Mediatisation and campaign frames: Comparative analysis of partisan and news media information during the 2015 electoral campaign in Spain

Abstract

This study compares the frames presented by four printed and online newspapers (El país, El mundo, Elconfidencial.com, and Eldiario.es) in their headlines with those adopted by the four largest political parties (PP, PSOE, Podemos and Ciudadanos) in the news releases published on their websites during the 2015 Spanish electoral campaign. Findings show that strategy and game frames clearly dominated not only news media discourse, but also the pieces published by the political parties, whereas prognostic and issue frames were more infrequent. This reveals the contagion of the media logic to the parties' informative action and evidences their co-responsibility in the political disaffection. Meanwhile, the importance of game and strategy frames feeds media commercial dynamics and allows media to intervene in the political sphere practicing a speculative journalism.