Latin America, and the U.S.
Amber van der Steen 10253084 Master’s Thesis
Graduate School of Communication Master’s Programme: Political Communication
Supervisor: Joost van Spanje 30-06-2017
Abstract
Although comparative political communication research has been steadily growing over the past twenty years, there is still a lack of research into non-Western media systems. Additionally, the amount of research on left-wing populism is far outweighed by the amount of right-wing populism research. Therefore, the current research aims to add to both fields by investigating coverage of Spanish left-wing populist party Podemos in Spain, Latin America, and the U.S. As both a relatively new party that originated from a protest movement, and a party that has been challenging the status quo in Spain ever since its beginning, Podemos has successfully entered the media and political arena of Spain. Through a quantitative content analysis sampled from January 2014 until May 2017, coverage of Podemos was investigated. Podemos is framed thematically in Spain, the U.S. and Latin America. However, U.S. newspapers implemented the populism and protest frame more than Spanish newspapers. Latin American newspapers aligned with Spain in not framing Podemos as anti-establishment or radical left.
Keywords: comparative political communication, populism, Podemos, protest paradigm, framing, quantitative content analysis, Latin America
Introduction
The rise of populism in Europe and other Western countries has been developing over the last few decades, both in terms of right- and left-wing populism. The focus of research in the academic world has been largely on right-wing populism (see Bos 2012, Bos, van der Brug & de Vreese 2010, and 2011 for example), which has left left-wing populism as a less-studied subject of research (Hartleb, 2015, Kioupkiolis, 2016). Considering the rise of left-wing
Italy, and Podemos in Spain, this is an opportune time to contribute to the research on left-wing populism. Research into SYRIZA and its surprising success has already been conducted by some (Stavrakakis and Katsambekis, 2014), and some research on Podemos as well (Kioupkiolis, 2016). The current research will focus on Podemos as a political party that had unexpected success in the European Parliament elections of 2014. Podemos has been very present in the media, both by their own initiative on social media and the traditional press such as television and newspapers. Podemos was founded in January of 2014, after playing an important role in the civil and social protest movement in Spain from 2011 onwards. After the foundation, Podemos did surprisingly well in regional, as well as national elections in Spain in the years that followed.
By the aforementioned researchers, and others (for example Mudde, 2016 and Zakaria, 2016), Podemos is labelled a populist party. Also by non-academic sources, newspapers and television broadcasts, the tendency is to mention Podemos in one breath with populism, or other populist parties from the left such as SYRIZA. News coverage is important because it is the information that citizens receive of the world around them. Aside from populists, Podemos has also been labelled radical or extreme left, as well as anti-establishment. Additionally, Podemos has been accused of being funded by Latin American leaders, which has led newspapers to label them ‘chavists’. Aside from the association with Latin American leaders, Podemos has been said to have other ties to Latin America, both ideological and financial. The international political climate is one of populism, but does this affect coverage of any populist party? Would, in a country where there is a surge of right-wing populism, such as the Unites States, the coverage of Podemos be similar to that of Spain? Or, would coverage in Latin America, where left-wing populism has been around for decades, be less critical of a left-wing populist party?
The different ways of defining Podemos as a party, and the inability to do so by others has led to the following research question:
How and to what extent is Podemos covered in newspapers in Spain, Latin America, and the U.S?
By answering this question, the current research aims to provide more insights into left-wing populism, both in Europe and America. Secondly, the aim is to add to comparative political communication studies by investigating not only differences between Spain and the U.S., which have been investigated comparatively before, but also to add Latin American countries to the comparison, thereby contributing to the political communication research into non-Western and/or developing countries.
Theoretical background News parties & the media, protest paradigm
A new political party like Podemos, that has been labelled anti-establishment, usually emerges to address issues that have not been taken up by the incumbent parties. It could also be argued that their achieved success is due to the disappointment of voters in the incumbent parties (Tavits, 2007, Schärdel and König, 2015). Any new party, populist or not, needs to gain media attention in order to attract voters. However, the more attention a new party attracts, and thereby the more well-known they become among their voters, the more negative coverage they consequently tend to receive (Jenkins, 1999). As Jenkins points out in his work, new parties either have to be or do one of the two following things to attract media attention: perform better
party for the political future (of their respective country). In addition to being a new party, Podemos was established after being a social protest movement; the attention and coverage it initially received was based on the protests they led in Madrid. The protest paradigm, simply put, is the process that leads mainstream news coverage to support the status quo and marginalize those who question or protest it (Boyle et al., 2012). Since Podemos started as a protest movement this could have consequences on the coverage in the mainstream media. In this instance, the protest paradigm can also apply to a political party such as Podemos. Being a new party and stemming from a protest movement could be argued to have worked in the favour of Podemos in gaining media attention, because it made the party very newsworthy. The news values as developed by Galtung and Ruge (1965) and Harcup and O’Neill (2001, 2016), such as novelty, conflict, surprise, shareability, and the power elite, could help explain the reasons for journalists to choose to write about Podemos. Additionally, Bos et al. (2010) provided evidence with their research that populist party leaders are inherently newsworthy due to their style of rhetoric and their focus on the leader.
