Construction of Social Discourse on Mental Health: Analysis of Newspapers from Colombia and Peru

Londoño-Moreno M.; Atarama-Rojas T.; Villacorta-Celi C. · Revista Guillermo de Ockham (2025) · DOI: 10.21500/22563202.7844

Resumen

Purpose. The media play a crucial role in shaping the social discourse on health. As active participants in the public sphere, they can highlight issues, assign value to them, and provide conceptual depth for a proper understanding. This ability to influence social discourse be-comes particularly relevant when addressing mental health, since, as a public health priority, the media could either foster care and awareness or reinforce stigmatization. In this context, the theories of agenda setting and framing provide the conceptual framework for this research, which aims to examine the discourse of print media regarding mental health. Methodol-ogy. The focus, frequency, and themes employed were analyzed through a comparative content analysis of the newspapers with the highest readership in Colombia and Peru. The study examined a universe of 666 409 news posts published on Facebook through-out 2024, of which 595 addressed the topic of mental health; these are subjected to a quantitative content analysis, where each variable was systematically evaluated. Results. The findings reveal a low representation of mental health within media discourse. The study also identified a limited use of digital communication, with Facebook being used primarily as a platform for visibility and content repetition, which reduces opportunities to create informational value. Contributions. The research found that the dominant ap-proaches and themes are largely generalist and lack specialization, hindering an adequate representation of mental health in public discourse.

Instituciones: Universidad de Piura; Universidad Tecnológica del Perú