149

Análisis comparativo de las agendas ciudadanas y

mediáticas en Ecuador durante el primer año de mandato

del presidente Guillermo Lasso.

Comparative analysis of Ecuador’s

public and media agendas throughout

President Guillermo Lasso’s rst year

in oce.

ARTICLE

Universidad del Azuay

He graduated from Social Communications at the Universidad del Azuay (2020) and a Master

in Advanced Studies in Political Communication at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid

(2022). He has researched agenda setting, public sphere and civilian conversation topics. He is

currently a teacher at the Universidad del Azuay, where he teaches Communication, Language,

and Journalistic Writing. He is also a member of the Academic Board at the Social Communica-

tion School at the same University.

sebastian.carrasco@uazuay.edu.ec

ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0005-5596-7221

RECEIVED: 2023-10-24 / ACCEPTED: 2024-02-05

Sebastian Carrasco-Hermida

OBRA DIGITAL, 25, June 2024, pp. 149 -167, e-ISSN 2014-5039

DOI: https://doi.org/10.25029/od.2024.405.25

Abstract:

Ecuador is a country that, in the past fteen

years, has been characterized by the political

polarization of the media. In that context, this

investigation analyzes the correspondence of

agendas that exists between the citizens agen-

da and the agenda of the media, both printed

and digital, in Ecuador during President Guiller-

mo Lasso´s rst year in oce (May 24th, 2021-

May 23rd, 2022). Public agenda data from the

polling company Click Research, a company

allowed to do public opinion research by Ec-

uador´s Electoral Council, was retrieved and a

topic content analysis of four Ecuadorian me-

dia, both digital (Primicias and Radio La Calle)

and traditional (El Comercio and El Universo), was

done, as well. The Matching Index proposed by

Asp was used to analyze to what degree media

and public agendas are corresponded. Results

show that there is a correspondence between

the agenda of dierent types of media and the

public agenda. There is a bigger correspon-

dence between public agenda and the printed

media agenda in permanent topics for society;

while the correspondence is bigger with digital

media when it comes to inmediate, circumstan-

tial events that mark the public agenda on oc-

casions.

150150

Comparative analysis of Ecuador’s public and media agendas throughout

President Guillermo Lasso’s rst year in oce.

1. INTRODUCTION

The media select several topics and events to

cover. In doing so, they provide the public with

talking points to build reections and thoughts.

This is known as the agenda-setting eect (Mc-

Combs, 2006). In today’s academia, the ques-

tion arises as to what extent the media select

topics based on aspects such as the editorial

line of the medium, the economic motivations

of the owners of the press, or the closeness

and relationship that these media have with

the government in power.

This debate is supported by evidence from

some Latin American countries, where media

dynamics are governed by powerful economic

groups that control the majority of media out-

lets. For this reason, the editorial line of press,

radio, and television tends to be mostly aligned

to the right of the political spectrum and critical

of left-wing governments and political actors

(Schuliaquer, 2021). In Brazil, for example, it

has been observed that the mainstream media

attempted to associate left-wing gures in the

country with negative attributes. Meanwhile,

right-wing gures in that country were associat-

ed with positive characteristics during the 2014

presidential election (Goldstein, 2016).

Ecuador is another example of this. During Ra-

fael Correa’s left-wing government, there was a

dispute between the government and the me-

dia, which established an agenda of negative

attributes around Correa’s presidency and the

members of his cabinet (De la Torre, 2014).

In 2021, a right-wing candidate, Guillermo Las-

so, from the country’s banking sector, won the

presidential election in Ecuador. If we consider

what Schuliaquer (2021) states about media

dynamics in Latin America and the concentra-

Keywords: Agenda setting, agenda correspon-

dence, media agendas, public agendas, Ecua-

dor

Resumen:

Ecuador es un país que, en los últimos quince

años, se ha caracterizado por una polarización

política. En este contexto, este estudio real-

iza un análisis de la correspondencia entre la

agenda pública y la agenda mediática, tanto

de medios tradicionales impresos como de

medios digitales independientes, en Ecuador,

durante el primer año de gobierno del presi-

dente Guillermo Lasso (24 de mayo de 2021-

23 de mayo de 2022). Se recuperaron datos de

agenda pública obtenidos por la encuestadora

Click Research, avalada por el Consejo Nacion-

al Electoral para realizar encuestas de opinión

pública, y se realizó un análisis de contenido

temático de las principales noticias de cuatro

medios de comunicación ecuatorianos, tanto

digitales (Primicias y Radio La Calle) como tradi-

cionales (El Comercio y El Universo). Se aplicó

el índice de equiparación de agendas propues-

to por Asp para analizar hasta qué punto se

corresponden las agendas de los medios con

la agenda pública. Los resultados demues-

tran que existe una correspondencia entre las

agendas de los diferentes tipos de medios y la

agenda pública, existiendo mayor equiparación

de agendas con los medios tradicionales im-

presos, para temas más permanentes de agen-

da; y mayor equiparación de agenda con los

medios digitales independientes, para temas

inmediatos relacionados con acontecimientos

coyunturales y especícos.

