“Citizen Delusions”: Comparing tone and framing in the image-building of
Ciudadanos and Podemos as new parties by three Spanish media.
Álvaro González de Arrieta Martínez 11826061 Master’s Thesis (Resit) Graduate School of Communication Master’s programme Communication Science Joost van Spanje 31st January 2020
Table of content
1. Introduction ... 2
1.1. Social and theoretical relevance of the study and thesis overview ... 3
2. Conceptual framework ... 4
2.1. Parties as living organisms: A small theory of new parties ... 4
2.2. The importance of the news media: Understanding the framing and tone of political parties 6 2.3. Framing and tone in this research ... 8
2.4. Understanding the framing and tone of new parties ... 8
3. Hypotheses ... 11
4. Research design: methodology and data gathering ... 12
5. Results ... 15
6. Conclusion, discussion and limitations ... 18
7. References ... 21
1.
IntroductionSpain has many idiosyncrasies. By way of context, there are 19 regions in the country and a whopping 4772 legally registered political parties, which amounts to a useless-but-still-impressive average of 251 parties per region. Put differently, there are considerably more parties than seats available for public representatives, which amount to 1608, adding the Congress of Deputies and all regional legislatures. It would seem that pluralism is there, one option for every taste.
Regardless, radically fewer groups have found electoral success, with Ciudadanos and Podemos being the foremost exceptions this decade. This thesis presents the insights from research that examined the image the news media created of both as new parties to identify common and contrasting patterns. The research focuses on the tone and framing applied to the new parties Podemos and Ciudadanos in online news articles by Spanish dailies El Mundo, ABC and El Confidencial. All articles were sampled between the dates of January-May 2014 and June-December 2006 for Podemos and Ciudadanos, respectively.
One of the central reasons to research how the Spanish media has treated the image of these new parties is that “most voters are informed about politics through the media” (Schulz, 1995, as cited in Hopmann, Vliegenthart, de Vreese, & Albæk, 2010, p. 389). Consequently, a partial portrayal can bias voters in favour of political formations. In addition, this thesis aims to fulfil the apparent gap in literature in the joint study of new parties and the media - other than general studies showing “the media can have direct effects on political opinions through direct exposure to the content of a particular broadcast or newspaper article” (Hopmann, Vliegenthart, de Vreese, & Albæk, 2010, p. 390). On a specific ground, the results will shed light on how the Spanish media landscape reacts to new, disruptive political forces. More generally, this thesis attempts to create a
framework of study that combines what we already know about new parties with the study of the news media and their political behaviour that can be applied elsewhere.
Deriving from this existing literature on both sides, the new party image of Podemos and Ciudadanos is researched applying concepts from political science dealing with new party theory and specific communication science theories on framing and tone. In order to do this, the following research question was designed: How does reporting by Spanish media on Podemos and Ciudadanos as new parties vary in terms of tone and framing? A content analysis - starting from their first recorded mention in the media until each party’s first electoral success - studies the evaluative tone and framing applied to them.
1.1. Social and theoretical relevance of the study and thesis overview
To answer the RQ, two fields that are not often combined, political and communication science, have been merged. Analysing the media framing of both parties is necessary and timely. First, socially, the topics covered in this thesis touch upon the role of the media in democratic and informed societies: in short, this study is socially relevant because it attempts to test whether new parties, with new ideas, face media efforts to make their political activism less competitive. The importance of this is widely supported in academia.
Indeed, Strömbäck considers the democracy-media relation “as a social contract” (2010, p. 182) and defines the freedoms of speech and press as determinant democratic factors. The free flow of information, a public space for discussion and an independent, watchdog-type media are, and ought to be, constitutionally guaranteed (Strömbäck, 2010, p. 182). But biases happen in the news media (van Spanje & Azrout, 2018, p. 1), so researching the framing and tone that mass media apply to new political parties assesses, in a way, a country’s state of democracy. Asymmetrical coverage is not inherently negative but raises an important discussion.
