The ignoring of “People” in the journalistic coverage of economic crises. The housing bubble and the euro crisis in Spain

Abstract

Taking the case of Spain as example, this article aims to answer the question about the degree to which the problems and concerns of ordinary citizens were included in the press coverage on the boom and the crash of the real estate bubble, and around the economic problems related to the euro crisis. The objective is to determine whether people were a main actor -as agent and/or victim- in the coverage of the crisis, and the degree to which the different nature of the crises and the diverse orientations of the newspapers affected this coverage. In contrast with the idea of a rise of ordinary people as actors in everyday news coverage, the content analysis confirms the hypothesis that people played a very marginal role in the journalistic coverage of both crises. It also confirms that the “silence” of people in the economic coverage did not depend on the ideological or thematic focus of the newspapers under research. The findings also contextualize the ignoring of “people” in the journalistic coverage of economic crises within the silence of traditional media on the connection between the economic crisis and the intense social indignation, which was the breeding ground for political populisms.