Propagation of pseudo-events produced by Chega during the coverage of the electoral campaign for the Portuguese legislative elections of 2019

Résumé

The accession of Chega to the Assembly of the Republic, after the legislative election of 2019, represented a turning point for Portuguese political and mediatic landscapes. Inherently linked to the figure of its leader, André Ventura, this party emerged as the first representative of the populist radical right who managed to get a seat in the parliament of Portugal. Throughout the electoral campaign, one could notice how much Chega’s political communication was influenced by a profound knowledge of news-making routines. Among the communicational acts created by Ventura’s political party, one could see the presence of pseudo-events, leading one to pose two questions regarding its coverage: did the news-media outlets propagate any pseudo-event produced by Chega? The answer to that question being affirmative, how was that propagation made?

The goal of answering those two questions led to the qualitative analysis of every news piece published during the electoral period, from August 1 to October 6 of 2019, whose subject was the party led by André Ventura.

As the results of this paper’s research show, I and Correio da Manhã were the only print-media outlets to propagate the pseudo-events produced by Chega, its subject being circumscribed to gender issues and corruption, and its dominating news-values being continuity, conflict and controversy.