The media as a whole operate within a framework as described by Shoemaker and Reese (1996, 2014, 2016) as the hierarchy of influences model. According to this model, there are multiple factors that shape the media and media content, from the individual journalists, to the routines, to the organizational features, and lastly the extra media factors. Newspapers fall into the organizational level of that hierarchical model, which is where the focus of the current research will be on. Consequently, when comparing newspapers across different countries, there needs to be a frame of reference. Comparative political communication research has made use of the models of media systems, as developed by Hallin and Mancini (2004), as a frame of reference. Since the seminal work by Hallin and Mancini (2004), more researchers have tested the models of media systems empirically and further developed them, such as Brüggemann et
al. (2014) and Esser and Umbricht (2013). Researchers of media systems have created models that serve as frameworks, and the models developed coincide in many aspects. The dimensions of media systems have been broken down into four categories by Hallin and Mancini (2004); the first dimension, press circulation, is not only intended to express the amount of circulation but also the type of audiences reached by newspapers. An important difference between the U.S. and Spain is that the mass media in the U.S. reaches a wide audience, whereas in Spain the media produces news for an elite audience (Hallin and Mancini, 2004). The second dimension is political parallelism, which in the current research relates to the political parallelism on an organizational level; simply put this refers to the connections between the media and politics, the presence of multiple media outlets of different political leanings within one country, and the news content produced by those media outlets. The third dimension is professionalism, which relates to journalists, their (organised) autonomy, and sets of norms and rules. The fourth dimension is the role of the state; whether the press is subsidized, how the public broadcasting channels are managed, and whether the government restricts the media in any way. Research by Strömbäck and Luengo (2008) showed a high level of interconnectedness between media and politics in Spain, with a high level of political parallelism confirmed by Baumgartner and Bonafont (2015). The dimensions originally formulated by Hallin and Mancini will be used as a theoretical framework because, even though there have been other researchers that improved the models and dimensions (referred to earlier), Hallin and Mancini have acknowledged that their models were tentative but firmly grounded in theory (Hallin and Mancini, 2016).
The media systems in turn function within distinct political systems, that influence the way news is covered due to structural biases. The alteration in the presentation of news,
over another, is known as framing (Entman in Strömbäck and Luengo, 2008). Framing theory has been used in communication research for quite some time, and it is important to note that frames are not necessarily intentional. However, in political communication it can be common for certain frames to be favoured over others to influence the perception of a party (leader) for example.
As per media systems, the cultural context of those systems influences the frames that are implemented as well; media in culturally similar countries tend to use similar frames (Baden and Tenenboim Weinblatt, 2017) whereas the culturally more distant countries do not use congruent frames. The U.S. overall is more right of centre on the political spectrum compared to Spain, which could affect the frames used in covering Podemos. Latin American countries, as briefly mentioned, share a similar past with Spain and this could also be reflected in the frames. In the introduction, it was mentioned that Podemos is a left-wing party, associated with populism, and the extreme or radical left. Populism has been widely researched and is most often defined as “an ideology that considers society to be ultimately separated into two homogeneous and antagonistic groups, the ‘pure people’ versus ‘the corrupt elite’, and which argues that politics should be an expression of the volonté générale (general will) of the people” (Mudde, 2004). The current research acknowledges that there have been debates on what constitutes populism, and has chosen to adhere to this definition by Mudde (2004) which can be applied to populism from both the right and the left. Aside from the possible populist frame implemented in the coverage of Podemos, there is another possible frame that could be used by journalists, based on the protest paradigm mentioned earlier; framing Podemos as a marginalized party, or as questioning the status quo.
Lastly, the distinction between thematic and episodic frames is important when discussing a new, status quo-challenging party. The research by Strömbäck and Dimitrova,
(2006), and Strömbäck and Luengo, (2008) has shown that thematic frames, which place a topic or issue in a larger context, are implemented more in Spain (and Sweden) compared to the U.S., where episodic frames are more common. Podemos would benefit more from thematic frames, since it would provide them with more context and consequently acknowledge the party as opposed to treating them as a new or protest party.
Hypotheses
Because of the novelty, inherent newsworthiness, and populist characteristics, Podemos attracted a considerable amount of attention. However, based on the different characteristics of the media systems in Spain, Latin America, and the U.S. it is expected that the coverage will differ accordingly.
It can be argued that Podemos has succeeded in both of the requirements for new parties set up by Jenkins (1999); first of all, they successfully entered the political arena of Spain’s two-party system. They have become one of the largest political parties in Spain within a very short amount of time. Secondly, they attracted a great number of voters within a short period of time and did far better than predicted in the European Parliament elections (Medina and Correa, 2016). However, the more attention a new party attracts, the more negative attention they tend to receive (Jenkins, 1999). Considering the high level of political parallelism in Spain, demonstrated by, for example, the left-leaning newspaper El País coexisting with right-wing newspaper ABC, as opposed to the low level of political parallelism in the U.S. (especially before the existence and success of Fox News) this will have consequences for the coverage in each respective country. Furthermore, as briefly mentioned, little research has been done investigating the media of Latin America, as the majority of research has focused on Western
developing democracies, places Spain, Portugal, and Latin America together for having been ruled by military dictatorships for long periods of time, which had consequences for the relationship between the media and the state. In Latin America, there is not any official censorship. Nevertheless, journalists avoid broaching political issues, since most media are owned by the most influential political families (Matos, 2009) and the repercussions of writing about a sensitive issue can be dire.
