The role of thinks tanks as media agenda settersThe Spanish case at S.S. Press (1999-2013)

Resumen

The aim of the dissertation is to examine the image of the Spanish economy in the most important think tanks of the United States, and how think tanks in turn transmit that image to the mainstream media. The theoretical framework applied is the agenda setting theory (first and second level). To that effect, a selection of the most relevant think tanks and newspapers was made, followed by a study of the presence of the Spanish economy in them during the period 1999 (access to the euro) to 2013 (start of the recovery that followed the 2009-2013 crisis). On the media side, the analysis was focused on the four newspapers that have the highest presence in terms general and international news (New York Times and Washington Post) and in financial news (Wall Street Journal and Financial Times). The results show a limited interest by the think tanks on the Spanish economy, both from a quantitative and qualitative perspective. The references to the topic are discrete and circumscribed to the so-called ‘euro crisis’, usually putting Spain in the broader context of the EU. Therefore, the tone is negative, the salience low, and the thematic agenda is dominated by the euro-crisis, both in the think tank and in the media agendas. The analysis showed a “two-way street” between think tanks and newspapers – think tanks not only influenced the media agenda, but the news published in the newspapers also modified the think tank agenda. This mutual transfer of agenda between media and think tanks underscores the importance of examining agenda-setting theory as more than a simple one-way process from sociopolitical actors (in this case think tanks) to the media, but more as a network of interrelated relations.