ABSTRACT
Chapter 7 presents a study where the authors undertake the critical exploration of the media representation of PISA in the Portuguese newspaper Público. They sought to ascertain and understand, within the Portuguese context, how a national reference general-interest daily newspaper refers to the process of Portugal’s participation in PISA, to the results of PISA and their respective implications, both in news discourse and in opinion discourses, in the period from 2001 to 2018. The interest in the media exploration of PISA derives from acknowledging that the mass media are an element of the global information society, both by making information available and steering the attention of the target audiences, and by contributing to shape their beliefs and value systems, their representation and attribution of importance to the different current events. The study shows, first, a progressive evolution of the coverage and prominence attributed by the newspaper to PISA, signs of its growing credibility and political importance in society and in the media agenda; second, the growing positive tone of the titles of the pieces, signalling the recognition of the favourable evolution of the Portuguese results in PISA, especially evident in the news stories, in contrast to a greater negativity in the chronicles/opinion pieces; and, finally, the almost absence of the “public voice”, in particular of the direct protagonists of the schools, signalling the newspaper’s limited openness to a socially plural opinion. These seem to be three important conclusions that can be drawn from the analysis of the surface features of Público’s production on PISA.
