Pandemics and photojournalism: comparison between the coverage of the Spanish flu and the Covid-19 pandemic, in Fon-Fon! and Veja magazines

Abstract

This course conclusion work aims to build a comparative analysis between the photographs produced during the Spanish flu, in 1918, and the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, in Fon-Fon! and Veja's magazines. Relying on the theoretical and methodological perspective of Charles Sanders Peirce's semiotics, on the processes of images' perception and meaning. Still having, as support, Lúcia Santaella's studies, one of the main disseminators of semiotics and North American thought. Concepts about the importance of photographs and photojournalism as narrative agents in the construction of history were explored. In the analysis's process of construction, the images' categorization was established, having as the main hypothesis the pointing out of photographic similarities between one period and another. The assumption of similarity between the photographs was confirmed, whether on a political-social level or just from a visual point of view.