Representaciones y vacíos sobre jóvenes universitarios en tres periódicos mexicanos de alcance nacional

The press exerts a notable influence on social interactions by shaping social reality through the constant exchange of ideas, concepts and beliefs. Berger and Luckmann’s theory of social construction of reality (1968/2003) is applied to analyze the contents about university students published by three national Mexican newspapers (La Jornada, Milenio andEl Universal), aiming to understand who talks about these young people, from what perspectives they do it and what are the themes, practices and actions emphasized. A content analysis was carried out, collecting 103 news stories published from 2018 to 2022. It stands out that the labels most used to talk about these young people are “students”, “actors for development”, “activists” and “young people of excellence”. Furthermore, only 6% of the stories gave these college students the chance to talk about themselves. Examination of the corpus revealed a worrying picture of limited and limiting discourses; thus, underscoring the need for a more accurate and responsible media representation of this group. It is urgent to identify and understand journalistic discourses, given the crucial influence of the press in the formation of perceptions and the construction of social reality.