Social representations of violence: Fernando Báez´s case through a lexical metrical analysis of Facebook digital press

Abstract

The purpose of our work is to identify the social representations of violence, from the analysis of the digital press about Fernando Baéz’s death (Argentina), as well as the explanation attributed to it. The approach used is case study, with a quantitative-qualitative sequential explanatory design. The sample consisted of 694 direct comments (540 women and 154 men), taken from the Facebook website of Página 12 newspaper. Different representational organizations are explained depending on the concerned subject’s gender. For men, violence arises from the feeling of hatred among social classes, reinforced by family environment and by youths’ membership groups, and this violent act is classified as a tragedy. For women, violence emerges as a racist expression reinforced by the father figure, in which the “other” becomes a target or victim. A violent act is not a tragedy (an inevitable situation), but it rather becomes murder (an avoidable situation).