The struggle between information and reading: a newspaper, a rural community and their social representations regarding the semi-arid region of Ceará

um jornal, uma comunidade rural e suas representações sociais sobre o Semiárido cearense

Abstract

This thesis problematizes the social representations of the semi-arid region of Ceará, Brazil, and its subjects mobilized in the special reports produced between 1998 and 2020 by the former investigative section of the Brazilian newspaper O Povo, known as cadernos especiais (special notebooks), highlighting the systems of power and meaning that were part of the section’s modus operandi and its aesthetics. In this sense, the research aims to understand and interpret, through reading, the interaction of a group of peasants linked to a rural community located mainly in the municipality of Independência, Ceará, with the representations in question, with the aim of confronting the symbolic elaborations mediated in the notebooks with the appropriations of the peasants, recruited because they refer to the universe designated by the newspaper. Specifically, the research (a) identifies the representations of the semi-arid region and its subjects materialized in the special notebooks, based on the study of their production process; (b) understands how the rural community constitutes alterity, based on the representations mobilized daily by its members about themselves and their context; (c) interprets the meanings provoked by the peasants’ reading, highlighting the socio-cultural marks that result from the alterity of these subjects; and (d) analyzes how the meanings provoked by the reading dialogue with the editorial representations, highlighting the convergences and divergences that result from the forms of appropriation and recognition of the peasants with the special notebooks. Belonging to the field of Information Science, with a focus on studies of socially located subjects and mediation in favor of knowledge sharing, the thesis is based on the interdisciplinarity built between the theory of social representations; the concept of reading as the production of meanings; the idea of information as a hermeneutic and intersubjective process; and the notion of culture as the ordering and exercise of power. The nature of the research is exploratory and qualitative, its method is hermeneutic-dialectic, and it involved the analysis of two universes – the production of the sections and the rural community –, delimited and conducted according to the purpose of the exploration. In the newspaper environment, the study brought together seven professionals involved in the production of the notebooks, using semi-structured interviews to understand the intricacies of the section, demarcate power relations and identify social representations. In rural areas, the empirical work included an ethnographic immersion in the Escola Família Agrícola Dom Fragoso – an institution located in Independência that is co-responsible for forming local identities with the semi-arid region and structuring the community –, using participant observation and semi-structured interviews to understand the context and organize the reading group of ten peasants. The research also included methodologically provoked reading sessions in which the peasants were given a sample of four special notebooks, selected from a total of 35 notebooks, with the following selection criteria: reference to the subjects’ daily lives; emphasis on the structured phase of the editorial; and diversification of the sample, with priority given to the most recent publications. The group’s readings generated apprehensions of meaning that sometimes converged with, and sometimes diverged from, the symbolic guidelines of the editorial board, generating negotiations of appropriation and recognition in relation to the sample of sections. In the readers’ interventions, knowledge, criticism and shared judgments stood out, highlighting conflicts of otherness. The research concludes by considering that the gregarious factor of the subjects’ information and reading experiences does not happen passively, but in a negotiated way with cultural beliefs and orders, emphasizing the conditional behavior of symbolic constructions that favor the subjects’ protagonism.