To manage despair? About housing shortage and media discourses

Abstract

Between March and May 2019, a group of around 70 families denounced the housing emergency that exists in Junín, province of Buenos Aires, through a camp in the main square of the city. Due to its uniqueness this event caught the attention of the local media. The news with which the camp was covered in three local graphic media Democracia, La Verdad and Semanario were analyzed from the theoretical and methodological contributions of the Critical Discourse Studies. This paper investigates how the camp was described, how the actors who participated there were constructed, and how the inclusion of different voices came about. Finally, it was reconstructed the discursive network in which these meanings are inserted, which makes possible to recognize how dissimilar configurations exist in these three media, but also others that are common: above all, around the belief that housing must be "deserved" and that the best way to address this type of conflict is through "effective" management.