The high level of political parallelism in Spanish newspapers, which manifests itself with clear political leanings of the papers (and journalists) on the one hand, and the less politically engaged news media in Latin America and the U.S. on the other, has led to the following expectation:
H1a. Coverage in Spain will be more evaluative than in Latin America and the U.S.
Because of the cultural proximity, which dictates that in this research the U.S. is the most culturally distant from firstly Spain and secondly Latin America, the following is expected:
H1b. Coverage in the U.S. will be less evaluative than in Latin America and Spain.
As mentioned above, the previous research by Strömbäck and Dimitrova (2006) and Strömbäck and Luengo (2008) on thematic versus episodic frames has shown that Spanish media employed more thematic frames in the election coverage, as opposed to the Swedish media, where episodic frames were more prominent, and the tendency of the U.S. media to cater to a mass audience and employ more of a sensationalist style. Latin American media similarly publish more soft news, in avoidance of broaching political subjects that may result in problems for the
journalist. Because of these findings, the following is expected of Spanish newspaper coverage compared to that in Latin America and the U.S.:
H2. Thematic frames will be more frequent in Spain than in Latin America and the U.S.
Because the U.S. media are not used to the challenging of the political establishments by parties such as Podemos, combined with the tendency of the U.S. media to employ a more sensationalist tone, and the lack of ties to official political entities that would inhibit them from criticising politics, leads to the expectation that U.S. newspapers would be eager to portray a party like Podemos as a populist party. This as opposed to the Spanish newspapers whose readership consists of an educated elite, and thus expects a more serious, hard news tone. Finally, Latin American press, that has been said to also engage in more soft news coverage, and is less prone to write about politics, but is more used to challenges to the political system and political extremes, has led to the elaboration of the following hypothesis:
H3. The populism frame will be more common in the U.S. than in Spain and Latin America
Because Podemos originated from a protest movement, it is expected that because of the protest paradigm, it will be treated as an outsider, a party that does not fit the status quo. For reasons similar to the previous hypothesis, less ties between politics and media and a more soft news approach in the U.S., the following hypothesis was elaborated:
Additionally, the political positioning of the Spanish newspapers will most probably influence their coverage of Podemos. Although the Spanish newspapers have been said to be tied to the established political parties, it is expected that the left-wing newspaper El País may be more supportive of Podemos due to their shared political orientation. The more conservative, right-wing newspapers ABC and El Mundo will probably not align with the views of left-right-wing party Podemos. This has led to the following hypotheses:
H5a: In ABC and El Mundo the populist frame will be more common than in El País. H5b: In ABC and El Mundo the protest party frame will be more common than in El País. H5c: Coverage in ABC and El Mundo will be more evaluative than in El País.
Data & Sample
The data used for the current research has been sampled through LexisNexis between the 16th of January 2014 and the 3rd of May 2017. The search terms used were Podemos and Part!
to include the word for party in both languages; partido and party. After grouping duplicates and filtering to include only the sources of relevance, a total of 818 articles was left, from 17 sources. Out of those 818 articles, 30 are in English, and the rest are in Spanish; 473 from Spain after grouping duplicates, and 84 from Latin America. Sources from Spain, Latin America, and the U.S were included in the sample; the choice of countries is reasoned as follows; the expectation is that Latin America will be similar in its coverage of Podemos to Spain due to their similar historical experiences. As a comparison, a different system will be included; the U.S. Firstly, the U.S. is most distant from Spain, culturally and in terms of media systems, regarding the political ties to the media and the role of the state, the elite orientation of the media, and (previously) internal pluralism of the media in the U.S. The most important
difference is the lack of state intervention in the media and the lack of political ties to media outlets, as in this aspect the U.S. differs from both Latin America and Spain.
The role of the state, as mentioned, has been different in Latin America; the media have not necessarily been censored, but they have traditionally and historically been encouraged to refrain from discussing politics, the punishment ranging from social exile to death. The import of soap opera shows in the style of those in the United States intensified the culture of commercialized television and media, with an overtone of entertainment and soft news (Voltmer, 2008, Matos, 2009). Surely, other countries with different systems could have been selected in lieu of the U.S. for similar reasons as mentioned here; the U.S. was partially chosen because of its availability on LexisNexis.
To filter out any articles that are not about the political party Podemos, the first question of the codebook is: Is the article about Podemos? This is an important first step in the codebook, since Podemos is also the Spanish word for ‘we can’ and the word partido is also the Spanish word for (sports)game. The abbreviation ‘part’ can also be the beginning of words such as participar (participate) or particular (particular). Spanish articles were selected from El País, El Mundo, and ABC, the three largest newspapers in Spain and with different political affiliations. From the U.S. articles were selected from the New York Times and the Washington Post. Several newspapers from Latin American countries were sampled; El Tiempo and El Espectador from Colombia, El Mercurio and La Nación from Chile, El Comercio Peru, El País Uruguay, El Comercio Ecuador, La Nación Costa Rica, La Estrella de Panamá, El Nacional Venezuela, La Nación Argentina, and El Nuevo Día Puerto Rico. These newspapers were selected as an availability sample, the low number of articles available from these countries led to a grouping together of the Latin American newspapers.
A first glance of the articles that come up when searching in LexisNexis has shown that most headlines will indicate whether or not the article is about the party Podemos. All 30 English articles, all 84 Latin American articles, and 200 Spanish articles were downloaded for coding. The 200 Spanish articles were chosen randomly using a random number generator; a list of 200 random numbers out of the total amount (473) was generated and the articles with the corresponding numbers were selected and downloaded for coding out of the list on LexisNexis, which was sorted starting from the most recent publication to earliest.
