Pandemics on the agenda: Covid-19 and the Spanish flu portrayed in the Brazilian press

Abstract

Our main objective in this text is to analyze the speeches from the published reports about the Spanish flu epidemic past in Brazil, printed in newspapers of great national circulation, which we will use for our analysis, such as “Portal G1”, “El País”, “Jornal Cidade”, mainly between the months of April and May 2020. These reports are interrelated with aspects of the present pandemic situation, evoking, in the construction of the narrative, a discursive memory, which indicates certain aspects, contrasts and effects of varied meanings. We will approach, in this investigative enterprise, the established assumptions of Discourse Analysis of French tradition, more specifically, the studies of Michel Pêcheux, Michel Foucault and Eni Orlandi, in order to develop our analyzes. We will highlight the concept of discursive memory, and how it can illuminate the debates that the press itself proposes to carry out when it reconstructs the historicity of the Spanish flu epidemic in Brazil.