Palabras clave: Agenda setting, corresponden-

cia de agendas, agendas mediáticas, agendas

públicas, Ecuador.

151151

Sebastian Carrasco-Hermida

tion of power by powerful economic groups, it

could be understood that the press in Ecuador

would play a less critical role towards this gov-

ernment. Thus, the media agenda would focus

on positive issues for Lasso’s administration.

Faced with this scenario, it is worth asking what

agenda topics the media select to transmit to

the public and to what extent these topics cor-

respond to the main concerns of Ecuadorians.

In this way, it is possible to know what agen-

da items the media place on the public sphere

(Habermas, 2020) and outline whether there is

a power of transference of relevance from the

media to the citizenry.

To answer this question, we have taken the

case of Guillermo Lasso’s rst year in oce,

which runs from 24 May 2021 to 23 May 2022.

The level of correspondence between the pub-

lic agenda, which is understood as citizens’

concerns, and the media agendas of tradition-

al print media and independent digital portals

with a news section during the established time

frame will be analyzed.

2. THEORETICAL

FRAMEWORK

2.1 AGENDA SETTING THEORY

The rst authors to coin the term agenda set-

ting were McCombs and Shaw (1972), who

stated that the media do not seem to inuence

the direction or intensity of people’s attitudes

towards specic issues. However, they success-

fully inuence the relevance or prevalence of

these issues for the citizenry.

This inuence is achieved through increased

exposure to the specic content that the media

presents to the public. The more people are ex-

posed to an issue in the media, the more acces-

sible it becomes to the public, the more they

start to care about it and formulate their opin-

ions on it. This produces the agenda-setting

eect (Ardèvol-Abreu, de Zúñiga & McCombs,

2020).

Why this agenda-setting eect occurs can be

answered in several ways. However, from a the-

oretical point of view, one of the most accept-

ed is explained by the need for orientation, in

which each individual has to locate and under-

stand a series of issues. When there is uncer-

tainty, the media will play an important role in

orienting the population (Chernov, Valenzuela

& McCombs, 2011).

Therefore, Chernov et al. (2011) dierentiate

between permanent agenda items and im-

mediate or circumstantial items. Many public

agenda items remain present and stable over

long periods in a society. These issues are cat-

egorized as permanent agenda items. On the

other hand, issues suddenly appear on the

public agenda, usually because of a specic

event, and people do not know much about

the issue, so their need for orientation is great-

er. These issues will often not remain stable for

long periods on the public agenda. Thus, they

could be categorized as immediate issues.

The media seems to have given some guidance

on both issues. This occurs so citizens incorpo-

rate permanent and immediate matters into

the public agenda (López-Escobar, Llamas &

McCombs, 1998).

One of the criticisms of agenda-setting theory

relates to how the public is conceived, espe-

cially in mass behavior. On the one hand, Mc-

Combs & Shaw (1972) conceive society as a

quasi-homogeneous mass with more or less

similar reactions to certain stimuli. On the oth-

er hand, Coleman & Wu (2021) consider that

there are individual dierences in citizenship

152152

Comparative analysis of Ecuador’s public and media agendas throughout

President Guillermo Lasso’s rst year in oce.

when it comes to establishing a public and per-

sonal agenda for each person, so it cannot be

said that the whole of society reacts similarly to

a stimulus.

Dalton et al. (1998) consider that the power giv-

en to agenda-setting theory throughout history

has been overstated. There is not necessarily a

relationship between the public interest in an

issue and its presence in the media. Zhou et al.

(2016) consider that one of the main challenges

for the study of agenda setting is that, in the

current media fragmentation, it is unclear to

what extent it is still possible to speak of a unify-

ing ability of the media to set the public agenda.

This phenomenon has become more acute

with the expansion of social networks and the

globalization of communications. Some au-

thors arm that on digital platforms, there is

a balance of inuential power between media

agendas, political agendas, and citizens’ public

agendas (Gilardi et al., 2021).

Others, in contrast, maintain the position that

traditional media, despite specic circumstan-

tial and contextual changes, still set the agenda

for the population (Tan & Weaver, 2013). How-

ever, some argue that, in the contemporary

world, there is already a power on the part of

social platforms such as Twitter to set the pub-

lic agenda and even that of traditional media

(Boynton & Richardson, 2016).

