Introduction

In March 2014, a case of corruption was uncovered in Brazil that would go on to shake the country's democratic institutions to their very core. Through blind luck, a few arrests snowballed, and the case became the largest investigation of political corruption ever in Brazil – a country already infamous for dirty politics. However, the corruption investigation, known as Operation Lava-Jato, did not merely result in trials and sentences for the culprits. In corruption cases, the evidence emerging from plea bargains can be vital, because corrupt deals are struck, in their very nature, between very few people, producing as little material evidence as possible. With the preliminary statement of the theoretical challenge, the author introduces one of the concepts that could increase the scientific understanding of the conundrums posed by the Lava-Jato case. He presents a small tour of the environment of media and politics since the country's transition, in the mid and late 1980s, to democracy.