Journalism and Myth

Foundations of a Symbolic Crisis 

Abstract

The challenge of this paper is understanding the imaginary of Journalism transformations in the transition from the industrial to the post-industrial period when the mass media gave place to the media of the masses. To this end, it seeks to broaden the Journalism Theories perspective based on the contribution of the General Theory of Imaginary, as to better understand what variances and reminiscences in the images permeate the epistemological field of this object in crisis. This symbolic reading is constructed from the mythocritic of classical Brazilian journalism epistemology books from the industrial period, which constituted our foundation while tensioning the post-industrial dynamics. The analysis allowed us to understand that the images constellating in the imaginary of journalism are dynamized from their imaginary responses to ancestral drives: Myths of Time, Myths of Vision, Myths of Progress, and Myths of the Order. Hence this symbolic and mythic framework, we could highlight the imagens evoked by our contemporary times.