“Is it just a little flu”? Producing a news-based counter account on Covid-19 discursive crises in Brazil

Abstract

ABSTRACT We aim to produce a counter account regarding a discursive crisis in media outlets that, since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic in Brazil, already pointed to the intersection of inequalities with a profound impact on vulnerable and marginalised groups. We draw upon the Sociologies of Absences and Emergences and intersectionality to challenge the truth regime associated with hegemonic accounts by “accounting for” news to contrast hegemonic discourse with a hidden side of socio-political reality. Methodologically, we retrieved 235 news – from March 11th to April 16th, 2020 – from seven Brazilian media vehicles to reveal, through thematic analysis, a discursive crisis with four opposing quadrants. We argue that alternative media had a critical role in highlighting the impacts of what we understand as necropolitical policies by (i) exposing the suffering of those doomed to non-existence in the hegemonic discourse; (ii) amplifying voices undertaken by vulnerable and marginalised people and activities of social groups aiming to resist. Exploring the discursive crisis allowed us to amplify the (re)emergence attempts that fought necropolitics with implications for rethinking the role of accounting in unequal contexts. In conclusion, our counter account revealed how historical inequalities and the growth of neoliberal conservatism sustained a flagrant loss of rights during the pandemic as a gendered and racialised crisis in Brazil. We contribute to the existing literature by connecting accounting’s potential of communicating/constructing realities and the need for alternative accounts based on the Sociologies of Absences and Emergences.