The Informative Treatment of Ana Botella during her Term of Office as Mayoress of Madrid

Abstract

The figure of Ana Botella as mayoress of Madrid has generated some controversy mainly in events of great public importance, some of them being very serious. Since her direct appointment bypassing the polls (November 2011) until he resigned to run for the next elections (December 2014), there have been three other facts of extraordinary media importance in which the mayoress and the City Council have played a leading role. Being almost unprecedented in the academic literature about the municipal political area, this paper analyzes the coverage of the mayoress by the national press of Madrid. As the main objective, we observe the positive, negative or neutral valuation of Ana Botella and whether her presence in the media has been relevant. In total, we have extracted and analyzed 1,419 items of news or opinion contained in the Madrid edition of the newspapers ABC, El Mundo, El Pais and La Razon. One of the most significant findings is scarce media prominence of the mayoress in the events studied, despite the direct involvement of the City Council she presides.