Portugal, Spain and Ireland_ 2002-2015

This dataset compiles media narratives on economic issues in Portugal, Spain, and Ireland between 2002 and 2016, focusing specifically on the 15 days preceding each national legislative election. The corpus consists of articles from six mainstream newspapers: Público and Diário de Notícias (Portugal), El País and El Mundo (Spain), and Irish Independent and The Irish Times (Ireland).

The dataset provides systematic coding of media coverage along three analytical dimensions:

EU salience – the degree to which the European Union is referenced in the news;

Tone – the evaluative orientation of the coverage (positive, negative, neutral);

Framing – classified into five categories: responsibility, consequences, causes, solutions, and problems.

This comparative dataset enables the study of how economic issues were framed in the media during electoral campaigns across different national contexts, and how the EU featured in political communication in Southern and Western Europe.