Media coverage of lepidolite and lithium carbonate in the ...
The green transition’s legitimacy depends on whether affected Andean communities are treated as political actors rather than scenery around a supply chain.
This study examines how the Peruvian press covered lithium-related issues between 2018 and 2025, focusing on the symbolic construction of extractive technologies, particularly the processing of lepidolite for lithium carbonate production, within news discourse. Through a content analysis of 1,244 news articles from four leading media outlets—El Comercio, La República, Gestión, and RPP—the study identifies dominant frames, source attribution patterns, and tone valences associated with media coverage. Five interpretive frames were coded: economic opportunity, geopolitical strategy, environmental concern, social conflict, and technological innovation. The findings reveal a marked predominance of the economic opportunity frame (40.9%), particularly in business-oriented media, followed by the geopolitical strategy frame (21.2%). Source attribution analysis shows that government officials (38.4%) and industry representatives (27.6%) dominated news discourse, while Indigenous communities accounted for only 4.1% of citations. Tone analysis confirms that economic and innovation frameworks presented positive valences, while environmental and social conflict frameworks consistently displayed negative tones. This study contributes to research on the mediatization of extractive industries in Latin America and highlights the limited representation of communities directly affected by lithium development in the Andean territories.