A retórica do medo : uma análise neurolinguística da mídia

Abstract

This study aims to establish, with a cross and exploratory way, some interfaces between the communication theoretical foundation, systemic thinking, neuroscience and linguistics. This relationship appears to evaluate how the elicitation of emotions generated from the symbolic constructs happen. It`s produced by the mass media, especially journalism, as well as shed light on the possible effects on the formation and reinterpretation of individual and collective beliefs as from this process. Considering, with a systemic perspective, that the triad mind-body-language builds a single and indivisible system, we used theoretical assumptions of Bateson (1987), Chomsky (2005), Damásio (2000/2012), Ekman (2011), Krznaric (2015), Jung (1991/ 2001/ 2008/ 2011ª/ 2011b), among others, to develop circuits that explain the function of empathic process on activation of emotions, and how it can be activated by language. Field survey of transmitters and receptors of journalism's symbolic constructs has shown that there is a preference for activation of fear in the preparation of such constructs, and this preference impacts on mood, with reinterpretation's effects on collective beliefs. Quantitative data collected in random groups submitted to consumption of news, from media platforms of Zero Hora and Correio do Povo, over 14 days shown an increase in experience of some emotions such as fear, anger, and sadness, and a decrease in the joy experience. At the same time, these data showed an increase in the degree of truth for sentences representing more pessimistic beliefs about society. Field research has also enabled the development of a framework of symbolic constructs in order to, through discourse analysis, identify which specific rhetorical strategies were used in the activation of fear in the receivers. The crossing of this data with the in-depth interviews of journalists uncovered, at the end, that such phenomena, and its effects, often occur in the field of unconscious, featuring a transmission of ideology by conditioning, in which journalism play a role as a catalyst of something that Bartolli Filho (2015) calls "terror anthropology”.