'They deserve it': Media crime discourse in Argentina during the 1990s. A socio-semiotic analysis on the punitive approach towards crime

Abstract

This thesis analyses the conditions of production of the punitive crime discourse in the Argentinean press. Specifically, it focuses on the media's dissemination of the premise that 'they deserve to die' in reference to petty criminals; how this type of discourse was developed and consolidated throughout the 1990s; and how it helped to create consensus on a punitive approach towards crime, which was then crystallised in 'zero tolerance' crime policies.To trace the origins of such a discourse, this research analyses several features of Argentinean history such as the country's military past, its weak democratic traditions, its society's high tolerance for corruption, and the police practice, inherited from military forces, of detaining and torturing civilians. The questions guiding this thesis led to a comparison of the narrative features of the military discourses of the 1970s and the media crime discourses of the 1990s. This analysis assisted in understanding the persistency of the 'zero tolerance' and 'iron fist' discourses when reporting crime in contemporary Argentina and the possible implications of this for Argentine democracy. A key component of the originality of this thesis's contribution to this topic lies in the way it bases its visual and textual analyses of media discourse on the theory of social discourses elaborated by Argentinean semiotician Eliseo Verón: it uses social semiotics to analyse more than 500 front pages and 380 editorials of three Argentinean newspapers Clarín, La Nación and Página 12.