Fórmula 1 e comunicação crítica: o ativismo do piloto Lewis Hamilton dentro e fora das pistas.

Abstract

The persistence of structural racism in global capitalist society poses a complex challenge, manifesting itself even after centuries of struggles for the abolition of slavery and the achievement of full citizenship for the black population. In this context, it is imperative not only to talk about anti-racism, but to effectively practise it, investigating the motivations of the ruling classes to resist dialogue about diversity in social environments. Formula 1, a globalised and historically elitist sport, characterised by white hegemony in its 74 years of existence, emerges as a privileged lens for this analysis, with Lewis Hamilton emerging as a unique agent of transformation in this scenario. This research investigates Lewis Hamilton's activist communication in Formula 1 as an educommunicative practice to combat structural racism and the elitism of the sport, analysing how his symbolic acts and media performance promote social debates in a traditionally conservative environment. The methodology adopted consists of a semiotic analysis of six media images of Hamilton in Grand Prix races held between 2020 and 2021, using the theoretical-conceptual framework of Peirce's (1839-1914) general semiotics to decipher the mechanisms of visual meaning and Greimas' (1917-1992) discursive semiotics and actantial model to understand the narrative structures of confrontation and solidarity present in his statements. The research is theoretically anchored in Educommunication studies through the perspectives of Soares (2011), Miguel (2017); Almeida (2023) and Oliveira (2024), who understand the interface between education and communication as an instrument of socio-political transformation, and on the fundamentals of anti-racism through the approach of Bento (2022), Ribeiro (2019) and Hooks (2019), who provide the critical foundation for analysing structural racism in sport. The aim of the research is to demonstrate how Hamilton's communicative praxis reinterprets the media-sports space, transforming it into a platform for critical education and the contestation of meanings. The analysis reveals that Hamilton employs a precise semiotic repertoire, including gestures, clothing, and symbols that function as vectors of a counter-hegemonic narrative. Through this theoretical perspective, Hamilton is identified as an active subject whose object of value is social justice, confronting institutional and cultural opponents with the support of allies. Finally, the work seeks to demonstrate how his actions constitute an effective educommunicative practice by educating through media communication, destabilising the hegemonic bubble of Formula 1 and forcing it to confront narratives of social injustice. The research contributes by offering a semiotic-educommunicative interpretation of the phenomenon, demonstrating how sports communication can be reinterpreted as an instrument of political contestation.