Framing the Neighbors

How does photojournalism in San Diego represent Tijuana and its residents? This chapter analyzes both articles and photographs in the San Diego Union-Tribune over the course of a decade (2000–2010), using visual methods and a broad heuristic to capture four dimensions of stigmatizing narratives about Tijuana. On one hand, the analysis finds a complex portrait of Tijuana that encompassed not only the expected images from the drug war but also stories from business and daily life that would feel familiar and empathetic to San Diego readers. On the other hand, themes of violence and disorder pervaded much of the content, even on topics unrelated to crime, particularly in headlines and captions. This chapter demonstrates how bordering and debordering representations in local media can coexist in paradoxical ways and how they shift scales from local to national, depending on the topic and framing.