The analysis was carried out exclusively in relation to the headline of these news articles, an element which, in the words of van Dijk (1990: 83), represents “the key piece of news insofar as it embodies its macro-structure, or in other words, the space in which the most relevant aspects of the news must be summarised”. The journalistic headline is not only an essential element in catching the reader’s attention but, as Mancera Rueda (2014) points out, in addition to this conative function, it has an identifying and hyper textual purpose as well, because in digital newspapers the headline is often the only way to access a news story. This situation further accentuates its relevance for the journalist, who knows that his or her ability to attract the reader and bolster the audience depends on this creative task. In order to analyse the data, a spreadsheet was created in Microsoft Excel that included the following categories of analysis [Table 2]:

Table 2. Categories of analysis used in the research