Depression as a journalism subject: exploring the Folha Group’s files (1970-2009)

Abstract

We investigate evidence of the cultural construction of depression in Brazilian media. To this end, we have explored its definition as a journalistic subject by examining the corpus of research materials from Folha Group’s newspapers, especially Folha de S. Paulo, over the past forty years. Our approach to the news archives has allowed us to outline four main strategic regions of discourse production, revealed and exemplified in the article. Based on these observations, we have advocated a new perspective for the analysis of the press’s role in publishing materials for dissemination of scientific research regarding depression. We will interpret its role not simply as the automatic disseminator of scientific truth, but as the explorer of a gray area of the field of opinion, regarded as a representation of the rubble of circulating knowledge, where what is at stake is the production of the current nature itself of the disorder.