Between victimization and overcoming: Paralympic Games Rio 2016 and representation of Brazilian athletes in national press

Abstract

This research project aims to examine how it will be portrayed in three Brazilian news-papers the participation of national disabled athletes in the 2016 Paralympics Games. We intend to apply concepts from French Discourse Analysis to the production of two major newspapers Brazilian (Folha de S. Paulo and O Globo), and the production of the largest national sports newspaper (Lance!).The research investigates how these vehicles will have operated the levels of crop and reconstruction of the sports event, in view of the performance of national athletes with disabilities through the world's largest competition of disabled athletes. Our intention is to analyze which discursive formations will be set in motion by the newspapers listed in our corpus to an-nounce the evidence that Brazilian parathletes were highlighted throughout the event.Our hypothesis is that one of the trends of journalistic vehicles is the perpetuate certain stigmas and stereotypes that surround the person with disabilities - something perceived in similar coverage during the previous editions of the Paralympic Games. This view causes a pen-dulum that swings between the representation of the athlete or as a hero, able to promote resilience and celebration of humanity, either as an individual to who we look with compassion and awkwardness, highlighting the difference with that sportsman who is not deficient.We are interested to check, finally, if the Brazilian media will perpetuate in the 2016 Paralympics Games the same media coverage of logic that are used in other sporting events with athletes without disabilities, failing to take into account the specifics of the actors that come into play in one and in another case. (AU)