Assessment of journalistic coverage and public institutional communication of Spain's most recent crises and emergencies

Resumen

This research addresses the complexity and uncertainty of communication in crisis and emergency situations. From a double perspective, it evaluates the journalistic news coverage and public institutional communication in the recent crises in Spain. Four cases are analysed: the Ebola Crisis (2014), the Lorca Earthquake (2011), the E.Coli bacteria crisis (2011) and the Guadalajara Fires (2005). The selection of cases responds to their social, media and political relevance and to being representative of situations of natural disasters, health crises and food crises. The data come from a survey applied to the 30 directors of the main Spanish media in four platforms: newspapers, television, radio and online media. The media selected meet two criteria: national scope and general purpose. The results confirm that the best journalistic coverage was made during the Ebola Crisis. In second place was the Lorca Earthquake, in third place were the Guadalajara Fires and, lastly, the E.Coli Bacteria Crisis. As far as the government's institutional public communication is concerned, the work during the Lorca Earthquake stands out for its quality and transparency. Respondents place second, the Bacteria Crisis E.Coli, and Guadalajara Fires in third place. The communicative policy of the Ebola Crisis is the worst rated by media editors. In an informative context marked by the presence of fake news, hoaxes and misinformation, it is essential to identify the main communication errors in the crises in order to combat them. Thus, the deficient work of the spokespersons has been identified as the main problem in these informative scenarios. Other errors identified are the lack of information coordination among the different actors involved, the dissemination of contradictory messages and erroneous data, and the use of crises for political purposes. This research also subjects the variables to an inferential statistical analysis to identify possible correlations between them. Finally, we point out that despite the fact that the analyzed data are derived from the field study carried out for a doctoral thesis, the theoretical framework, the analysis techniques and the findings reached are unpublished, novel and significant.