Mapping press ideology. A methodological proposal to systematise the analysis of political ideologies in newspapers

Ideology and political ideologies in general have been addressed both from theoretical and applied perspectives by media and communication scholars in an attempt to reveal whether pluralism is present or absent in the media. However, the complexity of such a task has proven to be high as well as very problematic. The efforts to systematise the study of ideology in the media in order to make it objective and systematic have been scarce. This paper tries to contribute to such systematising by providing a method to analyse political ideologies in the media that aims to be objective and replicable in the political context of Western democracies. Our work was inspired by previous studies that were mostly conducted in the field of political sciences and political communication. The main goal of this paper is to reach a deeper comprehension of ideology, in general, and political ideology in particular, and to conceptualise a method that aims to be instrumental in the analysis of the media from the viewpoint of political ideologies but without being restricted by traditional labels that may reproduce cultural biases. The theoretical-analytical method here suggested addresses ideologies in newspapers to identify worldviews according to four general values: individualism, communitarianism, egalitarianism and elitism