Tragedy in Japan in the Folha.com: the trivialization and consumption of the journalistic photograph in unlimited space of the Internet

Abstract

Photography on the internet still seeks its ontological claim, and the steps taken by the academy in order to understand its nature, are still incipient. The present dissertation undertakes the construction of a scientific thought in the light of dialogues between classical and contemporary theories of photography, media culture, journalism and Internet in real time. Even
though there is an unlimited space on the internet of Folha.com, this dissertation qualifies the photojournalism applied to an online environment as ephemeral and as a factor of saturation when verifying that it lacks of conditions for deepening the news. The questioning that guided the author
throughout the search of this topic was: When do photojournalistic images on the Internet saturate more than they inform? The search for answering to this question was possible starting from an analysis of the imagery
coverage of Folha.com displayed on its site, Hot Site and images galleries regarding the natural disaster that took place in Japan in March 2011. Therefore the classical methods were chosen as the theoretical approach to analyze the object of study. Methods as case study, Content analysis and also proposals still in testing such as Image Analytical Deconstruction, bibliographical research, documentary research and systematic empirical observation for data collection.