Comunicación electoral e interés ciudadano

Abstract

The main objective of this research is to identify and quantify the "American" influences on the coverage of the past national elections in Spain. Secondly, considering the non-existence of previous works, our interest focuses on quantifying the relation between the media's agenda and the public interest for political information. Using the comparison of media, the intention is to analyse the variation of share and rating of audience in the news depending on the existence of certain characteristics in the electoral coverage. The results show that the Spanish audience has been sensible to some of the peculiarities of the electoral coverage indicated by authors of civic journalism (e.g.: news having a positive tone captured more attention), but it has remained indifferent to others. In this sense, the use of variables that measure the attitudes (like ratings and shares) and not the opinion (like surveys) can be a good alternative for carrying out studies that evaluate which factors can disconnect citizens and decrease media consumption.