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Diversity of Journalisms. Proceedings of ECREA/CICOM Conference, Pamplona, 4-5 July 2011
The study: context and results
The traditional power of the media on information flow is beginning to decrease,
undermined by the new cyber-communication sphere that is developing throughout the
Social Media. Thus, the agenda-setting process is now in a constant state of flux, due
to the amount of micro-conversations that take place in blogs and social networks, and
therefore this new phenomena needs to be mapped in order to understand the full
implications of this shift in public opinion sources.
Previous studies carried out with Nostracker (Campos et al.2010) have shown that the
MSM agenda is quite different from the micro-media and the social media agenda
when analyzing news such as natural disasters. In this study we intend to find out
whether such distortion of the traditional agenda-setting process affects political issues,
and particularly the public image of politicians, in the same way.
The context of this study: Spain’s political situation
In our study we have monitored the presence of the President of Spain, Mr. José Luís
Rodríguez Zapatero, and the presence of the Opposition Leader, Mr. Mariano Rajoy
Brey, in conversations held in the micro-media and in the news during a month of
campaigning prior to the local elections on May 22 nd , 2011.
These are the two main political figures in Spain, and the result of the local elections
will probably show the trend for the general elections results scheduled for 2012.
The media at this moment are paying close attention to decisions taken in both parties,
as the general political situation in Spain is considered to be ‘Bad’ by 37.5% of the
population, and ‘Very bad’ by 29.7% of them. Furthermore, it seems that voters will not
be motivated by a change in the Government; because 51.2% of the people think that
the Spanish political situation in a year’s time will be the same while 22.9% think it will
be worse (CIS, 2011).
Data from the same study, the CIS Barometer published in March 2011, shows that
Spaniards view the future of the national economic situation pessimistically and 40.0%
of the surveyed participants think that Spain’s general economic situation is bad, and
almost the same number of people (42.7%) thinks that it will not change in a year’s
time.
One must also take into account the current political polarization in Spain, where the
political debate has been rather hostile since the elections of 2004 in which President
Zapatero came into power. Sampedro and Seoane observed the following for the precampaigning
period of the 2008 elections:
These debating lines, typical of the centuries-old confrontation in Spanish politics, were
contrasted with TV debates in which [the political figures] accused each other of
deception and of lying to the voters. With almost no questions from the moderator, this
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