Análisis comparado de la prensa colombiana del siglo XVIII y el siglo XXI. Dos miradas a la construcción de realidad y memoria

Abstract

For almost four centuries, newspapers were a reference to know what was happening in the territories. Their production varied from the compilation of commercial letters in the 17th century and reports of events in the 18th century to their greatest splendor in the second half of the 20th century, when the world came to know the "fourth power" they embodied as a result of their function of overseeing the other three powers. They were strengthened and circulated more thanks to the printing press, but today they are in retreat as a result of another invention: the Internet. In the Americas, the printing press had a timid appearance due to the precautions raised by the circulation of papers with ideas contrary to those of the establishment. Colombia was introduced to the printing press in 1737 when the first one arrived packed in crates in Cartagena, destined for the Colegio Mayor de San Bartolomé, run by the Society of Jesus. It began publishing religious texts and novenas of saints until King Charles III of Spain expelled the Jesuits from New Granada in 1767. After that, it slept along with other goods seized from the Society of Jesus until it was gradually awakened thanks to the arrival of Antonio Espinosa de los Monteros, who with other imported pieces made the old printing press, now known as the royal printing press, work again. Journalism formally appeared in New Granada on February 9, 1791 with the publication of the Papel Periódico de la Ciudad de Santafé de Bogotá. Previously, in 1785, El Aviso del Terremoto and La Gazeta de Santafé de Bogotá had circulated for a very short time. The main objective of this research is the analysis of these first publications that circulated at the end of the 18th century and six others that circulated between 2006 and 2012 in order to see the social construction of reality and memory in two epochs separated by 221 years. To this end, the Historical-Discursive Method was adapted by combining aspects of the Agenda setting theory with that of Newsmaking to analyze by layers the newsmakers, the editorial biases of newspapers and the discursive intentions of the contents. In this way, an image of the societies that gave life to these publications, their challenges, conflicts and contradictions was obtained. It was concluded that since its beginnings, the press in Colombia has always been at the side of the power structures. In the 18th century, the newspaper Papel Periódico de Santafé de Bogotá was part of the propaganda machinery of King Charles IV in the Americas, while in the 21st century the press became part of economic conglomerates that prevented its extinction. The institutional nature of newspapers continues to have weight in the collective imagination, although its audience has been reduced. The scandals recorded by the press set the tone in the construction of memory and continue to be one of the keys to reading the society of any era.