in the years 2007, 2008, and 2009.