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DESIGNAÇÃO: A ARMA SECRETA, PORÉM INCRIVELMENTE PODEROSA, DA MÍDIA EM CONFLITOS INTERNACIONAIS

Kanavillil RAJAGOPALAN (Universidade Estadual de Campinas)

ABSTRACT: I argue in this paper that designation, the process by which we give a ‘local habitation and a name’ to an object, be it real or imagined, and thereby bring it center stage and make it available for further discursive practices, must be seen as the first and perhaps the most important step in the ideological manipulation of the readers’ attitude in relation to the object named and talked about. I underscore therefore the importance of looking at strategies of designation or naming, in understanding the role of news media in the dissemination of ideologically slanted information.

KEYWORDS: media – politics – linguistic identity – designation – reference

It was 1992, and the old Soviet system had collapsed less than a year before. Russians had the feeling that now they were living in a democracy everyone should be allowed to do anything. Secret documents were being released at a breath-taking rate; we could ring any senior official, no matter how high up, and expect that he or she would speak to us on camera; the Russian newspapers were revealing truths about their government and society which had been secret for ever. None of it lasted, of course. As Russians came to know and understand more about the West, they found out that there is little freedom of information there either.

— John Simpson (2000:155)

My impression is the media aren’t very different from scholarship or from, say, journals of intellectual opinion—there are some extra constraints—but it’s not radically different. They interact, which is why people go up and back quite easily among them.

— Noam Chomsky (1997)

0. Introdução

Desde a Guerra do Golfo, já há mais de uma década, o papel da mídia tornou-se inconfundivelmente visível e inegável. Há quem diga que aquele famigerado confronto entre as tropas de Saddam