Agenda-setting theory has evolved from its ori-

gins and must now go beyond a simple model

where the media talk about an issue and it is

incorporated into people’s lives. For example,

Su & Xiao (2021) wanted to study to what ex-

tent social interactions on the Chinese social

network WeChat could inuence the content

of partisan and metropolitan media in China.

Therefore, it is necessary to talk about interme-

dial agenda setting.

2.2 INTERMEDIAL

AGENDA SETTING

McCombs (2004) dened this phenomenon as

the relationship between two or more media

outlets regarding agenda setting. Generally,

this relationship between two or more media

outlets is established by the domination of the

large traditional press, which transfers the the-

matic relevance of specic issues to small me-

dia outlets and local media outlets (Li, 2018).

However, this conception has been changing in

recent years, and the debate has been opened

on whether, through digital tools such as so-

cial networks, the public agenda can be said to

have any inuence on the communicational dy-

namics of media agendas (Guo, Mays & Wang,

2019).

Some authors consider that citizens’ conversa-

tions and debates on Twitter depend on what is

covered and disseminated by the media (Vargo

et al., 2014). Other scholars point out that the

conversations generated on Twitter can some-

times reach press and television media cover-

age (Meraz, 2015).

The literature indicates a bilateral relationship

of inuence between the public and the me-

dia. Above all, such inuence will depend on

the context and reality of the addressed news

(Vargo, Basilaia & Shaw, 2015). The bilateral in-

uence relationship evidences how the agen-

da-setting eect has become an international

phenomenon. In the globalized context, agen-

da setting is due, in part, to citizens reporting

on social networks about dierent realities

that were previously not reached by the media

(Guo, Mays & Wang, 2019).

This irruption of the citizenry in the interme-

dial relationship of the agenda through social

153153

Sebastian Carrasco-Hermida

networks evidences the importance of ana-

lyzing the public agenda and how it relates to

the media agenda of a country or region. For

example, Wang et al. (2023) conducted a study

in which they demonstrated that there is an

empowerment of the agenda of the general

public against the agenda of journalistic elites

on issues such as global warming and environ-

mental preservation.

This paper will study the public agenda and the

media agenda. The public agenda can be con-

ceptualized as the importance people assign to

each particular issue, compared to other topics

related to the society in which they develop (Pe-

ter & de Vreese, 2003).

On the other hand, the media agenda should

be understood as the set of issues presented in

the media, as well as their frequency of appear-

ance in the media and their relevance (Vargo,

Guo & Amazeen, 2018).

2.3 MEDIA DYNAMICS

IN ECUADOR AND

LATIN AMERICA

Throughout history, Latin American countries’

traditional print and television media have giv-

en right-wing governments and political parties

more favorable coverage. Meanwhile, they have

been more critical of left-wing governments

and political parties (Schuliaquer, 2021).

Faced with this dynamic, left-wing Latin Amer-

ican governments have had to take various

actions to balance the plurality of voices in the

political spectrum and ensure their adminis-

tration was covered positively. Actions of this

type may be the strengthening of public media,

which have become governmental, or changes

in the media legislation of a country (Schuli-

aquer, 2021). To extend the exemplication,

we can talk about the case of Gustavo Petro, in

Colombia, who had to use social networks such

as Twitter and Instagram to disseminate and

massify his campaign messages. In this way, he

tried to counteract the narrative the country’s

traditional media imposed on his candidacy for

the presidency in 2021 (Restrepo & González,

2021).

In the specic case of Ecuador, Rafael Correa

disputed the media eld with traditional actors

through the creation of a network of public

media in press, radio, and television (Buenaño,

2015).

Likewise, a Communication Law was imple-

mented with greater control over the media.

Some authors call it a de-democratic commu-

nication law in Ecuador (Ramos, 2013). This

generated an ideological polarization in the

country’s media eld, which has resulted in the

establishment of two dierent narratives and,

therefore, dierent media agendas (Zuluaga

& Gómez, 2019). This, in turn, has led to a so-

cial divergence that seems irreconcilable in the

short term (Altmann, 2020).

3. METHODOLOGY

3.1 INSTRUMENTS

Public Agenda:

To know the public agenda, it is necessary to ac-

cess quantitative data obtained in one or more

surveys and applied to a representative sam-

ple of the population studied (López-Escobar,

Llamas & McCombs, 1998). The polling com-

pany Click Research, based in Quito, Ecuador,

was contacted to obtain this data. This pollster

was used because they present periodic re-

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Comparative analysis of Ecuador’s public and media agendas throughout

President Guillermo Lasso’s rst year in oce.

ports on the country’s situation. These reports

include the question that is usually considered

the most important when it comes to knowing

a public agenda, according to Asp (1983). That

question is: What is Ecuador’s main problem at

the moment?

