Polarized pluralism facing new politics and online columnism

Abstract

The polarized pluralism of the Spanish media is characterized by a journalism clearly aligned with the main political parties. In this model, journalistic opinion has not historically provided a moderate interpretation of the social reality, but rather subjective articles aimed at judging reality and mobilizing ideologically the audiences. This research deals with the possible transformations of the Spanish media system as a consequence of the irruption of new political parties and the new digital media. With this aim, we qualitatively analyze the opinion columns published in two Spanish digital media, Eldiario.es, where Ignacio Escolar publishes his articles, and El Confidencial, where José Antonio Zarzalejos does the same, during the electoral campaign of December 2015. The results suggest that the columnists favor interpretive texts but they still show partisan alignments, only partially altered by the new parties recently appeared.