Author: Pablo Rey Mazón
Programme: Doctoral Programme on the Information and Knowledge Society
Language: English
Supervisor: Dr Ismael Peña-López
Keywords: data visualization, newspapers, corruption, scandal, agenda-setting, software
Abstract
This research empirically and visually studies how the media and online social networks influence the forming of public opinion in the digital age. It uses corruption scandals in Spain from the last two decades to analyze this impact. Long-term analysis, based on a novel database of newspaper front page analysis, reveals a strong correlation between news coverage and public opinion polls. The results suggest that intense periods of news coverage have demonstrable short- and long-term effects on public opinion, and that the memory decay model explains long-term trends. In-depth analysis of a corruption scandal provides accurate metrics of agenda-setting processes within the media ecosystem (front pages, online news site homepages, TV news, and Twitter) and shows how social media have been become extensions of the press ecosystem. This research contributes to empirical studies by developing innovative computational tools for data collection and visualization, extending current agenda-setting analysis methodologies. In addition, it characterizes various media channels and provides open access to the data collected and the source code to reproduce the analyses.