Analysis of data journalism covering the Spanish general election campaign held on 20th December 2015 through the digital editions of national newspapers

Abstract

The commercialization hypothesis stresses that the increasing pressure of the press to profit it´s business make them exclude the substance of political coverage to emphasize strategic, game and human interests frames, particularly during elections; since this depends on the main commercial factors in a given media market, the present paper aims to confirm the influence of some of these in the performance of the Mexican press, our case study. Using a theoretical model that relates factors of economic pressure to organizational responses and a method of commercialism indices per outlet, a content analysis of the 2012 presidential race in six newspapers (N=482) finds that there is rather a tenuous relationship between commercialism levels and the strategic coverage of the elections, probably related to particular conditions of the Mexican market and some limitations of the proposed research design.