The Presence of Civic, Service and Infotainment Roles in the News about Culture and Show Business of Chilean Journalism

Abstract

Through an analysis of news content about culture and shows in television news, print newspapers, digital newspapers and radio newscasts in Chile with higher audience or readership levels, this paper compares the presence of civic, service and infotainment roles in both information fronts bet- ween the different analyzed platforms. The results of the study show that infotainment is a predominant and transversal role in culture and show business, and no significant differences are observed between the two information fronts. e service and infotainment roles, for their part, are highly present in cultural coverage, while the civic role is not a news priority for any of these fronts, although comparatively, its presence is significantly higher in television news. When considering the influence of journalism and the media on the construction of reality when generating, organizing and hierarchizing news content, these results tend to support the idea that the media and journalism would be subject to the generation of entertainment and of the consumption needs of people rather than the creation of a cultural and citizen identity.