Measures
Populism relating to Podemos was measured in two ways; the first is an elaborate operationalisation of populism used to measure the extent to which Podemos is framed as a populist party. The following four indicators were used; does Podemos criticize the current government, do they present themselves as the solution to the failing of the current government, do they refer to ‘the common man’ in a positive way, and whether they refer to ‘the elite’ in a negative way. These four indicators show whether Podemos, Podemos members or leaders are quoted, cited or said to express themselves in populist ways. The second measure of populism utilised, was by coding the explicit mentioning of Podemos in relation to populism. These two measurements were used to investigate whether Podemos would be framed as a populist party, or simply labelled populist without further explanation.
The protest party frame was assessed by three indicators; is Podemos mentioned explicitly in relation to radical and/or extreme left, incompetence, and/or being anti-establishment.
The tone of coverage was also measured, with the possibility of no evaluation being made, and using a six-point scale ranging from only negatively to only positively being evaluated.
Lastly, to investigate the extent to which thematic versus episodic framing occurred, a non-exhaustive list of 32 issues was included in the codebook to assess whether Podemos was mentioned in relation to an issue and, if so, to what kind of issues Podemos is linked to in coverage.
Methodology
The variables used to answer the various hypotheses and, ultimately, the research question are the country of publication, the tone of coverage, the issues linked to Podemos in the newspaper articles, the association with anti-establishment, extreme right-wing parties, extreme left-wing parties, being linked explicitly to populism, incompetence, criticizing the government, negatively mentioning the ‘elite’, positively referencing the ‘common man’, or presenting themselves (Podemos) as the solution. Most variables were measured on a nominal level and recoded to be dichotomous. The list of issues and countries of publication were measured on a nominal level, and tone of coverage on an ordinal level. To differentiate between the various groups of countries and their newspapers, the original variable was recoded into two sets of new variables, to make separate analyses and associations easier to conduct; one variable for each separate set of newspapers from different countries was made; one for Spanish, one for Latin American, and one for U.S. newspapers. The other variable consists of three groups with the grouped newspapers together per country, to conduct between country differences tests. Evaluation of Podemos was recoded to form an ordinal variable that represents
coverage to either the presence or absence of an evaluation being made. The list of issues was recoded to make a dichotomous variable, indicating either no association being made between Podemos and an issue or the presence of an association.
Reliability of the codebook was tested by training a second coder (coder 0) who coded about 15% of the sample, and calculating the inter coder reliability of coder 0 and the main coder, by calculating Krippendorff’s Alpha. The intercoder reliability was calculated for a number of variables, most of which were satisfactory (over 0.60 Krippendorffs Alpha). The variables that were tested for intercoder reliability are; type of article (N=20) alpha= .845, reference to the common man (N=72) alpha=.651, criticism of current government (N=72) alpha= .773, linked to populism (N=72) alpha= .724, linked to the extreme left (N=72) alpha=.653, and linked to being anti-establishment (N=72) alpha=.563. The variable measuring the evaluation of the party and the variable measuring the issues Podemos is linked to were both not very reliable, possibly due to time constraints on both coders. Because the variables define a great deal of the research and determine the insights available from the data they will be used in the analyses, provided that the more problematic ones have been recoded to dichotomous variables to avoid any complex analyses based on unreliable variables. Evaluation of Podemos in article (N=20) alpha=.283, this is not a reliable variable, which means that the different evaluations will not be used in the analyses. However, the presence or absence of an evaluation being made will be used because the expectation is that the assessment by the two coders of whether Podemos was evaluated was not problematic. The intercoder reliability for the recoded dichotomous variable (N=72) alpha=.695, sufficiently reliable to be taken into the analyses.
The variable measuring the issues related to Podemos has also been recoded to a dichotomous variable, representing either mentioning Podemos in relation to a certain issue or
not. The reliability of the recoded variable was also satisfactory (N=72) alpha=.772. The data was analysed by running several chi-square tests of homogeneity with post-hoc testing using Bonferroni corrections to investigate the differences between the groups of countries. The chi square tests were done with the variables that were suitable for this specific test. Within country differences will also be tested by chi square tests to assess differences between newspapers.
Results Tone of coverage
The chi square test for the differences in proportion between countries and the evaluation of Podemos was significant X2 (2, N=299)= 8.56, p=.014, with significant differences
between Spain and the U.S. Using z-tests of two proportions with a Bonferroni correction to make pairwise comparisons, the between country differences were calculated. Spanish newspapers evaluated Podemos in 68 (30.9%) of the articles, whereas U.S. newspapers only did so in 3 (8.8%) of the cases. Latin American newspapers did not significantly differ from Spain or the U.S. This means that hypothesis 1a is partially accepted, coverage in Spain is more evaluative than in the U.S., but not compared to Latin America. Consequently, hypothesis 1b is also partially accepted; U.S. coverage is significantly less evaluative than Spanish coverage, but not in comparison to Latin American newspapers.
An additional chi square test for the proportional differences between the Spanish newspapers was significant, X2 (2, N= 220)= 10.47, p=.005, El País evaluated Podemos in 17 (18.9%) of its articles, whereas El Mundo and ABC did so in respectively 26 (37.7%) and 25 (41%) of their articles, which means hypothesis 5c is accepted.