Theoretically, the literature that incorporates the news media into the study of new parties is very scarce. Most of what intersects the study of the news media and political parties in Spain focuses on PP and PSOE. There is a theoretical need for i) a more precise model bringing media studies and party studies, and ii) a wider study of the media and political landscape of Spain. In this way, this research project aims to merge a communication studies approach with the political theory on new parties in order to provide a comparative analysis of media coverage of two new parties, contributing to the knowledge of early-stage image-building and the overall exposure of new political groups. In particular, comparing these two parties is relevant because Podemos and Ciudadanos are the most notable examples1 of new parties that have found large social support, electoral success, and, though only so far, stability as major forces in parliament, enduring past the infant mortality of parties2 (see Janda, 1980, pp. 162-169, as cited in Pedersen, 1982, p. 2), which adds to the academic interest of this study.
2.
Conceptual frameworkThe main concepts of this research project are framing, tone and the concept of new parties. In order to fully merge communication science with political theory, each has been defined and intersected in different steps.
2.1. Parties as living organisms: A small theory of new parties
According to Pedersen (1982, p. 5), a party is “an organization –however loosely or strongly organized– which either presents or nominates candidates for public elections, or which, at least, has the declared intention to do so”. The author then presents the idea that parties, as “mortal organizations” (Pedersen, 1982, p. 6), have a lifespan and four
1 Recent media sensation Vox had no national parliamentary representation at the time this research project started.
thresholds. The first one is the threshold of declaration, which refers to the moment in time when a political organisation states its determination to partake in an election and, as the author indicates, becomes a party.
Then comes the threshold of authorization. Passing it means having met the legal requirements needed for becoming eligible in an election. After this step, arguably “a barrier against the intrusion of new parties” (Pedersen, 1982, p. 7), campaigning can start, and, perhaps more interestingly, Pedersen notes that parties often gain benefits in the form of “financial support for the candidates and/or the party, access to mass media -in particular state-controlled television” (Pedersen, 1982, p. 7) and other means of exposure. The third step is defined as the threshold of representation, and marks “the barrier which all parties have to cross in order to obtain seats in the legislature” (Pedersen, 1982, p. 7). Although this depends on the legislation of each country, the threshold in Spain is 3% (Jefatura del Estado, 1985, p. 65) of the total vote in order to participate in the distribution of seats.
Finally, there is the threshold of relevance. In short, this indicates whether the relevance of a party is growing or if, on the contrary, it is becoming peripheral.
Out of these four thresholds, however, this study will only focus on the first three, considering the parties as new from their formation until they achieve representation in the national parliament. This is because parties only remain ‘new’ for a limited period of time. For the sake of replicability and accuracy, the assumption is that, by the time any party wins seats in a legislature, the audience will have become familiar with them. Therefore, that party is no longer ‘new’. In this case, by taking these first three thresholds we can confirm that both Podemos and Ciudadanos are conceptualized as new parties. This is because Ciudadanos declared its intention to participate in the Spanish electoral system on June 1st, 2006, whereas Podemos did so on January 17th, 2014. Podemos passed
the threshold of authorization on March 11st 2014; the exact date of the authorization of Ciudadanos is not available in the Registry of Spanish political parties. Finally, Ciudadanos obtained seats in legislature on November 1st, 2006, and Podemos on May 25th, 2014.
2.2. The importance of the news media: Understanding the framing and tone of political parties
Framing and tone are prominent concepts in communication science research. In this thesis, they play a key role in the study of the coverage of new parties by the news media in that, by focusing on them through a content analysis, we can measure the image of new parties portrayed by the news media in objective terms – e.g., words associated with or a specific treatment or description of the parties. So, the analysis will focus on finding i) the overall evaluation in the media framing of each party, ii) the overall evaluation in the media tone used to report on each one, and iii) the overall evaluation in the tone applied to ‘new parties.’ For the first two cases the evaluation will be measured from ‘negative’ to ‘positive’ in a 1-to-5 scale. The evaluative tone applied to new parties, which will be measured, too, from ‘negative’ to ‘positive’ but in a 0-to-1 scale (see chapter 4).
