Article

Sources, issues and frames in the information about drugs in the Spanish press. The case of El País, El Mundo, ABC and La Razón (January-June 2009)

Abstract

With the aim to evaluate the effectiveness of the institutions involved in prevention about drug consumption as a source of the information, we analyze personal sources, frames and main themes of the 502 newspaper articles about the subject in four general Spanish newspapers -El País, El Mundo, ABC and La Razón- between January and June 2009. The methodology used is content categorical and evaluative content analysis from the perspective of framing. The most quoted sources are mainly private institutions like Fundación de Ayuda contra la Drogadicción. However, most of the texts are focused from the perspective of crime and traffic of drugs. The study allows to identify that, instead of the political and institutional efforts from the ministers of health placing drug abuse as a social and health problem, the most used frames in this issue are related to crime and traffic of substances, more than focused on the social and sanitary dimension of the problem, which contribute to distortion of the reality of drug dependency and to the association of drug addict-criminal.

Keywords

institutional communications, drug, sources, content analysis, framing.