Framing international crises: a comparative content analysis of media texts on the collapse of Venezuela

Berti Olinto

doi:10.32920/ryerson.14657571

Abstract

This research explores mainstream and diasporic media coverage and discourses surrounding the Venezuelan economic and political crisis from late March 2017 until early May 2018. A comparative content analysis was applied to a total of 256 news articles, editorials, and stories from the Toronto Star, one of Canada’s largest newspapers, and from La Portada Canadá, a Spanish-language Latin American newspaper in Toronto. The results demonstrated diasporic media’s appropriation of journalistic biases such as human impact, dramatization, and national interests and the reframing of dominant discourses from international news agencies about the Venezuelan crisis. Whereas there are significant similarities between both media’s content regarding the crisis, La Portada Canadá stressed the transnational component of the Venezuelan diaspora through discourses about political and civic engagement in Canada. The Toronto Star focused more on the economic and political components of the crisis, which are closely linked to the country’s national agenda. Keywords: diasporic media, mainstream media, media coverage, media discourses, international crises, humanitarian crisis, Venezuela, Toronto

Highlights

Media outlets produced by and for immigrants, often referred to as diasporic media, have become powerful tools for enacting cultural identity, political participation, and civic engagement in the host country
Diasporic media is becoming a powerful tool for the discussion, representation, and portrayal of international conflicts and humanitarian crises that regularly have no place in mainstream media and international news agencies (Georgiou, 2005)
In analyzing the media coverage and discourses regarding the political and economic situation in Venezuela, the five major themes that are prevalent in the stories and narratives from the two newspapers selected for the study are: 1) the political aspects of the crisis, 2) the economic aspects of the crisis, 3) the international sanctions imposed on the government of Venezuela 4) the humanitarian crisis elements of the stories, and 5) Venezuelan migration

Summary

Introduction

Media outlets produced by and for immigrants, often referred to as diasporic media, have become powerful tools for enacting cultural identity, political participation, and civic engagement in the host country. The role of diasporic media in framing international crises, conflicts related to the diasporic communities, remains to a certain extent unexplored (Ogunyemi, 2017) Based on this premise, this research focuses on analyzing the ways in which diasporic newspapers in Toronto, Canada, have framed the political and economic crisis in Venezuela between March 2017 and May 2018, and how these newspapers have provided alternative discourses to Canadian media narratives through stories about the Venezuelan diaspora’s political engagement in Canada, and international solidarity within Latin American immigrant communities. Chávez remained President until his death in 2013, and he was praised by other socialist governments in Latin America for “expropriating millions of acres of land and nationalizing hundreds of private businesses and foreign-owned assets, including oil projects run by ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips” (Felter & Labrador, 2018, p. 1)

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