Evaluated no, count % within newspapers 152 69.1% 31 91.2% 36 80% 219 72.2% Evaluated yes, count
% within newspapers 68 30.9% 3 8.8% 9 20.0% 80 26.8% Total, count % within newspapers 100% 220 100% 34 100% 45 100% 299 Table 1. Evaluation of Podemos
Thematic versus episodic coverage. The chi-square test was not significant for the explicit mentioning of Podemos in relation to an issue X2 (2, N= 300)= 3.31, p=.191. 233 (77%) of the total amount of articles mentioned Podemos in relation to a certain issue, 177 (77%) of the Spanish articles, 23 (67.6%) of the U.S. articles, and 39 (84.8%) of the Latin American articles. Therefore, hypothesis 2 is rejected; thematic frames are not significantly more frequent in Spanish newspapers than U.S. and Latin American newspapers.
Spain U.S. Latin America Total Issue not mentioned, count
% within newspaper groups
49 22.3% 11 32.4% 7 15.2% 67 22.3%
Issue mentioned, count % within newspaper groups
171 77.7% 23 67.7% 39 84.4% 233 77.7% Total, count
% within newspaper groups
220 100% 34 100% 46 100% 300 100% Table 2. Crosstab newspaper & issue mentioned.
Populism. As described earlier, populism was measured in two ways; a frame consisting of four indicators, and one separate single measurement asking if Podemos was explicitly labelled as a populist party or linked to populist politicians.
p=.975, in 55 (18.5%) of all articles Podemos criticized the current government or its leaders. The second one, presenting Podemos as the solution, was not significant, X2 (2, N= 299)= .35, p=.842, in 35 (11.7%) Podemos presented themselves as the solution. Referring to the common man or the people in a positive way was not significant, X2 (2, N= 296 )=.21 , p=.903, in 40 (13.5%) of all articles did Podemos refer to ‘the people’ in a positive way. Lastly, referring to the elite in a negative way was not significant, X2 (2, N= 299)= 1.01 , p= .604, in 51 (17.1%) of all articles Podemos referred to the elite in a negative way.
The second measurement for populism, explicitly relating Podemos to populism, was also measured using a chi square test. The chi square test was significant X2 (2, N= 300 )9.61, p= .008, with one cell with a lower expected count than 5. In total, 41 (13.7%) of the articles explicitly linked Podemos to populism. However, the U.S. and Spain differed significantly, as tested by post-hoc tests using pairwise comparisons using z-tests of two proportions with a Bonferroni correction; 10 (29.4%) of the U.S. newspaper articles linked Podemos to being populists or to populist parties, whereas Spanish newspapers only did so in 23 (10.5%) of the articles. Latin American newspaper did not differ significantly from both the U.S. and Spain, with 8 (17.4%) of the articles linking Podemos to populism. Hypothesis 3 is partially accepted; there were no differences between the countries in using a populism frame, but the U.S. labelled Podemos more as a populist party than Spain.
All chi square tests for the differences between Spanish newspapers and populism were not significant, which leads to the rejection of hypothesis 5a.
Spain U.S. Latin America Total
Populism no, count
Populism yes, count % within newspapers 23 10.5% 10 29.4% 8 17.4% 41 13.7% Total, count % within newspapers 100% 220 100% 34 100% 46 100% 300 Table 3. crosstab newspapers and populism explicitly mentioned in relation to Podemos.
Protest party. Three indicators were used to measure the protest party frame, chi square tests were used to assess this frame. Out of all the articles, 60 (20.1%) linked Podemos explicitly to being anti-establishment, the chi square test for explicitly mentioning Podemos in relation to being anti-establishment was significant, X2 (2, N= 298)= 10.69, p=.005. Post-hoc tests showed that Latin American and Spanish newspapers significantly differ from the U.S. Various pairwise comparisons using a z-test of two proportions with a Bonferroni correction were used to identify the significant differences. 13 (38.2%) of the U.S. articles mentioned Podemos explicitly in connection to being anti-establishment, as opposed to Spain and Latin America, where only in 43 (19.7%) and 4 (8.7%) of the articles respectively did so.
Spain U.S. Latin America Total Anti-establishment no, count
% within newspaper groups
175 80.3% 21 61.8% 42 91.3% 238 79.9% Anti-establishment yes, count
%within newspaper groups
43 19.7% 13 38.2% 4 8.7% 60 20.1% Total, count
% within newspaper groups
218 100% 34 100% 46 100% 298 100% Table 4. Crosstab newspaper & anti-establishment.
75 (25%) of all articles explicitly linked Podemos to the extreme or radical left. The chi square test for mentioning Podemos explicitly in relation to the extreme and/or radical left was significant, X2 (2, N= 300 )= 37.34, p<.001. U.S. newspapers mentioned Podemos in relation to being extreme left in 23 (67.6%) of the articles, Spain 42 (19.1%), and Latin American newspapers in 10 (21.7%). The pairwise comparisons for the post hoc analysis were conducted using z-tests of two proportions with a Bonferroni correction. The chi square test for relating Podemos explicitly to incompetence or being incompetent was not significant, X2 (2, N= 298)= .187, p= .911, 17 (5.7%) of all articles linked Podemos to incompetence. Therefore, hypothesis 4 is partially accepted, two out of the three indicators differed significantly between countries.
