Discourse, opinion and episteme. Immigrants and COVID-19 in the chilean press

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Abstract

In the current democratic societies, the media, known as “the fourth power” and that are generally in
charge of the local elites, have achieved a crucial role in the naturalization of discourses in the community
having the capacity to even influence the public opinion in political, social, religious and economic
areas, among others. Being the problem of study the influence that the expression of a certain type of
discourse has over its receivers, the goal of this article is to reflect about the link between the discourse,
the public opinion and the press epistemology regarding the immigration in Chile during COVID-19
times. The results from the examination of eleven newspapers employing a Critical Discourse Analysis
approach inform us that, on the one side, the actors such as authorities are nominalized, whereas the foreigners are assimilated in a group or invisibilized altogether. On the other hand, the themes that emerge
from the data analysis are poverty, vulnerability and discrimination. This study aims at problematizing
the discourses that come from the press from a critical perspective in order to contribute to the dialogical
construction of the other from an objective point of view away from preconceived and stigmatized views
spread by the media.


 

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Miscellaneous