Google is in the news. Transformation of the news frames about Google in the Spanish press

Abstract

Founded in 1998, in less than twenty years, Google has become one of the largest multinational companies in the world. This research studies journalistic information about Google, from the perspective of the framing theory. The proposed question is: Has the image that the Spanish press projects on Google changed from the beginnings of the company to the last few years? To answer, it has been done a content analysis of all the journalistic texts on Google published in 2004 and 2014 by "El País", "El Mundo", "ABC" and "La Vanguardia". By means of an analysis protocol, the news frames present in each journalistic text have been detected. The results of the research show that there has been a transformation of the news frames on Google: from being mostly positive for the US company, to being negative. It has also been detected that, in 2004, information on Google put the focus on economic issues; while, in 2014, the analyzed newspapers preferred to attribute to Google the responsibility of a series of problems. The text concludes that Google is no longer framed by the main journals only as a technological company that achieves excellent economic results, but as a company whose activities impact –often, negatively– to certain people, human groups and other businesses.