Press Discourse on the SDGs and the 2030 Agenda in Spain: Analysis of the Digital Newspapers with the Highest Readership (2015-2022)

Abstract

In September 2015, all UN member states enacted the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as part of the 2030 Agenda. It is a universal call to action to end poverty, protect the planet and improve the lives and prospects of people around the world. This paper aims to determine the most relevant characteristics of the discourse around this plan, which has been offered by the seven digital newspapers with the highest readership in Spain during the eight years following the enactment of the initiative. On the one hand, a statistical analysis has been carried out of the number of pieces of information disseminated, as well as of the entities, industries, regions, themes and people or public agents most mentioned. On the other hand, a computerised linguistic corpus analysis was carried out, showing the main word associations made by each newspaper masthead and the length of the respective journalistic pieces. The main results reveal a generalised increase in the number of news items, especially from 2020 onwards. Furthermore, there is a clear prominence of the social dimension of sustainability and sustainable development, in contrast to the scarce relevance of the ecological and environmental aspect in most of the digital newspapers. It is concluded that the Spanish press discourse on the SDGs and the 2030 Agenda is heterogeneous and, furthermore, that there is currently no example that fully complies with the values of sustainable journalism. Also, that the coverage of this roadmap does not have long-format journalistic pieces that allow the desirable depth for an adequate explanation of the plan.