Representation of Landless Workers’ Movement in the press

Abstract

This study purposes to analyze discourses that put into scene the conflict between the Landless Workers’ Movement (Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra – MST) and farmers in Southeast of Pará. The discourses analyzed were taken from two stories published in a local newspaper named Correio do Tocantins, hosted in the city of Marabá, located in the eastern Brazilian Amazon. Our analyses, based on theoretical assumptions of Discourse Analysis (DA), focus on the ideological dispute in relation to the formation of an agricultural area in the Amazon, particularly in the South and Southeast of Pará, characterized by a history of intense fighting and conflicts over land. We highlight the discourses of the Press on the conflict between the MST, farmers or agricultural enterprises and State Government. We noted, also, a discursive practice by the media in which a negative image of this movement was constructed, in a way that the speech of the farmer and the press acquires very thin lines. What we observed is the effect of ‘adoption’ of the farmers’ speech by the media discourse. In the newspaper’s voice the discursive heterogeneity oriented through the conflict established is present, and the sense of criminalization of the social movement stands out in the discourse.Keywords: discourse, press, MST.