Global Media Journal

Paola García et Jéssica Retis

At the end of October 2005, unrest broke out in an unprecedented way in the suburbs of Paris. Violence ensued during the next three weeks following these events during which time police and youth collided. The riots spread out gradually across the country and forced the government to declare a state of emergency on November 8. Given the scale of the events, political and media reactions constructed a social debate and there are many who believed that France was undergoing a profound “crisis of meaning” and “identity crisis”. The riots are seen as reflecting the failure of the French integration model because the principal actors of the violence are mostly identified as immigrants. In this article we seek to analyze and understand how media echoes public political debate. These questions will be examined through the analysis of editorials, newspaper articles and opinions derived from the national press.