Informação simbólica, representações sociais e identidade: confronto de sentidos nas narrativas que (in)formam as mulheres de Noiva do Cordeiro

Abstract

This research examines the ways in which information, hereby understood as a symbolic form, pervades the process by which social representations and identity narratives are articulated and re-signified by the residents, particularly by the women of Noiva do Cordeiro, a rural community located 100 miles away from Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais. In methodological terms, we recurred to hermeneutic dialectics while combining it to two operational methods: documental and case study. The techniques used were focal groups, participant observation, free and semi- structured interviews and discourse analysis. The body of journalistic reports and documentaries analyzed was constituted while attempting to point out the diversity of revealing narratives of the history of isolation and prejudice experienced by the community. Throughout the analysis, the purpose has been to highlight the meanings through which representative and identitary discourses are elaborated, disseminated, confronted and re- signified, which is why we consider the social reality – marked by inequality and by power asymmetries – in which the meanings are produced. Among the main results, we can emphasize the unveilment of both the ideological factors as well as the narrative dimension of information based on which the women of Noiva do Cordeiro re- elaborate their own identitary representations and how they wish to be perceived. In addition, we can highlight the perception of information as the action of (in)forming media narratives, a context in which the mediation of information is permeated by a complex process of economic and symbolic valorization, in which condition information not only permeates the creation and reproduction of social representations, but also supports these representations as a way to guarantee not only the wide dissemination of content it manages, but also its public visibility.Keywords: Symbolic information. Social representation. Identitary representation. Ideological character of information. Narrrative (in)formation. Prodution of meaning. Noiva do Cordeiro.