Analysis of the coverage and discourse of the Sustainable Development Goals and the 2030 Agenda in the Spanish digital press (2015-2022)

Introduction: This research offers a longitudinal view of the coverage, as well as the main characteristics of the discourse on the SDGs and the United Nations 2030 Agenda, after analysing the ten digital newspapers with the highest readership in Spain. Methodology: A quantitative and descriptive approach of the news items that mention this topic was carried out, followed by an interpretative analysis of the content of the full texts and, finally, a semantic analysis and text mining. Results: It is observed that the number of news items mentioning this issue has increased by more than 1000%, setting 2020 as a turning point from which the coverage of this issue has become generalised in the media agenda. Despite this increase, news content featuring the SDGs and the 2030 Agenda has been decreasing to minimum levels. In terms of discourse, the results reveal that the terms most associated with 'SDG_2030Agenda' are 'UN', 'government', 'policies' and 'country'. The first three also appear in the associative analysis. In addition, four thematic groups are identified with terms that relate to: 'Global issues', 'UN', 'Institutional' and 'SDG Goals and Targets'. Discussion: The data show that, despite the increase in the number of news items, the prominence of this initiative has been inversely proportional. Conclusions: Content about the UN plan gives greater prominence to compliance by governments and institutions than to the content of the goals themselves.