Emergence of meanings: the discourse on favelas at the beginning of the pandemic

Abstract

This article addresses the discourses produced by the mainstream media about the coronavirus in the favelas, seeking to understand how and what meanings emerged and were legitimized in the first wave of the pandemic between March and August 2020. analysis of the speeches of part of the material in the section “Coronavirus in the Favelas” of the virtual platform of the Dicionário de Favelas Marielle Franco, Wiki Favelas, with more than 700 news about the pandemic in the Brazilian peripheries. For this article, materials whose category (already listed by the platform) referred to issues of inequality and
vulnerability were used. The results pointed, above all, to the intense relationship of the sanitary crisis with the cuts of race and class: from the demonstration of the precarious character of the dwellings in the slums, passing through the difficulties and/or impossibility of executing sanitary measures in these localities, the absence or inefficiency of governments in guaranteeing economic security for less favored families, as well as the presentation of racial problems that prevented an egalitarian fight against the virus and the strategies sought by residents to face the risks of Covid-19.