Studies on Media Framing in Latin America

Abstract

Discourses on public affairs, in their competing approaches to a legiti-mate and generalized perception of social and political reality, re-sort to controversy, the spectac-ular and the dramatic registers. In this respect, discourses on the news reveal that the media, as political actors, frame their coverage according to a dynamic of polarization that goes beyond them, but in which they represent a central component. In this arena of conflicting mean-ings, politicians, the media, social movements, reli-gious institutions and other social and public actors find themselves within the same community, where they dialogue and compete to impose their own defini-tion of public issues, some more effectively than others depending on the circumstances, using the full range of available platforms of expression in today’s complex digital media landscape. The public meaning that is ul-timately established depends on the discursive strate-gies employed, and reveals the power relations at play, at any given moment, within the community.