A la sombra del mito. Audiovisual representations of the Spanish war reporters

Abstract

Despite war journalism has traditionally been a male occupation (no job for women), there are dozens of women who are currently working in the coverage of violent crises and armed conflicts in the Spanish mediascape. However, women in this occupation remain less reputed than their peers and are practically invisible to the Spanish society. In this article, I analyze the social representations of women war reporters that can be found in audiovisual documents exhibited in Spanish social media in the period 2010-2016. Using socio-hermeneutic analysis, I propose a map of archetypes which condense the discourses about women in war journalism. In addition, and following the conduction of nine qualitative interviews with women reporters, the author reflects on the relationship between professional trajectories and the public image of the occupation.