10 research outputs found
Investigations into the Production of Broadline Purple-on-red Pottery from the Tucson Basin
Exploding Crime? Topic Management in Central American Newspapers
Huhn S, Oettler A, Peetz P. Exploding Crime? Topic Management in Central American Newspapers. GIGA Working Papers. Vol 33. Hamburg: GIGA; 2006.It has become common to state that criminal violence has superseded political violence in
Central America. This paper presents the first results of a research project which analyses
the social construction of violent realities in Costa Rica, El Salvador and Nicaragua. The
authors describe the print media landscape in Central America and examine both the quality
of leading newspapers and the main clusters of topics constituting the news discourse
on violence. The analysis of the macro-structure of topic management in Central American
newspapers allows to differentiate the “talk of crime”: it is more heterogeneous than often
thought. There are signs that the problem of juvenile delinquency is emerging as the center
of a cross-country discourse on “ordinary violence”. On the other hand, the talk of
crime is centered around few topic clusters, with sexual violence and border-related discourse
on violence being of key importance. Finally, the paper points to a heterogeneous
array of discourse events that is connected to political developments and power-relations