Deliberative framings and the constitution of "Geringonça": from media frames to readers' comments

Abstract

This article analyses how the formation of the XXIst Portuguese Constitutional Government, supported by the Parliamentarian Left (Socialist Party, Communist Party and the far-left organization Left Block that holds together fringes from ecologists movements, Trotskyists groups, and ex-Maoists organizations) was framed by "Observador", a right-wing online newspaper, ideologically opposed, from the editorial point of view, to the new Government. Simultaneously, we aim to understand if this framing process was followed by the audience. The comments posted by the newsreaders on the website but also on Facebook were analyzed during the formation of the new political solution. The goal was to determine whether there was a relationship between the frames used by the medium, and the opinion expressed by its readers. The results show a higher presence of the game-strategy frame in the media coverage of XXIst Constitutional Government formation process, but a closer look reveals that the most common employed narrative frames were on political impacts and conflict stories, resulting from an accentuated political turn to the left. Our analysis shows that the "Observador"'s audience triggered different interpretative frameworks always sharing an opposition to the formation of the left Government.