More specifically, framing in this context is understood as a dynamic communicative process which involves a source that introduces and describes an issue or actor (de Vreese, 2005, p. 51). There are two identifiable processes within the more general notion of framing: “frame-building (how frames emerge) and frame-setting (the interplay between media frames and audience predispositions)” (de Vreese, 2005, p. 51). Entman (1993, p. 52) further explains: “framing essentially involves selection and salience. To frame is to select some aspects of a perceived reality and make them more salient in a communicating text, in such a way as to promote a particular problem definition, causal interpretation, moral evaluation, and/or treatment recommendation for the item
described.” In other words, framing involves “selection and highlighting, and use of the highlighted elements to construct an argument about problems and their causation, evaluation, and/or solution” (Entman, 1993, p. 53). In practical terms, the media make framing choices, with diverse levels of awareness, when determining how to present an idea on the basis of a belief system guided by frames. Consequently, frames in text become apparent with the use of “keywords, stock phrases, stereotyped images, sources of information, and sentences that provide thematically reinforcing clusters of facts or judgements” (Entman, 1993, p. 52). This process leads to an influence in how the receiver processes and internalises the information that also draws from culture, or the common frames in the social discourse and thought of a group (Entman, 1993, pp. 52-53).
Understanding the role of the tone of the media toward political parties is significant to explore the consequences of the information created and gathered about parties, given that “parties can be presented in the media in a positive or a negative fashion” (Hopmann, Vliegenthart, de Vreese, & Albæk, 2010, p. 391). Zaller (1996) already emphasized that tone can influence voter behaviour, considering that the information flow can point to whom one should vote. Similarly, On Message: Communicating the Campaign by Norris et al. (1999) showed that a positive tone towards particular political formations generates more favourable evaluations towards them. This dynamic was further analysed by country-case studies, such as Kleinnijenhuis et al.’s (2007) research on the 2003 Dutch elections, Brettschneider’s (2002, as cited in Hopmann et al. 2010) study on Germany or the analysis on media tone in Canada by Fournier et al. (2004). In this manner, the tone towards the parties used by the media is “assumed to be an important cue as to whether one should vote for a party or not” (Hopmann, Vliegenthart, de Vreese, & Albæk, 2010, p. 391).
2.3. Framing and tone in this research
In order to ease the identification, explanation and interpretation of media framing and tone over Podemos and Ciudadanos, it is necessary to determine how to identify the two. Cappella and Jamieson (1997, pp. 47, 89) narrowed the operationalisation of frames, considering several aspects: their “identifiable conceptual and linguistic characteristics”, their “common observation in journalistic practice”, and their “ability to be reliably distinguished from others”, with the additional consideration of what de Vreese (2005, p. 54) named “representational validity,” meaning that “news frames that matter to public attitudes and behaviours must be common, regular, and reliably distinguished.” Chong and Druckman (2007, p. 107) tackle framing in the context of content analysis by using “an initial set of seven frames that emphasized the following themes: the magnitude of the problem, the beneficiaries and victims of change, the goal of ensuring security in old age, the value of providing individual choice, the projected outcomes of reform, the partisan political strategies on the issue, and the importance of an egalitarian solution.” So, by merging these perspectives, a set of variables was designed (see Annex 1 for an overview).
On the other hand, tone is more straightforward and has been measured through a variable indicating whether the articles presented a positive or negative overall evaluation of each party (see Annex 1).
2.4. Understanding the framing and tone of new parties
The emergence of Ciudadanos and Podemos led to the end of the PP-PSOE dominance of Spanish politics since the democratic transition (Vidal, 2018). The introduction of these parties altered the status quo of the political arena, which provides an interesting case to understand how the media answered to changes in the national political system.
The mass media has been criticised for acting as “agents of social control” when determining the amount of coverage parties receive on the basis of their distance with the status quo (cf. Shoemaker, 1984). In this manner, parties that oppose the political consensus are “brought into ideological line by ridiculing them as ‘irrelevant eccentricities’” (Miliband, 1969, p. 238, as cited in Shoemaker, 1984, p. 66). The media ridicule will increase with the perception of how deviant a group is. In theory, according to Shoemaker (1984, p. 66), the coverage of deviant actors will mirror the media perception that they are not “legitimate political contenders […] and a possible threat to the statu quo [sic] is removed”.
