JosĂ© Ricardo Morales’ Dramatic Representation of Media Manipulation and Propaganda from a Contemporary Chilean Perspective
This dissertation analyses and discusses the ways in which the interrelated concepts of media manipulation and propaganda are developed, problematised, and conceptualised in the plays Cómo el poder de las noticias nos da noticias del poder (1971) and Los culpables (1964) by the Spanish-Chilean playwright José Ricardo Morales. Through an interdisciplinary research grounded in the past and current Chilean contexts, this research examines Morales’ plays as critical texts that theorise and problematise the conflictive nature of media control and physical repression of social movements in authoritarian regimes, by dramatising their use of rhetorical and discursive strategies of persuasion. The analysis of the plays is complemented by a pilot research that examines and discusses the Learning Objectives (Objetivos de Aprendizaje) suggested by the Ministry of Education of Chile that match the topics developed in these plays. The analyses formed the basis for a focus group conducted with secondary school teachers regarding the potential use of the plays as interdisciplinary and contextualised pedagogical learning tools in secondary school courses, whose results indicate that implementing these plays may encourage students to critically analyse and discuss specific past and present-day Chilean conflicts from different disciplinary perspectives. This dissertation highlights Morales’ denounce of the ways authoritarian regimes repress anti-authoritarian contestant voices and manipulate public opinion through the media by focusing on the specific context of Chile. Moreover, it provides a long overdue visibilisation of the insufficiently studied agency of Morales’ plays as actors for social mobilization, engineering and transformation.
https://pure.rug.nl/ws/files/180927353/Title_and_contents.pdf
https://pure.rug.nl/ws/files/180927355/Chapter_1.pdf
https://pure.rug.nl/ws/files/180927357/Chapter_2.pdf
https://pure.rug.nl/ws/files/180927359/Chapter_3.pdf
https://pure.rug.nl/ws/files/180927361/Chapter_4.pdf
https://pure.rug.nl/ws/files/180927367/Chapter_7.pdf
https://pure.rug.nl/ws/files/180927369/Chapter_8.pdf
https://pure.rug.nl/ws/files/180927371/References.pdf
https://pure.rug.nl/ws/files/180927373/Appendices.pdf
https://pure.rug.nl/ws/files/180927377/Propositions.pdf