The Brazilian Image in the German press before the political-economic turmoil

Abstract

This paper aims at investigating the image of Brazil produced by the German press from 2000 to 2014, employing quantitative content analysis based on a sample of 742 news articles. The study comprises at first the two main leading quality newspapers – the Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ) and the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) – and additionally the alternative tageszeitung (taz) from Berlin. Moreover, one included the most relevant German political magazine – Der Spiegel. Results demonstrated a different pattern of foreign reporting from the one discussed almost forty years before by the Foreign News Study. Brazil boasts – at least until 2014 – considerable attention to economic issues and a small focus on politics. Among other Latin American countries, Brazil exhibited the most balanced image (i.e. small negativity) and a considerable amount of cultural coverage. Future studies should analyse in the long run, the impact of the conservative political turn on the country’s image.

Keywords
international news coverage; Brazilian image; news factor; NWICO; structural traits of foreign reporting