The Discursive Construction of BRICS: Brazilian Legacy Media and (Non-)Western Alignments

Abstract

This study investigates the construction of the BRICS bloc in Brazilian mainstream media discourse, drawing on a thematic analysis of 100 articles published in the three most influential outlets of the local print press: Folha de S.Paulo, O Estado de S. Paulo, and O Globo. Theoretically, it engages with previous scholarship on the centrality of Western parameters in the identities of Latin American elites—including the legacy press—as well as on patterns of Brazilian media coverage of domestic and foreign politics. Incorporating analytical and methodological procedures from Critical Discourse Studies, this investigation spans 15 years and further reflects on the mediated representations of BRICS across six subsequent intervals. The analysis points to an overarching discursive shift in the representation of the group in selected outlets of Brazilian mainstream media, from portraying BRICS as an artificial, ill-matched assemblage of incompatible countries to depicting the bloc as a powerful and potentially menacing actor in global geopolitics. Furthermore, a concluding discussion—based on both previous literature and the empirical analysis—reflects on the steady salience of Western imaginaries in Brazilian media discourses and further situates the mediated representation of foreign relations against the backdrop of the rise of the local far right, which has seemed to confound sedimented patterns in the dynamics between media and politics in the country.