Framing Civil Liberties vs. Security Debate. The Spanish Citizen Security Law as a Case Study

Abstract

The Spanish Citizen Security Law or Civil Protection Act was reformed throughout the parliamentary period from 2011 to 2014. It was widely known as the “gag law.” Supportive and opposing arguments were presented regarding both civil liberties and security. According to the point of view of political agents and media, they were either guaranteed or at risk. The aim of this content analysis is to reveal the media frames the citizens were exposed to in trying to be informed. The main conclusions from this study of the coverage of the eight most-read newspapers in Spain are: 1) critical discourse against the reform (because of its restrictive and repressive nature) was not marginal, but even the predominant one; 2) the law and order discourse was only predominant among the rightist newspapers; 3) the two main frames are more covered in similar quantitative terms the more the newspaper is far from the ideological extremes, and 4) that general scheme was stable along the period.