The Ideology of Media Discourse on Violence and Death: A Semiotic Approach

This study analyzes, from a semiotic standpoint, the ideology behind media discourse on violence and death through its social representation in Mi Diario, one of Venezuela's most popular newspapers, specializing in reports on accidents and deaths. The work is based on the theoretic contributions of Imbert (2003, 2004), Pinto (2003), Rincon (2002) and others. Finol's Semiotic Model (2009) was applied, which consists of 1) the language level, including verbal language, color scheme, layout and photographs and 2) the semantic level, which studies the uniform reading of discourse. A typical month was analyzed, and the sample consisted of editions selected at random between 2007 and 2008, as well as 2009. Conclusions are that: 1) The current discourse about accidents and deaths has a communicative strategy of naturalizing violence and yields to the logic of the media entertainment industry; 2) It reflects an imaginary in which real violence and symbolized violence coexist as a previous stage to annulling social fear; 3) It promotes a simulation that culminates in communicative closure at the fringe of all rationality.