Resumen de Illustrated press and British propaganda in Portugal and Brazil: O Espelho

Jorge Pedro Sousa, Helena Lima

• One hundred years have passed since the deflagration of the Great War. The conflict was the peak of the rivalries between the major European powers but the battle field would be extended to other areas of the globe. Such was the American case, thanks to the propaganda machine assembled by President Wilson.

  Lasswell (1927) argued that propaganda in the Great War was a tool to change beliefs, attitudes and actions, and gave the term “magic bullets” to propagandistic messages.

  The press, in turn, rightly labeled as "paper bullets", has become a centerpiece in the symbolic struggle for the formation of opinion pro and against the war.

  Particularly, the illustrated press took a central role in this effort.

  Three illustrated magazines were published in France and England, written in Portuguese and aiming at the public opinion from Portugal and Brazil:

  Portugal na Guerra (printed in France);

  O Espelho (printed in England, was published under the British Office’s control);

  A Guerra Ilustrada (translation of the British magazine La Guerre Illustrée).

  This research aims to analyze how O Espelho, written in Portuguese and widespread in Portugal and Brazil, presented the First World War to readers.

  We seek to identify such discourse, and the meaningfulness for its readers, considering what is known of the historical context of the war period, but also through the magazine’s discourse itself, both textual and iconographic. The images in O Espelho were part of an inter-textual frame, that included the graphical (design) and written languages.

  Results show that O Espelho was an important piece in the British propaganda's strategy to control public opinion in Portugal and Brazil, even if this propaganda effort was limited by the lack of resources and by the poor diffusion of O Espelho both in Portugal and in Brazil.