The public agenda issues are presented as a

percentage, which indicates how many people,

out of the total sample, indicated that a specic

issue is their primary concern. Four of its so-

cial climate and citizen perception surveys on

how Ecuadorians feel and conceive the reality

of their country were accessed. These surveys

were conducted in October 2021, January, April

and May 2022.

Click Research conducts quantitative research

using simple random sampling. In each study,

760 surveys were conducted with people over

18 years of age in Quito and Guayaquil, the two

most populated cities in the country. In total,

we worked with 3040 cases. The number of

respondents results from weighting the pop-

ulation size of the areas investigated (Click Re-

search, 2021).

This methodology guarantees a representative-

ness, or condence level, of 95% and a margin

of error of ±3% (Click Research, 2021). The in-

formation was collected through face-to-face

surveys in the public space of the research ar-

eas dened by the polling company.

Media agenda:

To analyze the Ecuadorian media agenda, we

resorted to a content analysis of the front-page

news of two traditional print media outlets in

Ecuador (El Universo and El Comercio) and the

news of two independent digital media outlets

(Primicias and Radio La Calle) that generated the

most Likes, Retweets and Comments on Twit-

ter.

The choice of newspapers is because, in the

years before conducting this study, they were

the two newspapers with the most signicant

physical circulation in the country. El Comercio

had a print edition of 125 thousand copies, and

El Universo had 112 thousand copies (Viveros

and Mellado, 2018).

In the case of independent digital media, we

chose media with more than 45 thousand fol-

lowers on Twitter, the most widely used social

network for disseminating news (García-de-

Torres et al., 2011). The tweets had to include

a link so the reader could review a complete

news article; otherwise, they would not be con-

tained in the analysis.

The content analysis examined the topics cov-

ered in the top three front-page stories in each

traditional print media. A similar study was per-

formed on independent digital media news. In

the case of digital media, because there is no

printed front page, the three daily news items

that generated the most interaction (com-

ments, retweets, and likes) with users on Twit-

ter were selected.

Thus, it was proposed to apply a content anal-

ysis methodology derived from the work of

Rodríguez-Díaz and Castromil (2020), which

analyzes the general themes in which certain

specic events are framed and allows observ-

ing the agenda that each media has and how

it diers from other media. Therefore, the vari-

able to be studied in the content analysis was

THEME, which refers to the general and most

relevant topic being addressed in a news item.

For this variable, 17 categories were identied

in which each news item could be placed. These

categories were: crime and insecurity; employ-

ment; economy and poverty; corruption; prison

crisis; essential services; taxes and tax reforms;

155155

Sebastian Carrasco-Hermida

political disputes and conicts between state

powers; gender violence; demonstrations and

citizen protests; coverage of the work of the

National Assembly; coverage of the work of the

presidency; Covid and the vaccination process;

migration to Ecuador; sports news; internation-

al news; and, nally, the category other issues,

for those news items that did not t into any

other category.

These categories were dened through a de-

ductive and observational process that made

it possible to match the media agenda’s topics

with the public agenda’s main issues. Other

current news topics and the reality of media

coverage in Ecuador were added to these cat-

egories ad hoc.

Specic parameters were established to cate-

gorize a news item into one or another topic to

facilitate the coding of the news items and avoid

overlapping between topics. These parameters

concerned the central idea shown in the news

item, with particular emphasis on its headline.

In a second instance, to discern the category

to which a news item belonged, we resorted to

the terminology used in that news item.

For example, to dierentiate between “crime

and insecurity” and “gender violence,” it was

dened that news using terms such as femini-

cide or machismo would t into gender violence

since it was the most relevant topic in the news.

In the same way, to dierentiate between news

items corresponding to “economy and pover-

ty,” “unemployment,” or “taxes and tax reforms,”

the terminology used in the news item was

read. When the news item talked about work or

employment, it was attributed to the employ-

ment category. Likewise, if the news item used

terms related to tax issues, it was assigned to

the category of taxes and tax reforms.

Sports news, international news, and news re-

lated to other topics were discarded from the

nal analysis.

The front pages of the printed media between

May 24, 2021, and May 23, 2022, were ac-

cessed to analyze the traditional printed media

agenda. The three main headlines on the front

page were identied, and the content analysis

of these three news items was carried out.

Twitter’s advanced search tool was used to an-

alyze independent digital media. In this way,

the tweets sent by the accounts @radiolacalle

and @Primicias were obtained between May 24,

2021, and May 23, 2022. The three daily news

items selected were those that had the most

interaction with users each day. It was estab-

lished that to analyze a tweet, it had to have a

minimum of 30 interactions.

These parameters are obtained as a deri-

vation of the work of Rolán & Otero (2017)

and Meso-Ayerdi, Mendiguren-Galdospín &

Pérez-Dasilva (2017).

Two thousand one hundred thirty-three news

items from print media and 1,352 from digital

media were analyzed.

