Comunicación Intercultural: Reflexiones Sobre la Visibilización Indígena en Medios Impresos Ecuatorianos

Communication, being recognized as a right, opens a new space of debate for the nationalities and peoples of Ecuador, since it guarantees their expression as a main element in the legislative section, especially intercultural communication, which when included in the Magna Carta and in the Organic Law of Communication (LOC), seeks equality in terms of the information issued by the media, avoiding "folklorizing" the stigma of the indigenous and Afro-descendant sector, allowing a plurality of voices. The stereotypes presented in this research show how the discriminatory imaginary is constructed from the media discourse, since the hegemonic thinking excludes minority groups that are not an informative attraction in terms of content, and that their appearance in the media is made by the requirement of a current regulation. From this perspective, an analysis was made of the Ecuadorian regulatory frameworks (the Constitution and the LOC) and the communicational practice of the print media El Comercio, whose code of ethics has been considered as a reference and contrast. The work was approached from a quantitative and qualitative approach, taking into account three time cohorts: 2008, 2013 and 2018, in which journalistic contents related to intercultural issues are monitored. In this way, it was possible to determine how the intercultural is constructed in the Ecuadorian press and to determine whether the changes in legislation have effectively allowed an intercultural country from the contribution of the media.