Marcelo Rebelo De Sousa: A Popular President Who Has All the Media Coverage

In his first speech, as the 20th President of the Republic, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa assured that his first and decisive thought was rooted in every Portuguese person. It is in the people that President Marcelo finds the needed legitimacy to develop everything he seeks. But this preoccupation with building bridges reflect the journalistic coverage of his work? From the analysis of the first two years of his term, what is striking is the depiction of a President who wants everyone together. The President has consistently assumed an approach of proximity with different social actors, and makes a visible effort to expand the stage of his political action to different Portuguese regions and several countries as well. The President appears as a hegemonic voice in the journalistic discourse. The starting question of this research is the following: in what ways has the journalistic coverage of the President's activity, during his two-year term of office (2016-2018), contributed to the construction of a hegemonic vision of the presidential functions? Taking into account this research question, in methodological terms, this study will analyse the two years of journalistic coverage of the presidential activity, in a set of daily and weekly newspapers. The technique of content analysis will be used, in a categorical approach, following Bardin’s (2013 [1977]) and Lopes & Espirito Santo (2016) framework. The expected results are the identification of the relationship pattern between the political involvement of President Marcelo and the media construction, in a sense that introduces a new projection of the Portuguese semipresidentialist regime.