Media Representation of the City and Urban Insecurity in Crime News
Radio Bío Bío and Radio Cooperativa in X (2022–2025)
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.62161/sauc.v12.6084Keywords:
Urban insecurity, Territorialization, Collective emotions, Media framing, Territorial stigmatization, Digital platforms, Urban representationABSTRACTAbstract
This study analyzes how the Chilean radio stations BioBioChile and Cooperativa construct representations of the city and urban insecurity through their posts on the social media platform X (formerly Twitter) between 2022 and 2025. A corpus of more than 20,000 tweets filtered by themes of security, crime, and violence was systematically coded across spatial, emotional, and narrative dimensions. Content analysis and chi-square tests were applied to identify significant patterns in the coverage of both outlets. Findings show that BioBioChile more strongly territorializes its news, intensifies emotionality—particularly fear—and directly attributes responsibility to offenders. In contrast, Cooperativa diversifies its emotional repertoire, more frequently employs testimonies and institutional tags, and distributes responsibility toward political and judicial actors. Overall, both outlets construct distinct symbolic maps of the city and urban insecurity, shaping how these issues are perceived and experienced by audiences.
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