Positions and clustering of the Spanish press: Content analysis of news generated by the World Youth Day 2011

Abstract

In this paper we present a content analysis regarding the position held by several Spanish newspapers and press agencies concerning an international event; the World Youth Day 2011. Its main purpose is to analyse how different media positioned themselves when informing over such event by analyzing the frequency of negative terms in news pieces. To this end, word frequency analysis was applied to 4,860 news pieces, which were then processed through clustering techniques; Multidimensional Scaling and Hierarchical Ascendant Classification. Clustering analysis sheds light on the position of newspapers and their similarities. Results show differences in coverage and uses of keywords. We will find three main clusters of newspapers appear, according to their editorial lines.