Framing fear: Twitter media coverage around an intercultural conflict breaking news

Amaranta Alfaro Muirhead – Universidad del Desarrollo – Centre for Social Conflict and Cohesion Studies (COES), Chile

Eileen Hudson Frias – Universidad del Desarrollo, Chile

Leo Ferres – Istituto Data Science – Universidad del Desarrollo, Chile

Keywords

Mapuche, Twitter, public sphere, fear filter, framing, breaking news, mass media

Abstract

According to the propaganda model, coined by Herman & Chomsky (2008) fear -the fifth filter of the model- in the form of “terrorism” has a great political utility and is used as a control mechanism, where mass media plays a crucial role in its propagation. In this sense the “fear filter” plays a central part in the news coverage on the Mapuche conflict -between the Chilean State and the Mapuche people- where this ethnic group has been framed as “terrorist”, especially since 2016 attacks against churches, trucks, machinery, where posters alluding the Mapuche cause were found. The focus of this research is to explore how the main Chilean media outlet refer to the Mapuche people and an intercultural conflict on Twitter taking as case study a breaking news event: the killing of a comunero Mapuche´s by a shot in the back of his neck during a police raid conducted by a special unit of policemen -known as Comando Jungla (in English Jungle Commando)- in an operation carried out in the Temucuicui area, in the Araucanía region. The goal is to recognize the main topics of the tweets generated by mass media on Twitter, and identify the presence of the mentioned “fear filter” frame. In order to do this, we will analyze the tweets on this breaking news event

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