Journalism under the lens: views from the professional field itself in the face of the Chilean social outburst.

Abstract

Within the framework of the Social Outburst that began in October 2019 in Chile, and which laid the foundations for an unprecedented constituent process in the country, the popular demonstrations evidenced a deep criticism of the Chilean social order and its institutions, among them, journalism. In this scenario, several voices linked to the field of communication spoke about media and journalism, in opinion columns, letters and public statements, analyzing the role played by the profession during the first weeks of the outbreak. From a thematic content analysis of 66 of these argumentative texts written by academics, journalists and students, we characterized their imaginaries about the professional field itself. Among the results, we observed that although citizen criticism is shared, it is contextualized in a larger framework, in which factors such as job insecurity and dependence on advertising, condition journalistic work and the media system.