Análisis de la cobertura informativa del Proyecto Castor en la prensa nacional y local española

Abstract

The Castor Project was a failed project based on the construction of an artificial natural gas storage facility in the Spanish coasts of Castellón and Tarragona; since its approval in 2008, several events occurred and were recorded by the local press in Castellón and Cataluña, as well as by the national press. The purpose of this research is, firstly, to analyze the media coverage of the Castor Project given by the following newspapers: El Mediterráneo, El Levante-EMV, El País, El Mundo, Diari de Tarragona and La Veu de l’Ebre; secondly, to determine if there are significant differences between the chosen headers, and, thirdly, if the pieces follow proximity criteria. This is an observational, comparative and longitudinal study where it has been used the content analysis methodology. The results show that the newspaper El Mediterráneo is the first source for these pieces. There is a common tendency to publish short news items taking up less than an A5 sheet and, generally, located in the Castellón area. The most recurrent topic is politics, and the most used genre is the news. The six headers chosen generally opt for using a standard lexicon and graphical resources in more than a half of the pieces, especially pictures. Regarding the sources, most of them come from official institutions, followed by Civil Society evidences. Finally, the results discussion allows to observe how the Project Castor issue is followed-up in every of the selected headers.