As mentioned above, the main topic of each

news item was identied, as proposed by Ro-

dríguez-Díaz and Castromil (2020), and a re-

cord was kept in the SPSS database manager of

each of the news items analyzed and their main

topic. At the end of the information collection

on media agendas, a percentage out of 100%

was obtained for each of the issues presented

in the news items.

156156

Comparative analysis of Ecuador’s public and media agendas throughout

President Guillermo Lasso’s rst year in oce.

3.2 CALCULATION OF THE

LEVEL OF CORRESPONDENCE

BETWEEN AGENDAS

A matching index was calculated to analyze

the level of correspondence between the pub-

lic agenda and the media agenda, both tradi-

tional and digital, as proposed by Asp (1983).

This matching index, also called the correspon-

dence index, was obtained by calculating the

dierence in the percentages of each specic

topic of the public agenda and the agenda of

each analyzed media.

Once this dierence in percentages was ob-

tained for each medium, all the dierences

were added up, and the result was divided by

the number of elements analyzed. This division

was made by two for this work since two inde-

pendent digital media and two traditional print

media were analyzed. It is important to note

that each media type will be analyzed separate-

ly. After this rst division, the result obtained

was subtracted from the value of 100 (which

refers to 100%), and this value, in turn, was di-

vided by 100.

This resulted in a number between 0 and 1, rep-

resenting the level of correspondence between

agendas. The closer the index is to 0, the lower

the level of correspondence between agendas,

and the closer the index is to 1, the higher the

level of correspondence between agendas.

In Asp’s original study (1983), for example, a

correspondence value of 0.76 was obtained be-

tween the political agenda of the Swedish Com-

munist Party and the media agenda of Swedish

television. This means considerable correspon-

dence existed between the issues addressed in

these two agendas. In the same study, a corre-

spondence index of 0.61 was found between

the political agenda of the Swedish Social Dem-

ocratic Party and the Swedish television media

agenda. This indicates a lower correspondence

of issues between television and the Social

Democrats than the media had with the Com-

munists.

For this work, an index was obtained to com-

pare the traditional printed media agenda with

the public agenda. A specic index was ob-

tained to compare the digital media and public

agendas.

4. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

4.1 PUBLIC AGENDA

As mentioned in the previous chapter, we

worked with the social climate and citizen per-

ception surveys of the pollster Click Research,

which were carried out in October 2021 and

January, April, and May 2022. The results are

extracted from the question: What is Ecuador’s

current main problem? These results are pre-

sented as a percentage.

Figure 1 shows the average percentages for

dierent issues across the four social climate

surveys. The public agenda issues in citizens’

concerns were crime and insecurity, employ-

ment, economy and poverty, corruption, prison

violence, access to essential services, COVID-19

and the vaccination process, and others.

157157

Sebastian Carrasco-Hermida

Note: Own elaboration based on data provided

by Click Research (2021 and 2022).

Delincuencia e inseguridad

Empleo

Economía y pobreza

Corrupción

Covid y vacunación

Crisis en las cárceles

Otros

Servicios básicos

The graph shows four main issues of concern

to Ecuadorian citizens: insecurity and crime,

employment, the economy and poverty, and

corruption. Ninety-two percent of respondents

indicated that the biggest problem in Ecuador

when the surveys were conducted, was one of

these four issues.

It is important to note that during the period

analyzed in this paper (2021-2022), Ecuador

experienced a crisis of insecurity and violence

in dierent cities and the nancial and unem-

ployment ravages derived from the economic

crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition,

during that year, several ocials from the coun-

try’s last governments were involved in a series

of corruption investigations.

On the other hand, it is worth noting that is-

sues such as the pandemic or the crisis in the

country’s prison system, despite having a con-

siderable percentage in some of the specic

reports, proved to be temporary issues on the

public agenda that ceased to be of concern to

citizens once the crisis had passed.

36%

24%

19%

13%

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Comparative analysis of Ecuador’s public and media agendas throughout

President Guillermo Lasso’s rst year in oce.

4.2 TRADITIONAL PRINT

MEDIA AGENDA

The three main news items on the front pages

of El Comercio and El Universo were reviewed

from 24 May 2021 to 23 May 2022.

In total, 2,133 news items were analyzed. Of

these, 1,054 were from El Comercio, and 1,079

were from El Universo. The disparities in the

number of news items between each media

are because, in some editions, the front page

of one of the media presented less than three

news items and dedicated its front page to a

specic topic.

After discarding international, sports, and oth-

er news, we worked with 1,665 news items or

78.1 percent of the total news items on the

front pages. Of these, 762 corresponded to El

Comercio and 903 to El Universo.

The percentages of news items corresponding

to each of the thematic categories dened and

which allowed us to analyze the level of corre-

spondence with the public agenda are shown

below.

