Abstract

Late in 2019 massive protest demonstrations rocked both Chile and Colombia. They were an expression of discontent with the economic model and social policies implemented in both countries in recent decades. After analyzing the framing of reality by media in 4,252 news items, we suggest that the main news portals in these Latin American countries not only portrayed the collective actions, but also promoted interpretations that did not necessarily reflect the demands of the demonstrations. In this empirical research, we use quantitative and discourse analysis techniques to study the news published by the top three most visited main news websites in each country, and deduce the main frameworks emerging from them. We conclude that in the 2019 protests in Chile and Colombia, media approach to collective action was not necessarily positive for the activists. This was mainly because framing in the Chilean and Colombian websites had to do with negative aspects of the movements, such as violence or economic costs. Although there are abundant case studies on the relationship between social movements and media framing in the literature, this research adds to current knowledge because it compares two Latin American countries and focuses on web news portals.