Fotoperiodismo y relaciones de poder entre jóvenes e instituciones. Homenaje al profesor Manuel Martín Serrano

Abstract

This work investigates the social image of youngsters produced by the mediating activity of the local press. Such mediating activity is typical of social institutions of public communication and finds in the stories, its paradigmatic expression. Specifically, we are interested in revealing the relationships among young people as social actors and the different mediating social institutions with which they are associated in the stories of the press photos. 251 photojournalistic stories from El País were gathered during 2003 and 2004, and were covered based on the methods of Greimas’ structural semantics. This methodology allows us to see how the referred dominant press in Spain (El País) establishes models of social representation about youngsters in which the social relations are those of power and social control, just as stated by the social mediation paradigm of Martín Serrano. The results conclude the follow-ing semantic axes: consumption axis, belongings axis, deictical of place axis, integration axis, and violence axis.