La relación entre conciencia regional y relevancia mediática. Un análisis de la representación de las comunidades autónomas en los cibermedios españoles

The role played by cybermedia in setting up the public opinion is a phenomenon that, far from being recent, has continued to consolidate from the beginning of the new century. This research approaches the correlation between the regional awareness of the Spanish population and the representation of the autonomous communities in the digital press as a representative element of how important digital media are in framing relevant aspects of the public sphere. In order to do so, this paper links, on the one hand, and through three indicators, the media salience of the Spanish autonomous communities and, on the other, the regional awareness associated to the different regions. The results show a clear gap in the media coverage, with a clear predominance of three autonomous communities, Madrid, Catalonia and the Basque Country, an intermediate block configured by Andalusia and the Valencian Community, and a third block with the rest of the communities. The media coverage of the first group triples that of the second and sextuples the communities of the third group, which confirms the hypothesis that the exacerbated regional awareness is correlated to a greater media coverage and that those communities with a less exacerbated regional awareness generally tends to have less media coverage. This research has been carried out thanks to the financing obtained by the Junta de Castilla y Leon and the European Social Fund.