Exploring the Relationships between Media and Political Parties through Web Hyperlink Analysis: The Case of Spain

"This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Romero-Frías, E.; Vaughan, L. Exploring the Relationships between Media and Political Parties through Web Hyperlink Analysis: The Case of Spain. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 63(5): 967-976 (2012), which has been published in final form at http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/asi.22625. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Self-Archiving."The study focuses on the Web presence of the main Spanish media and seeks to determine whether hyperlink analysis of media and political parties can provide insight into their political orientation. The research included all major national media and political parties in Spain. Inlink and co-link data about these organizations were collected and analyzed using multidimensional scaling (MDS) and other statistical methods. In the MDS map, media are clustered based on their political orientation. There are significantly more co-links between media and parties with the same political orientation than there are between those with different political orientations. Findings from the study suggest the potential of using link analysis to gain new insights into the interactions among media and political parties