Economic crisis as spectacle in Spain: infotainment in quality press coverage of the 2012 financial sector rescue

Abstract

This article reports on a conceptual and empirical analysis conducted to determine the degree to which economic and financial news published by two of Spain’s foremost daily newspapers, El País and El Mundo, may have been spectacularized through the use of infotainment techniques and strategies. Researchers postulated at the outset of this study that spectacularization takes place at every phase of the crafting of a news item and that agenda setting, framing and the selection of information sources, narrative devices, and language constitute strategic points in the process that can be oriented towards transforming news into an appealing and easy-to-consume product. Content analysis was used to examine coverage these papers provided during May and June 2012 of a bailout of Spain’s banking sector that entailed a partial government takeover of Bankia, the country’s fourth-largest bank in terms of assets, an event that marked one of tensest moments in the country’s long economic crisis. Findings indicate that the use of infotainment strategies in now common in economic reporting –the hard news core of the quality press– and that leading newspapers not only employ framing techniques associated with this genre such as dramatization, personalisation, emotionalism, and speculation but also rely heavily on journalistic subjectivity rather than expert sources of information