The salience of inequality in spanish cybermedia in a pandemic year

Abstract

The increase in inequality resulting from economic policies adopted to mitigate the 2008 financial crisis has been a frequent issue on the global media's agenda. Thus, when in March 2020 the world was paralyzed by the coronavirus pandemic, many voices spoke out calling for more supportive policies to curb the widening gaps in society. The aim of this study is to explain the salience given by the Spanish media to the relationship established between inequality and the coronavirus within the current hybrid media system, in which topics can be approached from the perspective of new actors, in new media spaces and, therefore, from new logics of journalistic production. To this end, we analyzed the journalistic stories published by six Spanish cybermedia during the first year of the pandemic. It has thus been possible to evaluate the evolution of the issue’s salience in the media agendas, as well as the weight of ideological bias in its journalistic reporting. The results show that, after an initial boom, the subject’s relevance declined over time, although inequality continued to be present in journalistic products. In addition, the media’s ideology has an impact on the issue’s coverage and the use of new opportunities in the digital context.