Reflections on heteronormativity: the models and representations of family in a health web from multimodality.

Abstract

The family representations that Health Programs in Chile presuppose are disseminated through technological devices such as the web, created by makers of signs immersed in a culture with a historical, social, and political load about the family based on the construction of a family model valid within a particular Chilean society. Currently, affective and sexual relations between people include natural or technological forms of reproduction, which puts a strain on the traditional family model. This ruling provides room for other family models (homoparental) as opposed to the reproductive family of yesteryear based on men and women as the only form. The present article aims to provide a theoretical reflection on the family models that are institutionally disseminated through images with their respective visual text through the web. It proposes a multimodal analysis to address the visual texts of the Chile Grows with You Program, starting with an analysis of the representational function: actors, actions, and circumstances (Kress y Leeuwen, 2006). We conclude that the images correspond to the guiding text and refer to upbringing as a central theme, reinforcing gender roles as mother, father, and child, which assumes heteronormativity. It reflects on the representations of the family and its power as an institution, in addition to the potential of the media, such as the web, to promote ideologies and representations of family that allow the construction of a mental image to generate new representations of family different from the heteronormative one.