Media and Political disaffection: A comparative study of Brazil and Spain

Abstract

The findings of a series of studies in the area of political communication during the 1990s questioned the answer media malaise offered for what was considered a constant in the academic debate: the negative relationship between media exposure and civic engagement. Some authors blame the media for "narcotizing" citizens, while other analysts say empirical evidence points to the opposite direction. This article approaches empirically the compared Spanish and Brazilian cases. More specifically, the study presents an approach to the impact of media consumption on institutional trust. The results point to different impacts of the media in each country, brought by the peculiarities of their political systems, as well as differences in media consumption behavior. © 2013 Communication&Society.