A fotografia como estratégia de imagem em relações públicas na legitimação das organizações: uma reflexão a partir do facebook da Samarco Mineração S.A.

Abstract

Public Relations can use photography as a strategy in organizational legitimacy, because it has a communicative power. The general objective of this work is to understand photography as a Public Relations strategy in organizational legitimation. Samarco Mineração S.A., a mining company founded in 1977, was chosen as the object of study for the analysis of the photographs. Its product is iron ore pellets, which are sold internationally for the steel industry. On November 5, 2015, the Fundão dam, located in the municipality of Mariana - MG, broke, causing a catastrophe not only environmental, but also, in the families of that place. Since then, the company that always had the speech to honor with its commitments to society and the environment had to draw communication strategies to recover the damage that this tragedy caused in the image of the organization and consequently in the organizational legitimacy. For the accomplishment of this study the bibliographical research was first used, with the objective of reflecting on the main subjects photography and Public Relations, from authors of these areas. As the work of this work is Public Relations photography, the photographs published on the company's Facebook page were analyzed and the photograph was perceived as an organizational legitimation strategy. For the analysis of the published photographs of the Facebook page of the company Samarco Mineração S.A .. The following research technique was used: content analysis. For the categories of analysis we used the categories of analysis for an effective photograph of Santos (2015). According to the author there are factors that contribute to the effectiveness of a photograph, which are: motive, elements of support, message, light, photographic technique and lasting emotional reaction. Based on the analysis of the photographs, it can be observed that they were used in conjunction with actions to repair and compensate the conflict between the organization and the public. Therefore, it is strategically used by Public Relations in the legitimation and political function of the activity.