The notion of deviance, though not central in this study, has helped designing the hypotheses. Since a new party is, almost by definition, disruptive, as it takes the space from another (in this case, the seats in Parliament), it is possible that the media have a particular reaction to parties when they are novel. To further understand this, there are several definitions for a deviant (political) group. Moscovici (1980, as cited in Shoemaker, 1984, p. 66) suggests that minorities are deviant by nature, which would suggest that both Ciudadanos and Podemos could be considered deviant groups and, more importantly, a threat to the political statu quo. Wells (1978, pp. 196-197, as cited in Shoemaker, 1982, p. 256) further conceptualizes the concept and proposes three manners to define the notion3:
- Conventional, or normative, approach: considers differing from or breaking established norms and rules as deviant behaviour. This is, society agrees on what are deviant acts and people.
3 “They can probably occur simultaneously and in several combinations” (Wells, 1978, pp. 196-197, as cited in Shoemaker, 1982, p. 256). Wells provides an example to illustrate how “a radical left-wing party can be regarded as deviant” (Wells, 1978, pp. 196-197, as cited in Shoemaker, 1982, p. 257) by all societal actors, and by its own members. Perhaps more importantly, he comments that the same party can, in their view, work for […] integration into the mainstream […], while the media regard [it] as extremely different from the political mainstream” (Wells, 1978, pp. 196-197, as cited in Shoemaker, 1982, p. 257).
- Labelling perspective: despite rejecting normativity, deviance is not intrinsically bad; it occurs when and because the label is applied unilaterally by an actor on another.
- Conscious depiction: behaviour can only be considered deviant by the agent that engages in it to the extent that they consciously know it is censored or unacceptable. In other words, only an actor can define itself as deviant.
Following Wells’s conscious depiction, we can say that Podemos often labels itself as a group whose political programming is disapproving not only of traditional political parties, but also of the political system. This is summarized in the following quote from Pablo Iglesias, leader of Podemos: “The caste [elite] aims to maintain a system that ends in disaster”4 (La Vanguardia, 2014). Going back to Miliband (1969, p. 224, as cited in Shoemaker, 1982, p. 257), it is often that deviance establishes the news value of a group and visualises its legitimacy, as deviance can carry valid proposals and agendas. Therefore, the public profile that resulted from Podemos’ communication strategy in its first months seems designed to be picked up by the media to spread its message.
Likewise, Ciudadanos supported its initial discourse on two pillars: offering the Catalonian people a party that “defended their rights as Spanish citizens” that was, also, an alternative to PP and PSOE, who it accused of “abandoning the political values of the Spanish Transition and of Illustration5” (Garrido, 2006).
All of the above suggests that the news media could label Podemos and Ciudadanos as deviant groups. Nonetheless, Wells’s approaches treat deviance as a dichotomous characteristic and not one with varying degrees. The latter is more accordant with the European understanding of the political spectrum as a continuous scale ranging from
4 Original text: “La casta quiere mantener un sistema que nos lleva al desastre.”
extreme left to extreme right (Shoemaker, 1984, p. 67). Where in that scale Ciudadanos and Podemos are perceived to be is very relevant for this thesis and particularly so for the next section. In that regard, an October 20146 survey from the Spanish Centre for Sociological Research (CIS, pp. 18-19) showed in a 1-to-10 scale from ‘left’ to ‘right’ that 39.2% of respondents placed Podemos at 1 or 2 (M = 2.43), meaning close to a popular understanding of ‘far left’, while 18.9% placed Ciudadanos at 5 or 6 (M = 5.38), what could be considered ‘centre-right’ or ‘moderate right’. This is particularly important because the media chosen for the content analysis are identified as left and right, too. All of them are quality newspapers of reference and, when designing the hypotheses and interpreting the results, El Mundo7 is considered the left-leaning one, and ABC and El Confidencial8 are the right-leaning media, processed as one conservative media unit.
3.
