La representación simbólica de la Violencia de Género en los informativos de TVEun análisis desde la teoría del framing

Abstract

This thesis analyses the informative treatment of television news about gender violence based on the framing theory. The study considers that there are deficiencies in the process of elaboration of these news, which are observed by checking that there is not a total compliance with the manuals of best practices elaborated by the media to inform on violence against women. In order to develop the objective of this thesis, a quantitative analysis has been carried out. This analysis includes variables that refer to the informative treatment of gender violence, both from a formal and content point of view, that allows us to identify the frames used in the information published in an audiovisual media. Specifically, the TVE news programme has been used as a case study. TVE is considered to be a benchmark public television station and, as a public media, should be the guarantor of the most appropriate treatment of this sensitive information. This research covers five years of news activity on this issue, from 2015 to 2020, so that the evolution of these frames over time can be verified. In this way, the research offers a diagnosis based on empirical data on how the media has reported on this type of news, in terms of format, priority, definition, audiovisual resources used and framing. The conclusions of the study show that the journalistic discourse is more focused on isolated facts than on contextualising them as part of a public issue. It also detects the presence of images that contribute to sensationalism, without any kind of filter. As a contribution, the research offers a typology of specific frames associated with news about gender violence that are empirically tested. Of all of them, the frame "crime story" appears in more units of analysis, which demonstrates the media's priority to show a journalistic discourse associated with this type of story. These data show that TVE does not strictly comply with its own recommendations contained in its style manual, thus confirming the deficiencies pointed out and also the need to address a transformation in the process of elaborating news about gender violence.