Narratives of the journalistic coverage on the investment and regulation of instituional advertising in Spain (2020-2022): thematic agenda, dominant perspectives and ethical biases

Abstract

In this paper we investigate the structure and scope of journalistic coverage on the use of public funds for institutional advertising. In order to accomplish this, a quantitative and qualitative analysis of content and agenda setting analysis are carried out on the news produced by 19 Spanish media outlets over the last two years. This way, we form a corpus of 567 pieces of news. Subsequently, a framing analysis (Entman, 1993) is applied to a random subsample of eight constructed weeks (Krippendorff, 1990).

Among the main results, a decreasing attention deficit is detected within the academic literature;  the permanent specific attention to this issue in 3 reference media in its sector (El País, 20 minutes and eldiario.es) through specific topic labels is highlighted, 11 peak periods of coverage are identified and analyzed, in whose agenda a total of 12 subtopics and 12 usual news-frames are recorded, that characterize the agenda and dominant approaches of journalistic coverage on this issue. Comprehensive and consistent taxonomies of topics and frameworks are proposed for future comparative analysis of framing and agenda setting, and the main trends in the recent evolution of coverage are reported.

In addition, we contrast the findings with the characteristics of the coverage in smaller media, including regional, digital and "alternative" approaches, thus encompassing a broader vision and a more complete and dynamic map of coverage and its controversy associated in the national media space. Among the main conclusions, we highlight: the lack of systematic attention to the issue in the Spanish press (only three media outlets have a specific tag); the dominance of the inadequate distribution of costs and "self-promotion" as central issues on the news agenda; and the correlation between the sectors of the press that receive the most funds and those that least call attention to the associated controversy, as well as between the ideological tendency of the media and the selection of governments of the opposite sign whose mismanagement of funds is most frequently reported on.