Spain U.S. Latin America Total Extreme left no, count
% within newspaper groups
178 80.9% 11 32.4% 36 78.3% 225 75% Extreme left yes, count
% within newspaper groups 19.1% 42 67.6% 23 21.7% 10 25% 75 Total, count
% within newspaper groups 100% 220 100% 34 100% 46 100% 300 Table 5. Crosstab newspaper & extreme left
Within Spain there were also significant differences between the newspapers; the chi square test was significant, X2 (2, N= 218)= 9.38, p= .009, pairwise comparisons made using z-tests of proportions with a Bonferroni correction. El Mundo linked Podemos to being anti-establishment in 17 (25%) of the articles and ABC also in 17 (28.3%) of the articles, as opposed to El País with 9 (10%) of the cases.
Another chi square test with pairwise comparisons was conducted for the Spanish newspapers, X2 (2, N= 220)= 24.63, p<.001, and showed significant differences between Spanish newspapers. El País linked Podemos to the extreme left in 4 (4.4%) articles, but ABC
to incompetence or being incompetent was not significant, X2 (2, N= 218)= 1.87, p= .393, 13 (6%) of all Spanish newspaper articles linked Podemos to incompetence. Therefore, hypothesis 5b is partially accepted.
Figure 1. Differences in Spanish newspapers in categorising Podemos as extreme left.
Conclusion & discussion
Articles from major Spanish, Latin American, and U.S. newspapers have been analysed to investigate the extent to which Podemos is covered and how this relatively new party is framed. The first two hypotheses are partially accepted; Spanish newspapers evaluated Podemos significantly more than in the U.S. and the U.S. significantly less than Spain. In general, it fits that Podemos was evaluated more by Spanish newspapers than both the U.S. and Latin America; Podemos is more relevant in Spain due to its proximity. Additionally, the media in Spain are aimed at an elite audience and have a clear political leaning; this is confirmed by the results. This also confirms the media and democracy models and dimensions discussed earlier; Spanish media, especially newspapers, have close ties to political parties. This was also
86 4 39 22 53 16 Extreme left no Extreme left yes
Differences Coverage Spain Extreme Left
confirmed by the results, significant differences between the Spanish newspapers in evaluating Podemos were found. The U.S. newspapers have far less ties to politics, which is not to say that they do not favour a certain political colour; these results show that foreign news may receive less evaluated coverage in the U.S. Latin American newspapers did not differ significantly from either Spain or the U.S., which places them in between the two countries.
Hypothesis 2 is rejected; contrary to what was expected, Spanish newspapers did not implement thematic frames more than U.S. or Latin American newspapers. It is a surprising result to see that Podemos was framed thematically in all the newspapers (about two thirds of all coverage). This means that the coverage mostly linked Podemos to certain policies or issues, and focused on providing context or background information about Podemos or an issue that Podemos has been linked to. Possibly, this is because of the type of issues that Podemos has claimed; anti-austerity, unemployment rates, and evictions for example; these are issues that are internationally relevant and not specific exclusively to Spain. It could also be argued that news values such as novelty, surprise, conflict, and the power elite have worked in favour of Podemos; they received coverage that did more than merely mention them. Thematic frames are more beneficial for any party or politician, but especially for new parties because it frames them with a background story and provides more information.
Hypothesis 3 is partially accepted, there are significant differences between the U.S. and Spain in linking Podemos explicitly to populism; a third of U.S. newspapers did so, whereas only one tenth of Spanish articles did so. The fact that Podemos is not actually framed as a political party but seems to be referred to as a populist party or linked to populist politicians is unexpected. There were no significant differences between the countries in implementing a populism frame, less than a fifth of all the newspapers framed Podemos as a populist party.
There were no significant differences between the Spanish newspapers, the majority did not frame Podemos as a populist party.
Hypothesis 4 is also partially accepted; the U.S. significantly frames them more as a radical left-wing party or an anti-establishment party than Latin American and Spanish newspapers, but no significant differences were found in labelling Podemos as an incompetent party (under 6% of all coverage linked Podemos to incompetence in any way). Between the Spanish newspapers there were significant differences as well in framing Podemos as a radical left or anti-establishment party; the conservative right-wing newspapers El Mundo and ABC used these frames more frequently than progressive left-wing newspaper El País. There were no significant differences in framing Podemos as incompetent.
Most of the results found are presumably due to the differences in political systems; the U.S. tends to lean more right of the political centre compared to Spain and Latin American countries. Additionally, until very recently, the U.S. was not accustomed to blatant challenging of the system by outsider or new parties (not as much as the other countries included in the sample that is). This could have contributed to the use of the word populist without further populism frames employed by U.S. journalists; what is unknown and challenges the domestic values is easily labelled as such. Many aspects of the dimensions established by Hallin and Mancini (2004, 2016) are confirmed by the results when it comes to the differences between Spain and the U.S.; Latin American newspapers either aligned with Spanish newspapers in differing significantly from U.S. newspapers or did not differ from U.S. nor Spanish newspapers. This situates the Latin American newspapers in between the two countries. Politically, Latin American newspapers seem to align with Spain, which may be due to their similar past, as discussed earlier with the research by Voltmer (2008). When it comes to thematic framing and evaluating Podemos, Latin American newspapers fall between Spain and
the U.S.; this could mean the media are transitioning from a model that resembles the Spanish one, to one that is influenced more by the U.S. To be sure, Latin American media cannot afford to be as critical of politicians and political parties, due to the close financial ties of most large media corporations to politically influential families (Matos, 2009). As Podemos has been speculated to have been backed by various Latin American politicians (Kioupkiolis, 2016, Seguín, 2015), this may have had effects on coverage in some of the countries included in the sample.
