Browsing by Author "Granados Hidalgo, Isabel Nataly"

Contrary to the cases of Ecuador and Bolivia, where the indigenous population has managed to constitute successful ethnic movements and political parties, indigenous peoples in Peru have not been able to organize a permanent indigenous movements or to form ethnic parties, which could create and promote their own agendas. The failure of indigenous movement to participate in the public sphere was strikingly visible in the Bagua conflict, a confrontation between Amazonian indigenous movements and the Peruvian government on June 2009. Previous research has shown that indigenous peoples and ethnic minorities are usually erroneously portrayed in the media and their agendas are distorted. The media representation of indigenous movements has not been extensively studied yet, although it is an important factor for their establishment and development. Therefore, this study was set up to discover how Amazonian indigenous movements, their issues and their agendas are being portrayed in the El Peruano newspaper. To answer the research question, all the items published in El Peruano related to the Bagua conflict, from May 7 to July 11 2009, were revised and coded using the methods of content and frame analysis. The items were coded according to source, type of source, topic, naming of the participants and visibility of the item on the headlines. The coded items were analyzed using information biases proposed by Bennett and the conflict frames proposed by Gray. The findings showed that indigenous movement representations in El Peruano were influenced by the political inclination of the daily and its historical role as the spokesperson of the sitting government. Coverage in El Peruano was based on influential political actors’ statements and analysis, and did not offer enough space for contextualization of the conflict or investigative journalism on the causes of the conflict or the agenda of the indigenous movements. This study manages to add new knowledge to prior research on media representation of indigenous people and ethnic minorities by providing a comprehensive account of the framing of the entire conflict and its main protagonists. At the same time, this study clearly indicates the necessity for further research on media representations of indigenous movements, since these new types of social actors are becoming more empowered and more influential in the politics of their encompassing state. The processes of political change, globalization, new economic policies and social pacts are creating a new type of struggle between indigenous peoples and governments, especially visible in Latin America, where the former have reached a higher degree of political participation previously unseen.