Analysis of the representation of alcohol consumption and its prevention, from the perspective of framing theory, in the Spanish press: El País, El Mundo, Abc and La Razón

This article presents the results of the analysis of 103 alcohol-related texts published from January to June, 2009, by four Spanish newspapers: El País (22), El Mundo (35), Abc (24), and La Razón (22). Two methods were used to examine the representation of alcohol: structural analysis based on Kayser’s model (1982) and content analysis based on framing theory. The latter method has been used to examine the journalistic treatment of biotechnology (Durant, Bauer, and Gaskell, 1998; Nisbet, M.C., Brossard, and Kroepsch, 2003; Rodríguez-Luque, 2009), which has been adapted to examine the subject of drugs (Paricio, 2010). A reliability of 90% was achieved in the Cohen’s Kappa coefficient test for the 67 variables examined in this study. The genre most dedicated to the subject of alcohol was news articles (66.9%), whose main theme was related conflict (19 texts), particularly the consequences of drunk driving (9 texts). The most used frames by journalists were, in decreasing order, crime (identified in 62 texts), new research results (in 11 texts), and epidemiology (in 15 texts). However, only few texts were dedicated to the prevention of alcohol consumption (a theme in only 4.85% of the sample) and the legal institutions dedicated to this activity (2.91%).