Overall, Podemos is not covered as a populist or protest party, and in a thematic frame. It could be argued that Podemos has been accepted as an official player in the political field in Spain, regardless of its recent establishment as a political party, because it was framed in all countries that have been investigated in a thematic way. Although the majority of the articles did not frame Podemos as a populist party, there was a significantly higher number of articles from the U.S. that explicitly referred to Podemos as a populist party or linked Podemos directly to populism. In other words, Podemos was mentioned as a populist party without further elaboration, which raises the question; why are they called a populist party? Are other traits assigned to Podemos that would qualify them as a populist party?
A caveat when discussing these results is that Podemos is not linked to populism, being anti-establishment, or a radical left-wing party in over three fourths of the international coverage. Hence, the coverage of Podemos overall had more of a hard news tone, generally not sensationalist, and described the party in a serious way with background information and their own issues.
Within Spain, newspapers differed significantly in almost every aspect. This was to be expected due to the political preferences of the newspapers and the audiences they cater to. In
the one side and ABC and El Mundo on the other side. Considering that most evaluation of Podemos was done in Spanish newspapers, and that El Mundo and ABC evaluated Podemos significantly more than El País, aligns with the results found by Baumgartner and Bonafont (2015); it is preferred by Spanish journalists to write negatively about the ‘enemy’ rather than writing positively about the political ‘ally’. A right-wing newspaper in Spain would give preference to criticizing the PSOE (the socialist party) over praising the PP (conservative party). Despite the lack of information about the kind of evaluation made in the articles in the current research, it can reasonably be theorized, based on the aforementioned research by Baumgartner and Bonafont (2015) that the tone of coverage in the conservative right-wing newspapers was more negative of Podemos than the left-wing El País. Additionally, the difference between El País and ABC was the biggest on all indicators.
Implications
Journalists are labelling Podemos as a populist party without actually framing them as one, which raises the question: what do they base the label ‘populist’ on? The recent rise of populist parties may have created an environment where the term populist is applied without providing a background or reason. This only adds to the criticism that populism is used as a ‘catch all’ term, applied to any party that remotely fits the profile or is given to a political opponent (Albertazzi and McDonnell, 2007). Given the current political climate, with an abundance of extremist parties thriving in both Europe and the U.S. it would be wise for journalists to consider when to call a party populist, radical left, or anti-establishment. One of the most important aspects of political communication research is that it can give insight into what shapes public opinion, by showing what is covered and how it is covered. This research has aimed to provide insights into international coverage of one phenomenon; Podemos.
Podemos has been interesting to investigate internationally, since it can be seen as a manifestation of various issues that were and are relevant in a large number of countries.
Furthermore, the aim has been to provide more knowledge about international differences and contribute to comparative political communication research. This has been done by comparing Latin American newspaper coverage, from over ten different countries, to U.S. and Spanish coverage. The Latin American media appear to be a combination of both a past that is similar to that of Spain and influenced by the U.S. at the same time; politically, in framing Podemos as radial left or anti-establishment, Latin America aligned with Spain. Nonetheless, in other aspects Latin American coverage did not differ significantly from U.S. coverage. When sampling for this research, it was expected that Latin American newspapers would resemble Spanish newspapers most, but the results have indicated that is not the case.
Limitations
The first limitation to the current study is the small sample size that was used; some analyses could not be performed because of this, diminishing the information the data could have provided. The second limitation is the unequal samples; the number of articles was divided unevenly due to availability. The third limitation was the value of some of the Krippendorff’s alphas; the reliability of some of the variables (issues and evaluation) was less than 0.6, which lead to a recoding of said variables to dichotomous variables thereby losing data that may have provided more in-depth knowledge into the coverage. Because the reliability of the evaluation variable and the type of issues associated with Podemos was not acceptable, it was not possible to do any analyses about the possible changes in tone of coverage or what type of issues Podemos was linked to in the coverage. The type of issues associated with Podemos in the coverage may have provided more insight into the coverage of left-wing populism.
Future research
Future research should focus on other media than just newspapers, since digital media have created a vast array of possibilities in terms of audiences that can be reached, being less dependent on investors, and circumventing government influence. Additionally, leaders of Podemos, especially Pablo Iglesias, have abundantly used social media platforms such as Twitter to reach new, and moreover, young voters. Similarly, future research should aim to analyse a larger sample of Latin American newspapers, to make between country comparisons possible and thus provide more insights into Latin American media per country or region. Latin America should be investigated by comparing countries independent of each other, since the continent as a whole perhaps cannot be categorized as one media system. By conducting more in-depth research into Latin American media systems, they can be placed into the existing models, or be assigned a new model if needed. As Hallin and Mancini (2016) indicate themselves, the intricate models are hard to measure with quantitative operationalizations. This has successfully been done before, and future research should continue to investigate more systems to add to the existing knowledge of media systems.
