Medios De Comunicacion

AK4PARO NOVO
jgonzalez@poli.uned.es, anovo@uniovi.es Juan Jesús González, profesor de Estructura social. Facultad de Ciencias Políticas y Sociología UNED. 28040 Madrid. Amparo Novo, profesora de Sociología. Facultad de Economía y Empresa, Universidad de Oviedo. 33006 Oviedo. COMUNICACIÓN Y SOCIEDAD Vol. XXIV • Núm. 2 «2011 • 131-147

El papel de la agenda mediática en un contexto (depolarización política
The Role of the Media Agenda in a Context of Political Polarization
Recibido: 7 de marzo de 2011 Aceptado: 15 de abril de 2011

RESUMEN: Este artículo estudia el papel de la agenda de los medios en el contexto de polarización política que ha predominado en España durante la década pasada. A partir de una primera hipótesis acerca de la relación entre la polarización política y elvotante mediano, el artículo se centra no sólo en la capacidad de los medios para imponer y manejar una agenda temática específica, obsesivamente concentrada en el terrorismo, sino también para hacer responsable al gobierno por ello, tal como se desprende del encuadre dominante del terrorismo: "debilidad y concesión". Palabras clave: polarización, sistema de medios, establecimiento de la agenda,encuadre, atribución de responsabilidad.

ABSTRACT: This article addresses the role of the media agenda in the context of political polarization that has predominated in Spain over the last decade. Starting from a first hypothesis regarding the relationship between political polarization and the median voter, the article focuses not only on the ability of the media to impose and manage a specificthematic agenda, obsessively concentrated on terrorism, but also to make the government responsible for the subjects on the agenda, as can be seen from the dominant framing of terrorism:"weakness and concession". Key words: Polarization, Media system. Agenda setting. Framing, Attribution of responsibility.

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1. The context: politicalpolarization and loss of responsiveness to the median voter^

In contrast to the conventional assumption that political parties compete for the median voter, this article is hased on the hypothesis that, in recent times, parties have tended to forget this voter and have competed to satisfy interests that are increasingly distant from those of the median voter. This hypothesis has heen widely documented hyJacobs and Shapiro (2000), who study the polarization strategies that have dominated in the US since the eighties. In the Spanish case, the polarization is inexplicable unless we take into account the influence of the media system as a factor of polarization and, more specifically, the peculiarities of the system known as "polarized pluralism" (Hallin and Mancini 2004). In fact, the first phase ofpolitical polarization, at the end of the Felipe González socialist period, occurred at a moment of maximum media polarization, due to the liberalization of the television media and the resulting struggle to form and control the new media holdings (González 2008). Thus, today's political-media alignments were shaped largely in the early nineties, and they served as a breeding ground for Aznar'spolitical polarization. In this case, the political-media strategy was easy to understand: while the PP devoted itself to harassing Felipe González, the parallel media devoted themselves to exploiting the socialist scandals, thus undermining the government and providing a paradigmatic example of what Castells has called "the politics of scandal" (Castells 2009). More intriguing is the second phaseof polarization, which began during the second PP term, shortly after this party won the absolute majority in the 2000 elections. Aznar's decision is the best example of our original hypothesis: far from competing for the median voter, the parties give preference to their core constituencies, despite the election risk that this involves. More specifically, what this example suggests is that the...