Social significance of violence in traditional Chilean written press narratives

A case study in the context of the social outbreak in Chile (18-O)

Abstract

The objective of this article is to characterize narratives of the traditional written press, conveyed by representations and social imaginaries that mean expressions of violence, framed in the so-called social outbreak of October 18, 2019 in Chile. In methodological terms, it has a combined and embedded design, complementing quantitative and qualitative content analysis, based on Galtung's typology of violence. The Chilean newspapers El Mercurio and La Tercera were analyzed between October 18, 2019 and March 5, 2020. Some relevant quantitative findings indicate that both media considerably address direct violence, but not structural violence. These data make more sense with the qualitative findings, which suggest the existence of social meanings, such as the representation of the criminal vandalism protest that supports an imaginary of social chaos and public disorder, criminalizing social mobilization. Therefore, the representation of the validation of police-military action as a guarantor of social order and of a dominant imaginary such as the neoliberal model also appears. The main conclusions of the study maintain that the analyzed media maintain a hegemonic narrative around the maintenance of a radicalized neoliberal order in Chile.