HypothesesThe aforementioned theoretical considerations lead to five hypotheses. The first two deal with the difference in framing between both parties in each type of media. Hypothesis one is that Ciudadanos will be framed more positively in the conservative media than Podemos (H1); thus, the medium-party ideological distance will have an impact on reporting. This presumption comes from literature on framing choices of the media to portray political parties (Entman 1993, pp. 52-53), on the impact of the media’s political bias and belief systems (Entman 1993, pp. 52-53) on reporting. The second hypothesis is
6 Ciudadanos was not an item in previous surveys.
7 El Mundo is a more recent newspaper; it is described as “the most expressive mouthpiece for the disenchanted youth and the new urban middle classes in the face of the new political and media establishment” and has close ties with the Socialist Party, PSOE (González, Rodríguez, & Castromil, 2010).
8 The universal ideological consideration by the people in Spain is that ABC and El Confidencial are two of the foremost traditional, conservative newspapers, among the most visible faces of Spanish right-wing media. ABC in particular was founded in 1909 with a family-run business model of bourgeois liberal capitalism (González, Rodríguez, & Castromil, 2010).
the same but inverted: Podemos will be framed more positively in the left-leaning newspaper than Ciudadanos (H2).
The following two hypotheses will centre on the parties individually, also drawing from the impact of the possible political bias derived from the belief systems of the media on their reporting and choice of tone. The third hypothesis is that the tone used to report on Podemos will be more positive in the left-leaning medium than in the conservative media (H3). In turn, the fourth expects the tone used with Ciudadanos to be more positive in conservative media than in the left-leaning medium (H4).
Lastly, because the conservative media chosen for this study are identified with tradition in the Spanish political landscape, it is expected that they will report on new parties more negatively, as they are in essence rupturing the political scene and introducing change and novelty. Consequently, since the fifth hypothesis will measure the tone from both media categories towards new parties, Ciudadanos and Podemos will be combined as one unit. Thus, it is expected that, when referred to as ‘new parties9,’ the tone of the conservative media towards any of the two new parties will be more negative than the tone used by the left-leaning medium (H5).
4.
Research design: methodology and data gatheringThe section above has provided insights to comprehend, on the one hand, how new parties have been theorized and the reasons to consider Ciudadanos and Podemos new parties from their foundations until their first electoral breakthrough. On the other, how the notions of framing and tone can be applied to new parties has also been theorized.
To analyse the framing and tone applied to the new parties, Ciudadanos and Podemos, this study relies on a content analysis methodology from their first recorded mention in
the media until their first breakthrough in an election: the Autonomical Election in 2006 to the Parliament of Catalunya for Ciudadanos and the 2014 European Parliament Election in Spain for Podemos. For this, a codebook was designed (see Annex 1). Given the short period of time available for coding news items and the fact that most online sites allow for specific searches of written press articles following keywords, Spanish newspapers were shortlisted for the data gathering following a sampling strategy. Thus, television news and visual media have been left aside. In terms of national newspapers, El Mundo, ABC and El Confidencial stand out among the largest in circulation, reach and influence. Their selection is also ideal because the media conglomerates that own them also own most of the regional press (González, Rodríguez, & Castromil, 2010, p. 3). This limited pluralism in print news allows the sample to remain limited but highly representative.
Following previous methodological designs of the Centre for Politics and Communication (CPC; see Schuck et al., 2011; Schuck & de Vreese, 2011), the outlet sample (El Mundo, ABC and El Confidencial) features left- and right-leaning media, and all are the digital editions of quality broadsheets. The content analysis was conducted on items (n=76) published in 2006 and 2014. Two distinct coding periods were identified: 1st June-1st November 2006 for Ciudadanos, and 17th January-25th May 2014 for Podemos. These timeframes represent the periods between their respective declarations of establishment as formal parties and the dates when they obtained seats in legislature -in the Catalonian and European parliaments, respectively.
