The framing of news reports on the Catalonian referendum in two leading British newspapers

Abstract

Even though the independence referendum held in 2017 in Catalonia was unsuccessful, the large role of the media together with easy, fast international broadcasting and the fear of a possible mimic effect in other regions made the entire world observe and discuss the event. The purpose of this article is to analyse the media coverage of the referendum in two benchmark British newspapers, The Guardian and The Telegraph. Based on hypotheses that the news coverage regarding the Catalonian referendum might be prone to the dissemination of information according to the editorial position of the newspapers, this research has analysed 188 news pieces by using framing analysis. The first hypothesis, that both newspapers adapted their versions of the story to readers according to the predisposition of the different editorial trends of each newspaper, was not confirmed. The results allow us to conclude that in the news of the benchmark British press regarding the illegal referendum in Catalonia, fair journalistic coverage prevailed.