Rhetorics of hunger in the Spanish digital press (2015-2018): on transitory hardships

Abstract

Coinciding with the global recession that started in 2008, news stories proliferated in Spain that presented food insecurity as a tangible reality caused primarily by growing economic precarity. Attributing responsibility to the policies of fiscal and monetary austerity, between 2008-2014 the press generated specific discourses on hunger and the hungry that resonated with public opinion. The aim of this article is to reprise that initial analysis of hunger and compare it with the arguments assembled by the press during the post-crisis period -2015-2018-. By means of a qualitative study on the news content of various digital platforms, we detail the nature of this new construction, as well as the role assumed by the media in the social amplification of certain phenomena. We conclude that in this new phase, the Spanish press – influenced by the recovery of certain macroeconomic indicators – has not only reduced its coverage of food scarcity and the experience of hunger, but repackaged its meaning, associating it with malnutrition and obesity, and presenting these as health problems derived from increasing poverty