Congresso Nacional, mídia e políticas de saúde: 2015 a 2017.

Abstract

The relations between health policies, Parliament and media have been little explored in research carried out in Brazil in the area of Public Health. This investigation has as objective to analyze the media coverage of the role of the Legislative in issues related to health policies. To this end, a case study of the Folha de S. Paulo portal was carried out, from 2015 to 2017, adopting elements of the expanded theory of the State, by Antonio Gramsci, and reflections on the concepts of public sphere and public opinion, by Jürgen Habermas, as a theoretical reference, as well as the places occupied by the media in this discussion board. The analysis of legislative documents in the Brazilian Parliament and news about parliamentary activity points out which topics are more visible – with emphasis on financing, health policies, health plans and health surveillance – and less visible in the newspaper and in the National Congress, among them AIDS, indigenous health, LGBTQIA+, generic drugs and the black population. The study also discusses possible factors associated with the phenomenon, such as the alignment between the newspaper and the government's neoliberal economic agenda, allowing the understanding of which proposals related to health policies become news.