Current issue
Author: Niels Søndergaard
The accelerated Chinese growth and foreign direct investments (FDI) since the turn of the century have fueled different domestic reactions in recipient countries. This article analyses dominant news portrayals of Chinese investments in Brazil from 2010 to 2018. News items from Brazilian newspapers with nationwide circulation are systematically examined with a specific focus on their emplotment, storylines and framing of Chinese investments. The article identifies the dominant narratives related to Chinese investment in Brazil, and introduces the notion of “narrative intersections”, which are formed as news reports combine existing narratives in the process of interpreting this phenomenon. The study contributes to improving understanding about the domestic sources of opinion formation regarding China in Brazil.
Author: Diego Sanches Corrêa
This article analyzes the process of ideological differentiation in the opinions of the Brazilian electorate following the political emergence of Jair Bolsonaro in 2018. As a result of political polarization among elites, voters were encouraged to identify themselves ideologically and adopt opinions consistent with their self-identification. To demonstrate this phenomenon, data from the Brazilian Electoral Study (ESEB) for the years 2014, 2018, and 2022 were analyzed. The data show that ideological divergences regarding two politically sensitive issues — racial quotas and the integrity of the electoral process — only became significant after gaining high public visibility, driven by public statements from Jair Bolsonaro and new right-wing elites. A similar phenomenon may have occurred with various cultural and economic issues, according to evidence from the 2022 survey. These findings suggest that the meaning of ideological labels is fluid and subject to continuous social reinterpretation.