The role of the press in the management of Catalonia’s independence process: an analysis of conflict framing

Abstract

This paper examines the prevailing conflict framings of national (El País and El Mundo) and Catalan (La Vanguardia and El Periódico de Cataluña) newspapers in response to the management of the regional independence conflict (2010-2014). For this, a new conflict framing typology was developed, based on level of substantivity. The study has verified that territorial origin affects, but does not determine, the media’s definition of the conflict and its preference for specific territorial models. The alignment between parties and the media appears to be the variable that best explains the orientation (pro-independence, constitutionalist, or federalist) of each newspaper. We have also verified the media’s action as a polarizing agent based on territorial model preferences.