Crisis, televisión, y Covid-19 en Chile (primer semestre 2020)

• Valdebenito Allendes, Jorge

• Crisis

The irruption of the Covid-19 in the world has turned into a historical scenario of systemic instability globally. Mass media have faced difficulties in the execution of their tasks of complexity reduction due to the uncertainty about the mutagenic behavior of the new virus. The present study characterizes the journalistic behavior of broadcast television and four newspapers with determined editorial policies in the face of the 'coronacrisis' events in Chile. The period of analysis goes from January to June 2020. The method is comparative and focuses on the representations of the events and their sequences. This is based on examining what is understood here as 'emphasis and blindness' in the coverage of 'milestones and controversies' during the incubation, propagation, and restructuring of the crisis. The results indicate that the normative positions of the media significantly influence their representation. Moreover, in this particular case, mass media such as open television show a behavior akin to government officials' interests, located in the center-right of the political spectrum. In this regard, this paper calls for the need to pluralize the media, especially during moments of uncertainty and instability, such as pandemic crises.