"Der Spiegel journalist messed with the wrong small town": como a circulação de sentidos tensiona a formação de zonas de contato

Abstract

In December 2018, German magazine Der Spiegel revealed that Claas Relotius, one of its top reporters, had forged information in more than 50 stories. One of the stories written by Relotius containing false information targeted Fergus Falls, a city in the interior of the state of Minnesota, in the United States. After the publication of the article by Der Spiegel, two residents of Fergus Falls carried out an information check and, after it was reported that the journalist's fraud had been discovered and he was removed from his activities with the magazine, published the results of their investigation on a blog. Immediately circulation flows generated with the publication of the blog, started to tension the formation of contact zones from the blog, both in mass media, as in social networks. This work, therefore, aims to show the formation of contact zones around the case from the publication of the blog, through the description of the circulation flows of the case, analysis of the phases and levels of the circulation, and demonstration of the circulation functioning. Thus, a theoretical path was traced anchored in the works of theorists such as Eliseo Verón (1987; 1997; 2005; 2007; 2013; 2014), Antônio Fausto Neto (2008; 2010; 2011; 2018), Mário Carlón (2018; 2018b; 2019), José Luis Fernández (2017; 2018), José Luiz Braga (2004; 2012), Umberto Eco (1986), Maria Cristina Mata (1999) and Michel Foucault (1994; 1996). For the methodology, we opted for the case study, as suggested by Howard Becker, supported by the analysis of the phases and levels of the circulation as proposed by Mário Carlón. The study identified the formation of a compensation heterotopy from the contact zones formed around the case from the blog publication, and showed how circulation tensions the formation of new contact zones in a context of mediatization of contemporary societies.