Figure 2.

Allocation of news items corresponding to each of the

thematic categories dened for the analysis of the

media agenda-Diario El Comercio (762 news items).

Note: Prepared by the author.

160

152

19,9%

118

10815,5%

14,2%

8,8%

8,1%

6,3%

4,5%

3,4%

3,3%

2,9%

1,8%

1,3%

140

120

100

Figure 3

Allocation of news items corresponding to each of

the thematic categories dened for the analysis of

the media agenda-Diario El Universo (903 news items).

Note: Prepared by the author.

As can be seen, the topic most covered by Dia-

rio El Comercio is the economy and the poverty

situation in the country. Almost one in ve news

items on the front page referred to these topics

(152, 19.9%). Another topic that is recurrently

present is the Covid pandemic, where the Del-

ta and Omicron variants are included. Hand in

hand with the pandemic, there was also news

about the vaccination process deployed by

the government of Guillermo Lasso in Ecuador

during the rst months of his term. One hun-

dred eighteen news items (15.5%) dealt with

these issues.

As for the public agenda topics observed in

the previous section of this chapter, in addition

to the economy above, 48 news items (6.3%)

discussed crime and insecurity; 25 news items

(3.3%) dealt with employment; 53 news items

(7%) discussed corruption; and 34 news items

(4.5%) discussed the crisis of violence in Ecua-

dor’s prison system.

Cantidad de noticias

140

133

14,7%

117

111

13%

12,3%

10,9%

9,5%

8,6%

7,4%

7,2%

4,5%

4,3%

3,5%

3,3%

0,7%

120

100

159159

Sebastian Carrasco-Hermida

papers’ media agenda. In other words, there

were 17 categories where a news item could be

placed. Again, international and sports news, as

well as those corresponding to other topics, will

not be part of the analysis of this work.

Therefore, the digital media analysis worked

with 1,114 news items assigned to one of the

thematic categories mentioned above. This

is equivalent to 82.4% of the total news items

collected in the database. Three hundred nine-

ty-seven of these news items belong to Primi-

cias and 717 to Radio La Calle. The percentages

of the total number of events that correspond

to each of the central themes of the events are

shown below.

Regarding Diario El Universo, it can be observed

that the most covered topic is related to the

COVID-19 pandemic and the vaccination pro-

cess that took place during the rst months of

Guillermo Lasso’s government. One hundred

thirty-three news items (14.7% of the total)

dealt with this topic. In contrast to the case of

El Comercio, none of the issues accounted for

more than 15% of the total news on the front

page. The second most popular topic on this

media agenda is the economic situation and

poverty in the country. One hundred seven-

teen news items (13%) of its news items dealt

with this topic.

In addition to the economy, which was re-

viewed in the previous paragraph, the results

of the other main topics on the public agenda

are presented. It is noted that crime and inse-

curity were the main topics of 86 news items

(9.5%); employment appeared as the most cru-

cial topic in 30 news items (3.3%) on the front

page; corruption of politicians was present in

98 news items (10.9%); and the crisis in the

penitentiary system appeared in 41 news items

(4.5%).

4.3 INDEPENDENT DIGITAL

MEDIA AGENDA

One thousand three hundred fty-two news

items from the two independent digital portals

were reviewed; 561 belonged to Primicias, and

791 were from Radio La Calle. This corresponds

to 41.5% and 58.5% of the total news analyzed

in this media type, respectively. The dierences

between the amount of news analyzed in each

press are related to the fact that there were

days in which there were not three tweets that

presented a news item that reached the mini-

mum of 30 interactions with users.

The thematic categories identied were the

same as those used to analyze printed news-

Figure 4

Allocation of news items corresponding to each

of the thematic categories dened for the analysis

of the media agenda - First news items (397 news items).

Note: Prepared by the author.

As can be seen, there is one topic that domi-

nates Primicias’ agenda, and that is corruption.

One hundred forty-eight of its news items,

37.3% of the total, deal with corruption cases

or judicial proceedings against public ocials

accused of corruption. The vast majority of the

other topics do not reach 10% of the total news

items analyzed.

Concerning public agenda issues, crime and in-

security is the central theme of 35 news items

(8.8%); employment is present as the subject of

only four news items (1%); the economic crisis

160160

Comparative analysis of Ecuador’s public and media agendas throughout

President Guillermo Lasso’s rst year in oce.

Figure 5

Allocation of news items corresponding to each of

the thematic categories dened for the analysis of the

media agenda-Radio La Calle (717 news items)

Table 1

Level of correspondence between public agenda

items and media agendas, both in

traditional print and independent digital media.

Note: Prepared by the author. The topics were

ordered from highest to lowest, according to their

prevalence percentage on the public agenda.

The highest correspondence index for each topic has

been placed in bold type.

