El framing (encuadre) de los líderes políticos durante el "Plebiscito por la Paz" en Colombia ¿Preparando la opinión pública para las elecciones 2018?

Political leaders, as specialized opinion shapers, played a fundamental role in the construction of interpretative frameworks of the peace category for the “Plebiscite for Peace” campaign in Colombia (2 October 2016). This process resulted in a polysemic approach to this notion which was later expressed at the polls in one of the most contested decisions in the history of the country, 50.22% of the votes in favor of “No” and 49.77% of the votes in favor of “Yes”. This article presents an analysis of the frames around the “peace” category that political leaders circulated in the public opinion in the middle of the debate. To do this, a tracking of the news published by “El Espectador” newspaper in its digital version, under the descriptor “Plebiscite for Peace”, was carried out during the period between July 18th and October 2nd, 2016. These news were coded according to five frames: negative peace, positive peace, Pax Romana, liberal peace and imperfect peace. This codification allowed evidencing the ideological confrontation masked in the polysemy of the peace frame which, due to its ambivalence was clearly at the service of contradictory positions. It is concluded that, in this case, public opinion was neither the privileged setting to fill democratic deficits, nor to allow the creation of consensus in spaces of dissent (Habermas, 1973). Rather, the frames used for the peace category generated a polarization process that enabled political leaders to create an imaginary appropriate to their individual or group interests in favor of the 2018 electoral process.