New masks for old invisibilities: Representations of children and adolescents in the media during the pandemic in Mendoza, Argentina

Abstract

Children and adolescents in times of the pandemic were mostly confined. The house concentrated school work and recreation in the same space. In this way, the school and the recreation were spaces in which the reproduction of life took place. Although childhood and adolescence were strongly linked to these spaces, the state, and media agenda operated differently. This work will seek to identify and analyze the representations about childhood and adolescence in pandemics in the local press of Mendoza, Argentina. The methodology used has a qualitative hermeneutical approach. For this, we worked with journalistic sources using one as the main landmark: “Los Andes”. To contrast and analyze the previous source, local sources “El Otro” and international sources “El Confidencial”, “Les Echos” and “El País” were used. The emerging categories that emerged through the analysis were: 1. school: virtuality, inequality, and delegitimization 2. confinement: closing of play spaces and misguided adolescence 3. child health: vulnerability in children as yet- no and 4. femicide in girls and adolescents. The childhood categories were regressive. Childhood and adolescence as “those not yet” and in a modern key, are manifestations that in times of pandemic continue to be sustained by a patriarchal and adult-centered structure, which segregates and excludes children and adolescents by subalternizing it.