The economic dis-information in Spain: case study of BFA-Bankia and its IPO

Abstract

The research this article is inscribe on comes from the belief that the current characteristics of the communications ecosystem generate the conditions for the occurrence of disinformation ploys due to informational insufficiency and partial information, abuse of fidelity to the source, the absence of interpretive and investigative journalism and the incomprehensibility of the information. The main objective is to determine the relationship between the journalistic handling of information as the creator of socialized realities and dis-information, from the semantic analysis and interpretation of content based of the digital editions of 3 Spanish printed media of daily rotation (El País, ABC and El Mundo), in retrospective to the listing in the stock market of BFA-Bankia (6th to 20th July, 2011) and prospectively on the interval after 10 consecutive days of losses (3rd to 17th May, 2012). The main results show endogenous journalistic dis-information or poor handling of the financial information made public through the analyzed media existed, due to the creation of positive expectations of the re-evaluation of the financial holding on the stock market. Meanwhile, the lack of investigative journalism, fidelity to official sources and the language used in financial reporting in the media outlets mentioned above, also contributed to the favorable scenario for dis-information.