The news items were gathered digitally from three newspapers: El Mundo, ABC and El Confidencial. In terms of story selection, articles referencing either party or their leaders within political news, opinion-editorial, and business-economy (see Schuck & de Vreese, 2011) were coded. The pre-selection search streams ‘Rivera’, ‘Iglesias’, ‘Ciudadanos’,
‘Ciutadans’10, ‘Podemos’ throw averages of thousands of articles per outlet, however, a closer review of the population of articles available within the stated timeframes shows that only a very limited number of articles are true positives with the search terms. For ABC (n = 24) and El Confidencial (n = 13), in fact, all these true positives were so few that all were coded. To account for this, the articles from El Mundo (n = 37) were sampled randomly. All 11 results for “Ciudadanos Rivera”, with a relevance score of 60% or higher were selected. The 1006 results the page throws for “Iglesias Podemos” with the same level of relevance were divided into 40 and, with the assistance of a random number generator, 26 articles were sampled. The news has been codified following the codebook presented in Annex 1, whose design follows that of the ERC Europinions project from CPC (Brosius, van Elsas, & de Vreese, 2019). The variables contained in the codebook measure the overall evaluation of the parties, the tone and framing present in the article, track negative associations made by the author between the parties and unpopular people or ideas, count how often they are referred as new parties, and provide a detailed overview of their coverage. Most variables measure whether the coverage is exclusively negative, mostly negative, neutral, mostly positive or exclusively positive, while some others are simpler and only track whether negativity was expressed towards the party.
The main coder for the project received training in content analysis as an assistant coder for ERC Europinions. This training was an intensive 30-hour programme split into two weeks and three 3-hour sessions, plus individual practice time. To calculate the intercoder reliability, an extra coder with the same training and experience in content analysis covered a random sample equivalent to 27.6% (n = 21) of the total amount of articles (n
= 76). Both coders were native speakers of Spanish. Inter coder reliability was calculated with Krippendorff’s alpha and presented a satisfactory result in three variables11.
5.
ResultsThe hypotheses were tested running two-way ANOVAs for H1 to H4 with a 1-to-5 negative to positive scale, and a t-test and 0-1 negative-positive scale for H5, all with data from the left-leaning medium (El Mundo) and the conservative media (ABC and El Confidencial). Here are the results, though several are not significant at the p < .05 level. The first element to be examined was the extent to which ideological proximity has affected the framing of the reporting on Ciudadanos and Podemos in H1 (comparing their respective evaluative framing in conservative media) and H2 (comparing their respective evaluative framing in the left-leaning medium). Firstly, the analysis of their framing in the conservative media shows that Ciudadanos (M = 1.41, SD = .96) scored lower values than Podemos (M = 3.05, SD = 2.92; see Figure 1). This means the former received significantly more negative framing than the latter. Thus, H1 is unsupported.
Figure 1. Evaluative framing in conservative media
11The scores were: .74 for V7a (Overall evaluation - tone), .80 for V7c (Mentioned as new party), and .71
for V8d (Actor evaluation – framing). All of them being above .667, the inter coder reliability is satisfactory. 1 1,5 2 2,5 3 3,5 4 4,5 5 Ciudadanos Podemos
Conversely, the same procedure on the left-leaning medium shows that Podemos (M = 2.67, SD = 2.06) scored higher values than Ciudadanos (M = 1.17, SD = 1.03). In other words, although both results are rather on the negative side of the scale, Podemos was framed more positively than Ciudadanos (see Figure 2). Therefore, since the hypothesis only states that the framing of Podemos in the left-leaning medium will be more positive than that of Ciudadanos, the presumption in H2 would be confirmed.However, the results for both hypotheses are not statistically significant at the .05 level (pframingP = .284, pframingC = .158). In short, the two hypotheses are not supported.
Figure 2. Evaluative framing in left-leaning medium
Next was the comparison of the evaluative tone used by the left-leaning and by the conservative media for Podemos in H3 and Ciudadanos in H4. Ideological proximity was presumed to have an effect here, too. In H3, Podemos received more positive tone in the left-leaning medium (M = 3.60, SD = 1.94) than in the conservative media (M = 2.96, SD = .84; see Figure 3), confirming the hypothesis.
1 1,5 2 2,5 3 3,5 4 4,5 5 Ciudadanos Podemos
Figure 3. Evaluative tone (Podemos)
In H4, Ciudadanos received more positive tone from the left-leaning medium (M = 4.10, SD = 2.47) than from the conservative media (M = 3.57, SD = 2.32; see Figure 4), which disproves the hypothesis. Nevertheless, only the results for H3 are statistically significant at the .05 level (ptoneP = .005, ptoneC = .799). Consequently, only the findings for Podemos (H3) are supported and statistically significant.
