Nationality and gender stereotypes in the San Fermín festival: cross-sectional age differences in the interpretation of TV news

Abstract

The media employ a shared cultural knowledge between sender and receiver to build media representations effectively. These representations, apparently innocuous, shape the audience’s perception and appraisal of the Other, which is constructed as an opposition to the Self. In our research we draw attention to a Spanish television news story that describes the increase of foreign participants at the San Fermín running of the bulls in Pamplona, Spain and also highlights the still minority participation by women. Through data from focus group discussions, we investigate age differences in the interpretation of gender and nationality stereotypes to examine how the media construction of this news story generates an intersectional othering. In our investigation, this othering process places women and foreigners outside the norm of this social identity built around the running of the bulls. Our research also identifies a significant generation gap in audience interpretation of the news story.