Comentarios sobre inmigración en tres periódicos en línea españoles: Aproximación a un discurso racista enmascarado

Abstract

This article analyses the readers’ comments about four immigration affairs in three Spanish online newspapers, with the purpose of defining their level of racism and whether it is necessary to establish ethical codes or moderation guidelines for reader participation in the digital press. It is a qualitative approach to the ethics on the use of technology. Its novelty lies on the connection of this discussion with the topic of racism in order to make a linguistic approximation through discourse analysis. The study departs from van Dijk’s (2002) methodology to analyse a sample of all the comments about four controversial topics related to immigration on those journals (n=261). The theoretical framework reflects on the interactive tools of the new digital media and the ethical aspects of user generated content related to the racism and/or tolerant discourses. The results show that the xenophobic discourse is prominently present in the reader’s comments through directly racist opinions or through disguised discourse strategies. In comparison, not all the topics have raised the same reaction. In this sense, the security topic and the image of the cities cause more worry than the victims of sexual exploitation. According to this study, the moderation of the user generated content in the digital platforms is still something to be resolved and also the civic education on its use.