Articulo_6_EN_Doxa_29

setting. After analysing 3,134 news items on six Spanish news channels, Humanes et al (2013) a hybrid model in Spanish television was observed, in which scales of internal and external pluralism coexist depending on the channel and business strategy of the communication group. TVE1 news programmes reflected the highest levels of internal pluralism, with Antena 3, Telecinco and Cuatro as commercial model references and La Sexta and Intereconomia as exponents of the niche audience model according to their ideological orientation.

In addition to other key faculties such as framing or priming, agenda setting is probably the defining capacity of any communication media in their relationships with other powers and with reality itself. A theoretical approach of great importance from the 70s (McCombs and Shaw, 1972; McLeod et al., 3 1974), equipped with potential explanatory and intuitive understanding, worthy to be widely used in various researches. With time, deeper debates have been generated to be used in power disputes and other ideological causes after the agenda setting (Gandy, 1982; Carragee & Roefs, 2004).

The context in which this project has been developed is that of one of the least dynamic European societies in 2000 (Morales & Mota, 2006), with a media system increasingly more concentrated in only two media groups. The high political parallelism between media and political parties (Campos Domínguez, López García & Valera Ordaz, 2013: 37) has been maintained in general in the coordinates proposed by Hallin and Mancini (2008). Significantly, only a slight autonomy of the media is discerned with regards to biased frames subsequent to the elections (Valera Ordaz, 2015).

In the analysis, attention is paid to the moderator, especially when a counter-argument is put to a fellow debater or collaborator in a live situation. These interventions were registered. The approach chosen considers the moderator as an actor “becoming the channel’s icon itself, which both in moderating and in explaining his/her point of view, defines the subject, but also his/her tone of voice, the dramatic profile and the setting from which the subject is approached . The participants follow these guidelines […]” (León Gross and Gómez Calderon, 2011: 68). Such an approach contrasts for example with that taken by Santamaría Guinot (2017: 132): “As the role of the host of the programme is to direct the talk show towards the topics they wish to debate in public, we will not analyse the interventions of Xavier Coral nor Helena García Melero”.

In addition to that concerning the data regarding the choice of the agenda and list of participants with their respective frequency of attendance or intervention via interview, the proposed methodology focuses on the words of the presenter and specifically the degree of questioning posed by the position of the fellow debaters or the interviewee. To grasp the full conditions in which these communicative exchanges operate, it is necessary to add a methodology like that of Sánchez Castillo (2018) on “audio-visual courtesy”. This includes analysis from a predominantly visual point of view (the use of resources such as a split screen, subtitles showing the respondent’s opinion or frames of this person while listening to the questions, among other variables) but combined with the intensity level from 0 to 10, of the different questions asked (the variable closest to that which is used in this study).

As is apparent from studies like that of Carniel Bugs and Sabés Turmo (2014) or Botella (2006), Spain lacks an audio-visual regulatory body; something which, besides being exceptional in the EU2, hinders compliance with democratic values.

2 Cotarelo, R. and Gil J. (2017), note 149.