REDEFINING THE NARRATIVE: THE INFLUENCE OF AGENDA SETTING AND POWER THEORIES ON JOURNALISTIC COVERAGE OF HUNGRY

Abstract

Hunger and food insecurity are structural problems historically linked to Brazilian social inequality, whose impacts were intensified during the covid-19 pandemic. Despite the social and political relevance of this issue, low thematic centrality has been observed in the coverage of regional newspapers. In this context, this study analyzes the presence and framing of hunger-related topics in the printed newspaper Folha de Pernambuco throughout 2021, a period marked by alarming indicators of food insecurity in Brazil and by symbolic and institutional events associated with addressing the problem in the state. The research adopted a content analysis approach, based on Bardin’s methodological framework, applied to a corpus consisting of 314 daily editions of the newspaper, totaling 5,878 pages. Texts containing the expressions “hunger” and/or “food insecurity” in titles or subtitles were identified, followed by a filtering process to exclude figurative uses of the terms. The findings revealed a low incidence of eligible publications, with predominance of episodic informational content, limited structural problematization, and recurring emphasis on assistentialist actions. The discussion suggests that the observed editorial selectivity may be interpreted through Agenda Setting theory, highlighting processes of thematic invisibility and discursive reduction of a complex social phenomenon.