Young people and events: Informative treatment in the Spanish digital press

Abstract

This research analyzes the formal and emotional aspects of news about traffic accidents, drowning, accidental falls and suicides related to young people. The novelty of the present analysis lies in the study of the variable “young victim” in the news of events of the digital press referred to the four main external causes of death in Spain. Six Spanish digital generalist newspapers have been selected: the digital immigrant newspapers elpais.com, elmundo.es, abc.es and lavanguardia.com and the digital native newspapers elconfidencial.com and 20minutos.es. Subsequently, a quantitative content analysis was carried out, collecting a representative sample of 4.733 journalistic pieces through Mynewsonline. From a deontological point of view it is observed how the media apply a different informative treatment to the young group in front of the rest. This could be interpreted as a media claim to try to obtain more audience and greater economic benefit.