TY - JOUR
T1 - Minimalist Storytelling
T2 - The Natural Framing of Electoral Violence by Mexican Media
AU - Schedler, Andreas
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2022.
PY - 2022/12
Y1 - 2022/12
N2 - 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.
AB - 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.
KW - Mexico
KW - electoral violence
KW - frame analysis
KW - organised crime
KW - print media
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85138438672&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1177/1866802X221124032
DO - 10.1177/1866802X221124032
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85138438672
SN - 1866-802X
VL - 14
SP - 239
EP - 263
JO - Journal of Politics in Latin America
JF - Journal of Politics in Latin America
IS - 3
ER -