IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/jnlpup/v33y2013i01p65-88_00.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Newspaper attention and policy activities in Spain

Author

Listed:
  • Bonafont, Laura Chaqués
  • Baumgartner, Frank R.

Abstract

Spain's newspapers are characterised by strong partisan identities. We demonstrate that the two leading newspapers nonetheless show powerful similarities in the topics of their coverage over time. The media system is strongly related to the policy process and it shows similar levels of skew (attention focuses on just a few topics) and friction (attention lurches rapidly from topic to topic) as others have shown for policy processes more generally. Further, media attention is significantly related to parliamentary activities. Oral questions in parliament track closely with media attention over time. Our assessment is based on a comprehensive database of all front-page stories (over 95,000 stories) in El País and El Mundo, Spain's largest daily newspapers, and all 7,446 oral questions from 1996 to 2009. The paper shows that explanations of friction and skew in governmental activities should incorporate media dynamics as well. Political leaders are clearly sensitive to media salience.

Suggested Citation

  • Bonafont, Laura Chaqués & Baumgartner, Frank R., 2013. "Newspaper attention and policy activities in Spain," Journal of Public Policy, Cambridge University Press, vol. 33(1), pages 65-88, April.
  • Handle: RePEc:cup:jnlpup:v:33:y:2013:i:01:p:65-88_00
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S0143814X12000219/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cup:jnlpup:v:33:y:2013:i:01:p:65-88_00. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/pup .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.