Conflicto, hegemonia y nacionalismo tutelado en Colombia 2002-2008: Entre la comunicacion gubernamental y la ficcion noticiosa de television

"CONFLICT, HEGEMONY AND DEPENDENT NATIONALISM IN COLOMBIA 2002-2008: BETWEEN GOVERNMENTAL COMMUNICATION AND FICTIONALIZED TELEVISION NEWS"Fabio López de la Roche, PhDUniversity of Pittsburgh, 2009This dissertation explores two key components in the contemporary production of hegemony in Colombia: presidential discourse and television news narratives.Analyzing the Álvaro Uribe Vélez administration's policy of "democratic security" and its communications, the author highlights its articulation with an authoritarian and regressive "patriotic" presidential discourse, which attempts to re-narrate the Colombian history of the last fifty years by turning guerrilla movements, especially FARC, into a scapegoat for all national and local problems. Appealing to the population's feelings of fear and hatred of the FARC (a result of its practice of kidnapping), President Uribe Vélez succeeded in reorienting the affective attention of Colombian public opinion against that guerrilla movement. The FARC, conceived of as the major public enemy, has thus contributed to uniting the government and population around a right-wing political project. The author also points out the ambiguous nature of Uribe Vélez's nationalism, characterized by the presence of traditionalist Colombian symbols and values and by its unconditional subordination to the George W. Bush administration's hemispheric policy.The dissertation includes a case study of the representation in the television news program "Noticias Caracol" of the January 11, 2008 liberation of Clara Rojas and Consuelo González, two Colombian hostages kidnapped by the FARC guerrilla group. The analysis allows the author to address questions of both pluralism and homogeneity in television news, the relationships between hegemony, "preferred readings," the "realistic" presence of fiction and dramatic strategies in the news, and the use of audiences' feelings about the phenomenon of kidnapping in manufacturing television stories.The dissertation represents an interdisciplinary research project inscribed among the fields of communication studies, journalism studies, critical analysis of discourse, narratologic inquiry, and political studies. The author uses a wide variety of sources: television news broadcasts; personal field notes of analysis of television news programs; journalistic reports on the Colombian conflict; newspapers; magazines; academic journals; and electronic magazine and newspaper articles. The dissertation is addressed to specialists as well to a wider public interested in the relationships between mass media discourse, hegemony, and political culture