NEW REPRESENTATIONS OF WORK: A CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF THE NEWS GENRE DURING THE COVERAGE OF THE 'BREQUE DOS APP'S'

Abstract

Based on the assumption that journalistic news is capable of reinforcing or denouncing social problems, in this work we propose to carry out a critical analysis of the news genre with a focus on the platformization of work (Grohman, 2020). It is a phenomenon of contemporary society whose main impact is the precariousness and annulment of labor rights of workers linked to digital platforms. In Brazil, these workers are mostly black, peripheral and low-income. Through the analysis of news published during the App Brake, the first national strike of app delivery workers, we aimed to identify how these social actors were represented and which discourses were used by the press to explain the problem in question. The theoretical-methodological construction of the study is based on Critical Discourse Analysis (Fairclough, 2003) and on the theory of textual/discursive genres with a sociorhetorical basis, using as analytical categories: (i) social and textual macroanalysis, in which we observe the dimensions of discursive (inter)action (activity, social relations and communication technologies) and (ii) microanalysis of actional meanings from intertextuality. The criterion for choosing the online news portals was their wide dissemination and propagation, while the texts were selected from the CrowdTangle tool, taking into account: high engagement rate, date of publication and use of the keywords "app brake" and "delivery stoppage". We believe that this study can contribute to the understanding of the social role of the news genre, discerning and discussing the discourses that guide the themes addressed and, consequently, unveiling the political and ideological interests of communication portals.