Corrupção e opinião pública: o escândalo da Lava Jato no governo Dilma Rousseff

Abstract

Political corruption, understood as the illicit use of authority and abuse of power for its own benefit to the detriment of the well-being of society, nowadays presents itself with increasing visibility in the means of communication of democratic political regimes. Corruption is one of the phenomena that affect the quality of public services directly affecting the quality of life of citizens. It can also be an obstacle to citizens' confidence in political representation, eroding in this way the legitimacy and consequent stability of the democratic regime. The media are important sources of information for citizens, however, several studies warn that the media coverage for corruption cases can condition the perception of the phenomenon: "scandal media industry". In view of this, this research proposes to analyze the perception of corruption, from various aspects and fields of influence, especially the media, and to perceive how this perception of the phenomenon acts in public opinion. In this way, we propose contextualizing the issue of corruption in the Brazilian press, observing the tendency to cover cases of corruption in Carta Capital, Época, Isto É e Veja, between the years 2014 and 2016, on the occasion of the corruption scandal at Petrobras, whose investigation became known as Operation Lava Jato Operation Car Wash. And our goal is to understand how political scandal influences the perception of public opinion on corruption and political attitudes. Thus, we establish a relationship between the perception of corruption and partisanship, satisfaction with democracy, economy, evaluation of government and confidence in the presidential figure. The data used come from opinion polls conducted by the Social Communication Secretariat of the Presidency of the Republic, Datafolha, Ibope and Latinobarómetro.