In this article we study the first mall installed in Chile, Parque Arauco, in 1982, as an urban space of communication, which operated discursively in the medial space in a dictatorial context and economic crisis. This shopping center, considered an icon of modernity associated with the free market model installed during dictatorship is analyzed from a media approach analysis, through two dimensions in the context of its inauguration: information coverage and advertising. From a qualitative content analysis of the news and of the advertising pieces of the written press, it is studied how said shopping center contributed to install consumption as an articulating axis of social relations and expression of economic success through the media at that time.