Intermedia Agenda-Setting Effect of Latino Television in the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election

Abstract

In March 2020, the World Health Organization declared a global health crisis from a viral disease known as COVID-19 caused by a coronavirus named SARS-CoV-2. The world population went into a mandatory lockdown and obligatory use of face masks to prevent the virus from spreading. Within this epidemiological context, in late August 2020, on the first day of the general election campaign period, the United States had reached about 6 million cases of COVID-19 and approximately 190K deaths, according to its Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Against all expectations, voter turnout to elect the 46th President set a civic participation record that had not been observed in over 100 years. The aim of this study is to examine the journalistic information disseminated by U.S. Spanish-language television media to Latino voters which motivated them to get out to vote. The theoretical foundation is Agenda-Setting theory focusing on the intermedia agenda-setting effect between Telemundo and Univision by measuring the level of salience emerging from their own news agendas.