Figure 4. Evaluative tone (Ciudadanos)
The last element had to do with the evaluation (positive or negative) a mention as ‘new parties’ might be given in both media categories. For this variable, a negative mention was given the value 0 while a positive one was coded with 1. Approximately, the newspapers referred to the parties as new in half of their articles coded (37 out of a total 76), and the means are .51 for the left-leaning medium and .43 for the conservative media (see Figure 5). So, the conservative media show a tendency to view new, disruptive
1 1,5 2 2,5 3 3,5 4 4,5 5 Left-leaning Conservative 1 1,5 2 2,5 3 3,5 4 4,5 5 Left-leaning Conservative
contestants for the political floor slightly more negatively. This would prove H5, but the result is not statistically significant at the .05 level (p = .333). H5 remains unsupported. Figure 5. Evaluative tone (new parties)
6.
Conclusion, discussion and limitations6.1. Implications of the results
Due to their p values (p > .05), out of five hypotheses, only one was supported (H3) and the other four were disproven (H1, H2, H4 and H5). Even though H2 and H5 seemed to be supported by the data, only the findings of H3 (p = .005) are statistically significant (p < .05). This means that any of the non-significant numbers might represent the effect of chance or noise in the sample; although the reason cannot exactly be accounted for (possibly, a small sample size). The analysis points to phenomena that might be occurring in all hypotheses, but no statistical evidence means they must be rejected. In other words, no hypothesis other than H3, the only one supported in the data, can truly be considered as having a significant effect.
If, in H3 Podemos received more positive tone in the left-leaning medium than in the conservative media, the only conclusion that can be drawn from the data is that party-medium ideological proximity has indeed played a role. This result, as explained below, is too narrow to generalise about the whole Spanish political and media landscape, but it does confirm a seeming affinity between El Mundo and Podemos.
0 0,5 1
6.2. Limitations
To directly address the previous section: despite not having found support in the data for four of the five hypotheses, it cannot be said that data in support could not be found in any other circumstances. This is, the effects hinted at by the data in H1, H2, H4 and H5 might benefit from other measurements, methods or sample sizes. A bigger sample would have likely produced more definitive conclusions and perhaps different results. Conversely, all the results in general should be taken with a grain of salt. The hypotheses were composed on the basis of the theory presented in chapter 2, and the fact that only one was supported may mean that a relative scepticism should be kept. It may be the case that either the method of analysis or the small sample size have interfered with the results, meaning that no hypothesis should be considered categorically proven or disproven. In more general terms, there is only so much a master’s thesis can cover. Thus, the codebook had to be thinner than it would have been ideal if this were a larger project, and so was the number of coders and the media sample.
At first, the intended data gathered was somewhere from 300-350 articles for a coding process of around 80 hours. When the data gathering began, the timeframes limiting the article selection meant there were very few articles on Ciudadanos or Podemos in ABC and El Confidencial. In consequence, all articles available for each party in each medium were drawn into the sample of the project, leaving only the articles selected from El Mundo as a true sample. An explanation that was found for this situation12 is the fact that the search engine for El Confidencial is very rudimentary and does not allow for advanced searches, while ABC’s merges far too many search tags with the keywords introduced - e.g., Rivera led to results from celebrities that share a surname with the politician, just as
12 The illusion of thousands of results dealing with both parties that were ultimately unrelated and hindered the initial estimations of results and sample size.
Iglesias included several thousand articles on the Church (Iglesia). The obvious consequence of this is that the sample size of the project is much smaller than ideal. Then, a possible limitation was feared but did not seem to affect the results. Podemos and Ciudadanos were founded at different points in time, and a variance in time and context could contaminate the analysis. In any case, it is very difficult to assess the differences between the media in one time frame and the other, and, thence, it is as difficult to determine if it has influenced the results of this study.
One last limitation that comes to mind is the one expressed by Hug (2000, p. 189) that “neglecting the fact that a sample is ‘self-selected’ and incomplete can lead to serious biases.” Nevertheless, since this sample was limited to specific timeframes (the founding and early life of the parties) and the study follows Pedersen’s criteria for considering a party as new without any further implications, electoral or otherwise, this self-selected sample is considered satisfactory. Notwithstanding, several other online-based media should be part of the sample to increase its external validity and representativeness, as will be mentioned in the next section.
