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Minimalist Storytelling: The Natural Framing of Electoral Violence by Mexican Media
Title / Series / Name
Journal of Politics in Latin America
Publication Volume
14
Publication Issue
3
Pages
Authors
Editors
Keywords
Mexico
Electoral violence
Organised crime
Print media
Frame analysis
Electoral violence
Organised crime
Print media
Frame analysis
URI
http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14018/14072
Abstract
During the first two decades of the twenty-first century, Mexico’s so-called drug war claimed around a quarter of a million lives. Adapting to this enduring epidemic of violence, the print media have adopted a minimalist reporting style that gives only thin, formulaic accounts of violent events. As I argue, established journalistic minimalism does more than provide little information about violence. With practised impassiveness, it frames violence in a way that creates a certain narrative: not of social actors to be understood but of natural events to be endured. Through a qualitative content analysis of over 1200 news reports, I examine the persistent force of this “natural” frame in the face of an extraordinary development: the unprecedented intrusion of political violence into the 2018 general elections, when forty-eight candidates were assassinated.
Topic
Publisher
Place of Publication
Type
Journal article
Date
2022
Language
ISBN
Identifiers
10.1177/1866802x221124032