Populism and Journalism in Jair Bolsonaro’s Appropriation of the Brazilian National Football Team’s Shirt on June 29, 2025

Abstract

This text addresses the understanding of how the green and yellow shirt is portrayed by Brazilian journalism, focusing on the episode of the demonstration of June 29, 2025. The theoretical framework includes Laclau’s (2005) empty signifier, Rosanvallon’s (2020) elements of modern populism, and public communication based on Esteves (2011) and Weber (2017). The research corpus consists of seven journalistic publications present on the news portals G1, linked to Grupo Globo; Poder 360, specializing in politics; and Agência Brasil, focused on public journalism, on June 29, 2025. The methodology used was critical discourse analysis with the categories of multimodality and representation and social event. The results indicate that the journalistic coverage situates the demonstration as part of the democratic process, even in the face of radicalized proposals against democracy synthesized in the figure of Jair Bolsonaro.