In the future, researchers that focus on the U.S. elections of the past year could investigate whether the disruption of the traditional two parties has had effects on their coverage of foreign political parties. Even though Donald Trump is officially a Republican president, he is an outsider, labelled as such by both Democrats and Republicans. The current research has used the protest paradigm to investigate the framing of a political party that originated as a protest movement, this can also be done in the future research of the U.S. elections. Additionally, research focused on the U.S. could examine the political parallelism of the news media, since the level of parallelism could reasonably have changed over time.
Furthermore, future research could elaborate on how the coverage of Podemos compares to coverage of the traditional political parties of Spain; since the newspapers have been closely tied to certain political parties, how has the emergence of other parties influenced those ties? The political parallelism of Spain has always been connected to the media aligning with existing political parties, but perhaps it has more to do with political orientation than party.
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Appendix
Appendix 1. Codebook Codebook
Content analysis
Podemos International Coverage University of Amsterdam
Amber van der Steen
Supervisor: Joost van Spanje
Definition article: any news article that is about Podemos. No minimum or maximum length is required. There should be text, or a photo/graph/etc. with text added to it.
Information: Q’s are questions meant to code the content of the articles. C’s are characteristics of the article.
Q1. Is Podemos mentioned? 0 No à stop coding
1 Yes à continue to next question
ONLY CONTINUE CODING IF Q1 = 1!
C1. Item number:
To avoid confusion/the same numbers add country code before item number. Spain: ES, United States: US, Latin America: LA
Example: ES1
C2. Coder ID: 0: Amber
1: Second Coder
C3. Date: Code as DDMMYYYY
C4. Country: 1. Spain 2. U.S. 3. Chile 4. Peru
6. Colombia 7. Argentina 8. Uruguay 9. Panama 10. Ecuador 11. Costa Rica 12. Puerto Rico C5. Newspaper: 1. El País 2. ABC 3. El Mundo 4. El Mercurio Chile 5. New York Times 6. El Comercio Peru 7. El Nacional Venezuela 8. El Espectador Colombia 9. La Nación Argentina 10. El País Uruguay 11. La Estrella de Panama 12. The Washington Post 13. El Comercio Ecuador 14. La Nación Chile 15. La Nación Costa Rica
16. El Nuevo Día Puerto Rico 17. El Tiempo Colombia C6. Type of article: 1. News 2. Opinion piece 3. Interview 4. Background story
5. Letter to the editor/answer of paper 6. Other
C7. Length of article (number of words):
Q2. Evaluation of Podemos. Is the party or their opinions/stances evaluated in the article? 0 No: neither positive or negative evaluations
1 Only negatively
2 More negatively than positively 3 Balanced
4 More positively than negatively 5 Only positively
Instructions for coding Q2: Balanced would be an equal amount of words/phrases/expressions that are positive and negative. If no evaluation is made, ‘No’ can be coded. If there is simply one more word/phrase/expression than the other, code more positively or negatively.
For coding Q3 to Q11: the connections made should be explicit. For example, when a connection between Podemos and being incompetent is made, it should be in a way that uses the word incompetent/amateurs/incapable.
Q3. Is Podemos/party leaders or members/their stances linked to incompetence/being incompetent?
0 No 1 Yes
Q4. Is/are Podemos/the party leaders or members/their stances linked to being anti-establishment or linked to parties/politicians that are anti-anti-establishment?
0 No 1 Yes
Q5. Is/are Podemos/party leaders or members/their stances linked to the radical left/extreme left/ultra-left or parties/politicians linked to the radical left/extreme left/ultra-left?
0 No 1 Yes
Q6. Is/are Podemos/party leaders or members/their stances linked to the radical right/extreme right/ultra-right or parties/politicians linked to the radical right/extreme right/ultra-right? 0 No
Q7. Is/are Podemos/party leaders or members/their stances linked to populism or linked to populist parties/politicians?
0 No 1 Yes
Q8. Does/do Podemos/party leaders or members criticize the current government/government leaders/president?
0 No 1 Yes
Q9. Does/do Podemos/party leaders or members present themselves as the solution to the incompetence of current leaders/government/president?
0 No 1 Yes
Q10. Does/do Podemos/party leaders or members mention the ‘common man’ ‘the people’ or ‘man in the street’ in a positive way?
0 No 1 Yes
Q11. Does/do Podemos/party leaders or members mention the ‘elite’ in a negative way? 0 No
Q 12. Is Podemos mentioned in relation to any specific problem/issue/policy? 0= no
1. Unemployment
2. Youth unemployment (code when explicitly referring to youth unemployment) 3. Economic growth 4. Poverty 5. Taxes 6. Social security 7. Pensions/retirement plans 8. Privatization 9. International trade 10. Transport/infrastructure
11. Energy policies (sustainable/fossil) 12. Agriculture
13. Environmental issues/climate change/global warming 14. Emancipation women
15. Health care 16. Education
17. The arts/culture/public broadcasting (funding) 18. LGBTQ rights/abortion/gay marriage
19. Religion/the church/spirituality/Catholicism 20. Immigration/immigrants
21. Minorities/integration 22. The military
23. Terrorism 24. Crime
25. Corruption/nepotism/fraud
26. Political change/current president or government
27. Transparency in politics/openness/civil initiatives/referendums 28. European union/commission/the euro
29. Austerity measures 30. Foreclosures
99= other
- If there are multiple items that are mentioned, code the one that is mentioned most. - If there are two or more that are mentioned equally, code the first one that is mentioned. - If the issue is not in the list, code 99 (other)
