A captura de Osama Bin Laden: as representações sobre o Islã e o ocidente na Folha e Veja.

Abstract

This dissertation is a study of the representations of the relations between Islam and Western Civilization present in the written press, Revista Veja and Folha de São Paulo newspaper during the cover of the capture and assassination of the terrorist Osama bin Laden. Initially, the research verifies the presence of representations that evoke the orientalist tradition, to the molds of the criticism built by Edward Said in his work Orientalism. From the study of the sources, it is verified that the two media vehicles moved away from that tradition and constructed their texts from other references. Revista Veja, in an American pro-action stance, constructed a liberal-sounding discourse, which at the same time did not appeal to the stigmatization of the Islamic religion, but equated it with Christianity and Judaism, described the diversity of religious practices within of Islam, and separated religion from terrorism. The magazine resorted to arguments such as the defense of liberal values such as secularism, religious freedom and free initiative, as a justification for American action and for other American actions in the Middle East. The newspaper Folha de São Paulo, assumes a position opposed to that of Revista Veja, when framing the construction of its texts in the American action. The vehicle also resorts to liberal values, stating that the US in its intervention hurt the liberal values they promised to spread. They claimed that the US replaced rational justice with revenge and torture. The paper linked the US to sponsoring terrorist groups and imperial behavior that undermines multilateral relations. The opposition between the two information companies was compared permeating their differences as the conception of a peaceful and liberal future for Veja, and at the same time a violent and uncertain future for Folha. Despite the differences, the notion of freedom constructed by the two sources resembles its fragility, because Veja confuses public liberty with private freedom while Folha de São Paulo uses the mathematics of horror to criticize the US without criticizing the terrorism to which Osama bin Laden was affiliated.