Amerikansk nyhetsmedia i förhållande till Sydamerika: EN KRITISK DISKURSANALYS AV DE SÄTT AMERIKANSK NYHETSMEDIA PRESENTERAR NYHETER FRÅN SYDAMERIKA FÖR DERAS LÄSARE

Abstract

The goal of this article is to use critical discourse analysis to analyse four different news articles regarding the departure of Evo Morales as the president of Bolivia and his subsequent exile in Mexico during the weeks after the country’s contentious election in October 2019. The four different news articles analysed come from four reputable newspapers with long histories in the business, they are: the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times and The Atlantic. They will be analysed using critical discourse analysis as a method and the discourses that is unearthed will be viewed using theories regarding how these discourses function to perpetuate American dominance in the Americas. The focus is to understand how these discourses are conveyed to the readers in the US, not about what happened in Bolivia under and after the election. The theories will be based on the US as a paternalistic figure that acts as a guiding force for the hemisphere as a whole. The article concludes that most of the discourses presented in the four different news articles act as a way to delegitimize the leadership in Bolivia to the readers as they focus on how this leadership has failed the country. Although one of the articles does not function in this way and instead focuses on what this means for the population of Bolivia.