Analysis of lexical framing in editorials on the Cuban War published in the Spanish press

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to identify the dominant lexical frames in the editorials on the Cuban
War published throughout 1898, in three of the main newspapers of the Spanish press: El Imparcial, El Liberal
and Heraldo de Madrid. Journalism then exercised a great influence on political decisions. In addition, it was
the only way that society had to find out about overseas events, hence its relevance to shape public opinion.
The use of corpus analysis software has allowed us to carry out a quantitative analysis of the most recurring
nouns and detect the most relevant semantic fields. In addition, the contrastive analysis has allowed us to
know the evolution experienced by the editorial line of each newspaper throughout the different stages of
this war. Therefore, this investigation can help to elucidate what was the responsibility of the press in the
confrontation between Spain and the United States.