A Proposal for a Qualitative Analysis of the Media Discourse on the Bombing of Yugoslavia

The chapter is a reflection on the qualitative research methodology followed in the analysis of the discourse of the bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999. It is based on a research carried out from the propaganda approach and aimed at understanding the strategies and narrative techniques that legitimised the representations of NATO’s intervention in the Spanish media. For the qualitative study of discursive practices, researchers have developed analytical tools that address different dimensions of the phenomenon including semiotics, content analysis and framing. However, all of them lack a specific and univocal operationalisation. For this reason, a large part of the effort in my research involved the planning of an integral method and in the application of specific and identifiable techniques. Under the broad methodological framework that constitutes the analysis of discourse, an analysis procedure was designed in order to make it possible to relate macro and micro discursive representations. This was achieved by connecting three techniques that operate at different levels of analysis—framing, intertextuality and rhetorical analysis—through cross-level units of analysis: events, places and characters. This methodology facilitated taking concrete and verifiable steps in the analysis of representations in a propaganda war.