The Syrian conflict in Spanish press: An analysis of the securitization of war

Abstract

The main objective of this article is to provide a consistent knowledge base on the possible media securitization process of the Spanish press when reporting on the Syrian conflict. To this end, an automated analysis has been carried out, through the SVM supervised algorithm, with the aim of measuring the use of human drama and security frames during the period 2011-2020. The starting assumptions are that the Spanish press mostly uses the security frame when reporting on the Syrian conflict and that there are no significant differences in the use of frames between the different media. The results show that both hypotheses have been validated as all media use similar language with a broad predominance of security frame. Similarly, text mining suggests that the Spanish press has focused its attention on the international aspect of the conflict having difficulty identifying other internal actors. In short, the research aims to analyze globally the news concerning one of the most serious humanitarian crisis in the present millennium.