Note: Prepared by the author.

and poverty are the subjects of 29 news items

(7.3%); and the crisis in the penitentiary system

is the central theme of 18 news items (4.5%).

Agenda

Pública

Agenda Mediática

Tema de

agenda

pública

Índice de cor-

respondencia

con medios

tradicionales

impresos

Índice de cor-

respondencia

con medios

digitales inde-

pendientes

Delincuencia e

inseguridad

0,72 0,70

Empleo 0,79 0,77

Economía y

Pobreza

0,97 0,88

Corrupción 0,96 0,86

Crisis en las

cárceles

0,97 0,98

Servicios bási-

cos

0,91 0,94

Covid y vacu-

nación

0,88 0,98

The correspondence index was carried out with

the seven main public agenda items in Figure

1 of the previous chapter. The table has been

ordered from highest to lowest, according to

their percentage of prevalence on the public

agenda.

print and independent digital media will be ob-

served.

It is worth remembering that the correspon-

dence index is a number that ranges from zero

to one. The closer this number is to zero, the

lower the level of agenda correspondence. On

the other hand, the closer the number is to

one, the higher the level of correspondence.

The topics most present in Radio La Calle are,

in the rst place, political disputes and conicts

between dierent branches of the Ecuadorian

State. This topic is central in 152 news items

(21.2%). In second place is corruption, which is

present in 121 news items (16.9%).

Regarding the main public agenda topics, it is

observed that crime and insecurity have 24

news items (3.3%); employment is the central

theme of 9 news items (1.3%); the economic

crisis and poverty have 52 news items (7.3%);

and the topic of the crisis in the penitentiary

system is covered in 23 news items (3.2%).

4.4 CORRESPONDENCE

INDEX BETWEEN AGENDAS

The results of the application of Asp’s (1983)

methodology, presented in the methodological

chapter of this work, to obtain a correspon-

dence index will be explained below. The level

of correspondence between the public agenda

topics and the media agendas of traditional

161161

Sebastian Carrasco-Hermida

On the other hand, the other three public agen-

da items, which had little weight in the public’s

concerns throughout the year, correspond

more with the agenda of independent digital

media. For these three issues, which are the

prison crisis, essential services, and the pan-

demic, the level of correspondence with the

digital agenda ranges between 0.94 and 0.98.

It should be noted that there is little dierence

between the correspondence index that the

public agenda topics have about the traditional

printed media agenda versus the correspon-

dence index between the public agenda and

the digital media agenda. There is no subject

where the dierence in agreement exceeds

0.1.

5. CONCLUSIONS

If we consider that all the correspondence in-

dexes obtained for each of the public agenda

items exceed 0.7, we can speak of a consid-

erable correspondence between the media

agenda and the public agenda. This correspon-

dence is independent of the nature of the me-

dia, whether they are traditional print or inde-

pendent digital media.

In contemporary Ecuadorian communication

dynamics, an agenda-setting eect generates

concern for a specic group of topics. These

topics on the public agenda are crime and in-

security, employment, the economic crisis, and

the corruption of politicians. With less preva-

lence, there was also concern about the prison

crisis, problems in access to essential services,

and the COVID-19 pandemic.

According to the categorization derived from

Chernov et al. (2011), ve of the seven public

agenda items presented would be permanent:

crime and insecurity, employment, economy

and poverty, corruption, and essential services.

The categories of prison crisis and COVID-19

and the vaccination process correspond to im-

mediate agenda items.

In the rst instance, it is evident that there is a

level of correspondence in the agendas above

0.7. This indicates that there is a correspon-

dence between Ecuador’s media and public

agendas. Although all the indexes are high, it

should be noted that the two main public agen-

da topics, such as crime and employment, have

the lowest levels of correspondence.

On the other hand, two topics that also had an

essential percentage in the public agenda of

citizens, such as the economy and the corrup-

tion of politicians, show higher correspondence

indexes. Especially in the comparison between

the public agenda and the traditional media

agenda, this index is close to the value of one.

It should be noted that the two highest indexes

obtained are between the public agenda and

the digital media agenda. Compared with the

independent digital media, these indexes cor-

respond to topics with lower prevalence in the

public agenda, such as the crisis in Ecuador’s

prison system and the pandemic. Both reached

an index of 0.98 out of one.

It is worth noting that the top four issues on

the public agenda correspond more closely

with the print media agenda than with the in-

dependent digital media agenda. These four is-

sues, which accounted for 92% of respondents’

main concerns, have correspondence indexes

ranging from 0.72 to 0.97 with traditional print

media.

162162

Comparative analysis of Ecuador’s public and media agendas throughout

President Guillermo Lasso’s rst year in oce.

