Articulo_6_EN_Doxa_29

different communication groups (B) as the disregard for the problems cited by the public (A) are two more examples of the very serious consequences for plurality that the existence of a duopoly which controls 4 of the 5 main Spanish channels could have, and could only be mitigated by a deep reform towards a new media model, more open, pluralistic and respectful of democratic standards. Possible concrete measures in this direction are: the establishing of the three-thirds model (one third for public broadcasters, one third private and one third for community media) as an objective towards convergence, the creation of an Audio-visual Council which registers the activity of the TV and emits at least suggestions, the limitation by law of the capitalist concentration in the media, the convocation of a process to assign new broadcasting licenses to entities without current presence, etc.

The self-references in both programmes always consist of the self-exaltation of the journalist´s own alleged journalistic qualities, not including general debates about the media situation, the capitalist concentration of the media, the control of banks and large companies or the reliance on advertisers and governments. This deficiency corroborates that which Rendueles highlighted (2013: 169), that no public matter should be excluded in principle from the processes of deliberative democracy which would imply “a subversion of dominant consensus in liberal democracies about the withdrawal of political debate on the accumulation of capitalist processes, which are taken for granted”.

The main limitation of the study is the absence of encodings carried out by other researchers. This would have calibrated the reliability of the classification adopted and its transfer into intensity scores given to each of the moderator‘s interventions which represent a questioning of the guest´s argument. To gain an insight as complete as possible of the conditions in which political talk shows are developed, the methodology used here can be complemented with others, such as that used by Sánchez Castillo (2018).

The transfer of the media agenda (represented in this study by Al Rojo Vivo and Las Mañanas de Cuatro) to the public agenda (represented by the spontaneous responses of citizens in the CIS surveys) is the centre of gravity of the agenda setting. Precisely because this theory is generally granted great relevance to the long term -for example, Rubio Ferreres (2009: 14)-, the potential influence of the media agenda in 2017 is lived out in later years, above all when referring to the special nature of this period and considering the special media coverage, as has been demonstrated regarding the practically monothematic agenda deployed by the reference programmes.

Therefore, the analysis which can develop the potential in terms of the transfer of the agenda of this study has two major milestones: 2019, because of the coincidence of elections of all kinds which have put to the test the impact of the 2017 agenda in the face of a crucial power-setting, and 2024, when 7 years will have passed, those who had used authors such as Andreu Abela (2008) in their studies to calibrate in proportion and more completely the relationship of agenda setting and its influence on public opinion. 2024 coincides also with the completion of the electoral cycle which started at European level in 2019.

In any case, despite the fact that one of the two talk shows analysed was cancelled, it would be advisable to repeat the research in another period not affected by the extraordinary political situation that Spain lived through during the weeks under study, adding other programmes and gathering more information about the new methodology proposed.