Desertos de notícia e o jornalismo de interior: uma análise de seis cidades interioranas da região Sul

Abstract

Journalism in countryside cities is the one that comes closest to an communities in countryside cities. It is an increasingly essential journalistic practice these days, in the fight against disinformation. However, this kind of coverage is not found in some places. This is the case of news desert, places without an independent journalistic vehicle, according to Atlas da Notícias. There is a concern so as to find out how the people in these regions have access to local journalistic information. The general objective of this work is to try to understand how regions considered "news deserts" in southern Brazil supply the demand for information, without authentic journalistic coverage. This is about the central concepts of Indoor Journalism, such as proximity, Local Journalism and Regional Journalism. It also deals with news deserts and digital social media interaction. In order to achieve the proposed objective, exploratory and bibliographic research, principles of content analysis and questionnaires were used as methodological procedures. 990 publications with informational content circulating in digital social media groups in the six cities were analyzed. 108 people residing in south of Brazil answered the questionnaires. Digital social media pages and messaging applications were the most used channels to get local information. They play a crucial role in news consumption. Those cities' administrations are the most present sources of news. Despite feeling informed, residents claim local news coverage is not enough. The lack of content depth reveals how inconsistent journalism can be in some countryside cities. Even journalists and other people involved in it admit that. It was observed that people make the most of news production initiatives in these places to obtain information, such as community radio stations and even interaction with the community itself, through groups on digital social media, messaging apps and word of mouth among.