This research focused the use of images of risk-adventure in magazines in a diachronic perspective in order to investigate their legitimation and the emergence of strategies of governing risk in contemporanity. A sample of 212 issues of Veja published in the period between 1968 and 2003 was used. The analysis suggests that the presence of risk-adventure activities in the media, in a temporal perspective, had two stages: the first concerns the profissionalization of activities that until recently were considered exotic. In the second stage adventure sports became more accessible and the public is seduced through the offer of tourist packages and specialized courses. Images of risk-adventure in contemporary media are intrinsic information resources and support for the text. But they have other effects, such as promoting the experience of events to which one would not have direct access because of the costs involved or the lack of the necessary technical competence.
Risk-adventure; discursive practices; images