In this sense, the idea that the media empha-

size the events of a society on a group of issues

that come to be considered important by the

audiences seems to be fullled, as proposed by

McCombs (2006).

This work demonstrates that, even though the

media in Ecuador have dierent agendas, as

stated by Zuluaga and Gómez (2019), the di-

versity of agendas corresponds to citizen con-

cerns.

A reection that can be derived from the anal-

ysis of the results has to do with the fact that

there are higher levels of correspondence be-

tween public agenda issues and the agenda of

traditional print media, such as El Comercio and

El Universo, for specic issues; while, for other

matters, the highest level of correspondence

is between the public agenda and the agenda

of independent digital media such as Primicias

and Radio La Calle.

The four issues with the highest percentages in

the public agenda correspond more with the

agenda of traditional print media. In compari-

son, the three issues with the lowest percent-

ages in the public agenda correspond more

closely with the agenda of independent digital

media.

To analyze this reality, it could be observed that

two of the three topics where there is a greater

correspondence with the digital media agenda

are conjunctural or immediate topics, accord-

ing to the categorization derived from Chern-

ov et al. (2011). These topics address specic

events that generate an emotional, viral, and

immediate conversation. These topics are the

prison crisis and the pandemic.

Once this has been pointed out, we proceed

to analyze why, in these issues, which are very

topical and with specic events that trigger the

citizen conversation in the public sphere that

Habermas (2020) mentioned, there is greater

correspondence between the public agenda

and the agenda of independent digital media.

This could be due to the logic of social networks

themselves, which place a news topic that gen-

erates alarm and panic among citizens and

provokes the immediate interaction of users

in the digital environment. Here, the need for

guidance discussed by Chernov et al. (2011)

focuses on the uncertainty and fear that may

exist among citizens.

That uncertainty can be resolved more quick-

ly through independent digital media, which

reports 24 hours a day, while traditional print

media do so through their physical edition in

the mornings.

In this media logic, independent digital media

are favored, as they do not have to wait for their

morning edition to be part of the digital citizen

conversation. It corroborates, then, what Vargo,

Basilaia & Shaw (2015) stated when they said

that the power of the digital agenda depends

on the news context and the journalistic reality

of the news.

As the days go by, these last-minute issues are

overshadowed by more traditional concerns

rooted in society that transcend beyond a

specic event, the permanent matters on the

agenda. In the case of Ecuador, these concerns,

which are rooted in society, are crime and in-

security, employment, the economic crisis, and

the political system’s corruption.

For these four points, it should be considered

that the correspondence indexes of the public

agenda are higher with the agenda of tradition-

al print media. This could indicate that, in the

163163

Sebastian Carrasco-Hermida

macro-spectrum of Ecuadorian events or the

daily activity of the country, it is still the tradi-

tional media, such as El Comercio or El Universo,

that set the public agenda. The power of the big

media that Tan & Weaver (2013) talked about is

maintained.

Once again, it is worth mentioning the need for

orientation referred to by Chernov et al. (2011).

This need for orientation in the face of more

established topics that move away from the

shocking and sometimes frightening novelty is

reected in the fact that the four main issues

on the public agenda have a higher rate of cor-

respondence precisely with the traditional print

media such as El Comercio and El Universo.

There will be an agenda-setting eect, re-

gardless of the new communication dynamics

generated in the digital environment, as long

as orientation is needed, both for permanent

agenda items and for immediate and eeting

issues.

This research supports the idea that there has

been a permutation in agenda-setting power.

Traditional print media are ceding their ability

to guide citizens in situations of high uncertain-

ty, rapid development, and constant change.

This guiding capacity falls over the media that

operate in the digital environment.

Thus, it corroborates the idea presented by Gi-

lardi et al. (2021) about the balance of forces

between dierent types of media and even the

power of social networks such as Twitter to set

the public agenda about which Boynton and

Richardson (2016).

Having mentioned this, it is also important to

note that the dierence in agenda-matching

rates between traditional print and indepen-

dent digital media is not overwhelming. Under

no circumstances is this dierence evident in

favor of either type of media.

Looking at the results, one might wonder why

the issues of most signicant concern on the

public agenda have the lowest correspondence

indexes when contrasted with the media agen-

das. Insecurity has correspondence indexes of

0.72 and 0.70, while employment has indexes

of 0.79 and 0.77. This could be due to the dy-

namics of journalism and the public’s attention

span.

While journalistic coverage presents a range of

topics, citizens retain smaller portions of that

range of issues despite the media’s hierarchi-

zation of news. These smaller portions are the

ones that are incorporated into their agenda.

This reinforces the idea of Ardèvol-Abreu et al.

(2020), who said that reducing topics in the me-

dia builds the public agenda.

164164

Comparative analysis of Ecuador’s public and media agendas throughout

President Guillermo Lasso’s rst year in oce.

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