Cross-cultural perspectives on framing social reality: A comparative study of Brazilian and Spanish TV news contents

The current essay draws upon the problem of visibility of social reality generated by Brazilian and Spanish TV news broadcasts through the selection and production of the same news contents that represent the social space of both countries. Given this scenario, we aim both to develop a methodology that allows establishing how and in what extent social reality is framed in Brazilian and Spanish TV news programs and to identify cross-cultural dynamics of mediatization of social reality in both contexts. By developing an empirical content analysis of two months of coverage of current affairs and events in four television news programs from Brazil and Spain, it was found that most of the information production process concerning political, cultural and social current affairs leads to reduction, distortion and immediacy of the facts.