Abstract
Within the context of the ongoing discussion on how the media represents spaces and territories to audiences, this pilot study proposes a methodological approach to investigate how diverse online news sources (national and regional legacy media, local public institutions, hyperlocal and community media, etc.) cover a territory—in this case, Brussels. Through a transversal analysis of the contents produced in 152 news items from as many sources, the paper aims to examine how online media ascribes particular meanings to spaces, which in the end might affect audiences’ perceptions. To assess how Brussels and its municipalities are represented, positive and negative values are assigned to news items describing its social problems. Results show that the complexity of Brussels’s institutional structure is an issue for the Belgian media, which has difficulty describing the territory it covers. Furthermore, the contents produced about Brussels indicate that online news producers may consistently portray poorer areas of the city as hosting more social problems than richer areas, hence stigmatizing these places. Finally, results suggest that the methodology presented and tested is viable to study place-problematizing.
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