'I believe they felt attacked': discursive representation and construction of interculturality in Spanish news television

This article discusses the representation of interculturality in the media. Interculturality, the interaction between two different cultures, has taken on greater importance in the social and human sciences. However, in the field of media communications the representation of interculturality has not received much attention. Thus, we are interested in analysing the media representation of interculturality in Spanish television news. We analyse the discursive construction of interculturality in news programs, and we go into depth as to how the conflictual kind of interculturality is represented. To achieve this, critical discourse analysis is used, applying the concepts of lexicalisation, propositional structures, topics, polarisation and focus. Results indicate that in public and private stations alike, interculturality is shown as a polarised interaction between a dominant in-group and a minority out-group, and it is defined by the status quo. However, Spanish television portrays a conflictual interculturality that is not limited to disagreement.This work was supported by a grant from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (Ministerio de Ciencia e InnovaciÓn) for the research project ‘Analysis of Audiovisual Narratives on Civilizations and Cultures. Representations and interpretations of television news narratives’ [grant number CSO2011-23786