Preamble Narratives and Social Memory - Universidade do Minho

Criminal violence in Brazilian moving images in 2010Juliana Cunha Costathe South and the Southeast 2 . This evidence also permits to understand that a part of thepopulation opting to consume entertainment contents by means of illegal downloads onthe internet or buying illicit DVD versions by street vendors. Finally, the supplementary partof the society on the one hand cannot afford a movie theater tickets or, on the other handare part of the offline population have just the analogue television system as main sourceof information and entertainment. The same statement was made by Bourdieu (2012), whenreferring to the French society of the eighties of the past century “[…] everyone knows thata very high proportion of the population reads no newspaper at all and is dependent ontelevision as their sole source of news” (p. 400).2. The Brazilian Moving Images Production: The Analysis of TV Annual Reviewsin Rede Globo and Rede RecordBroadcasting airwaves are public in Brazil, and a federal government agencygrants licenses to media companies operating radio and television stations.There are five large privately owned national television networks - TV Globo, SBT,TV Record, TV Bandeirantes, and TV Manchete, as well as hundreds of local andregional television stations (256 stations in 1992) operating under an affiliationsystem similar to the United States (Reis, 2003, p. 125).“TV Globo, Globo and Rede Globo are the names given to the Globo television networkin Brazil” (Codone, 2010, p.4); it is one of the only two media conglomerates in Latin America’saudiovisual space and the predominant television network among all the Portuguese-speakingnations 3 . Similarly, Televisa from Mexico is the largest media corporation in Spanish-speakingcountries. “No single network has ever dominated the USA, the world’s largest Englishspeakingdomestic market, to the degree that Televisa and Globo have secured hegemonyover their respective national markets” (Sinclair, 2005, pp. 198-199). “Globo and its affiliatesform the largest broadcasting network, with 122 main transmitters and covering practically allTV households in the country with analogue TV” (Farncombe, 2010, p. 4).Television became a truly mass medium in Brazil earlier than in most developingcountries, in large part because of effective, if highly authoritarian governmentpolicy. The military government policy, which took power in 1964, saw televisionas a potential tool for creating a stronger national identity, creating a broaderconsumer economy and controlling political information. The military deliberatelypushed television deeper into the population by subsidizing credit for setsales, by building national microwave and satellite distribution systems and bypromoting the growth of one network they chose as a privileged partner, TVGlobo (Straubhaar, 2004, p.91).Since the 1970s Rede Globo dominates the television market and this conglomerateis considered the “[…] fourth largest television network in the world, behind the Americannetworks of ABC, NBC and CBS” (Codoner, 2010, p. 10). This channel detains “[…] one-third of2“Brazil is a country with huge regional disparities. In 2002, 56% of real Brazilian GDP was generated by the most economicallydeveloped region of Brazil, the South-East, including metropolitan areas such as Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. Bycontrast, the two most depressed regions of the country; the North and the North-East, together produced only 0.6% ofnational GDP” (Salardi, 2008, p.2).3http://observatorio-lp.sapo.pt/pt/dados-estatisticos/falantes-de-portuguesNarratives and social memory: theoretical and methodological approaches205