Elizabeth Pinilla Duarte | Twittering for Peace? The construction of meaning and Otherness in digital media representations of the Colombian Peace Process

Elizabeth Pinilla Duarte | Twittering for Peace? The construction of meaning and Otherness in digital media representations of the Colombian Peace Process | University of Groningen, Faculty of Arts, Graduate School for the Humanities (GSH) | Prof. Dr. Pablo Valdivia Martin, Dr. Konstantin Mierau | From September 1st 2018 until August 30th 2022 | E.Pinilla.Duarte@rug.nl

My research project studies the production of narratives of the Colombian peace process in Colombian digital media, both in official communication and in the comments left by consumers of news on the Facebook, Twitter and Instagram websites. It considers these narratives to be vital cultural practices; narratives shape the construction of the meaning of the world, of the self and of otherness, and determine specific cultural practices. My hypothesis is that the narratives I propose to study contribute to maintaining a culture of violence, on the one hand, whilst also constructing new possibilities for social renewal, on the other. In order to carry out this study, I propose an interdisciplinary and qualitative methodology, which combines discourse analysis, conversation analysis, cognitive linguistics, communication theory, and theory of cultural narratives.

Main research question:

To what extent do the online narratives related to the Colombian peace agreement,  published both on mainstream channels and on the comment sections of their related social networks (such as Facebook), determine the construction of meaning and otherness?