6.3. Further research
A viable avenue for further research would be to broaden the media selected and to also draw a much larger sample of articles to code. There is foreseeable success when broadening the scope of the research to include a larger representation of the Spanish press landscape. Another idea would be to study the regional media-political landscape of Spain. A country with such strong regional identities – and issues – surely has many interesting findings to offer on a more localised scope.
On that same note, given the relative maturity of Ciudadanos -and even Podemos- and the recent surge in popularity and electoral breakthrough of Vox, a study that compared the three parties would be highly relevant in social and academic terms. Also, some strong
research can be conducted on how the Spanish media landscape perceives new parties, and whether perceptions of deviance and conforming to the norm play a role. As was mentioned above, the social implications of the visibility, as well as tone and framing considerations, of new parties are of a very democratically sensitive nature and would be beneficial to the field merging communication science and political theory on new parties. Then, the method of the study could vary from the newspaper content analysis used here. It might be more straightforward to conduct surveys, focus groups or experiments asking a random sample of participants to read a selection of newspaper and visual media contents and report their impressions and perceptions.
7.
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Annex 1 – Codebook for newspaper content analysis
V1 Coder ID
01 Álvaro (main coder) 02 Naiara (ICR) Newspaper V2 Story ID EM_C_(number) EM_P_ ABC_C_ ABC_P_ EC_C_ EC_P_ V3a Day V3b Month V3c Year V4 News outlet El Mundo ABC El Confidencial V5 Territory National Regional
V6 Length of news story Tone (parties)
V7a Overall evaluation of Ciudadanos/Podemos 0 Mentioned but not evaluated
9999 Not applicable/not mentioned 1 Exclusively negative
2 Negative > positive
3 Balanced/mixed (just as many negative as positive references) 4 Positive > negative
5 Exclusively positive
V7b Are they mentioned as new parties? 0 Not mentioned as new party
1 Mentioned as new party
9999 Not applicable/not mentioned V7c Evaluation of new party (if mentioned)
0 Negative 1 Positive
9999 Not applicable/not mentioned Framing (parties and actors)13
V8a Number of actors mentioned in the story 1
2 3 4
5
V8b Which actors are mentioned? Main actor
First mentioned after main actor Second
Third Fourth
V8c Negative description: Are any actors described in a negative way? (for every actor)
0 No 1 Yes
9999 Not applicable/not mentioned
V8d Is actor 1-5 evaluated favourably or unfavourably? 0 Actor mentioned but not evaluated
9999 Not applicable 1 Exclusively negative 2 Negative > positive 3 Balanced/mixed 4 Positive > negative 5 Exclusively positive
V9a Negative association: Are any of the actors associated with unpopular/negative ideas or people?
0 No 1 Yes
9999 Not applicable/not mentioned
V9b Negative accusation: Are any of the actors accused of supporting unpopular/negative ideas or people?
0 No 1 Yes
9999 Not applicable/not mentioned
V9c Fostering negativity: Does article imply/warn that the actors are dangerous, extremist, push populist ideals or add to the
fragmentation of politics, etc.? 0 No
1 Yes
9999 Not applicable/not mentioned
V10a Does the story mention corruption of Podemos’ politicians? 0 No
1 Yes
9999 Not applicable/not mentioned
V10b Does the story mention corruption of Ciudadanos’ politicians? 0 No
1 Yes
9999 Not applicable/not mentioned
V11a Does the article comment on/mention issues Podemos is interested in or pushing for?14
0 No 1 Yes
9999 Not applicable/not mentioned
V11b Does the article comment on/mention issues Ciudadanos is interested in or pushing for?
0 No 1 Yes
9999 Not applicable/not mentioned
Code Actor
Ciudadanos
100 Ciudadanos (C’s) as a whole (or synonyms like “partido de la ciudadanía”, “formación naranja”, “los de Rivera”) and lesser party members
101 Albert Rivera, president Podemos
200 Podemos as a whole (or synonyms like “formación morada”, “los de Iglesias”) and lesser party members
