Entrepreneurship in the digital press: a semantic analysis

Abstract

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to analyse how the media addresses entrepreneurship and to identify the attributes linked to this phenomenon.Design/methodology/approachThe sample is defined in terms of a linguistic corpus comprised of content related to entrepreneurship drawn from the digital editions of the three most important Spanish economic newspapers for the period 2010–2017. Word association and co-occurrence analyses were carried out. Further, a non-supervised clustering process was used as the basis for a thematic analysis.FindingsCorrespondence between social and media patterns related to the entrepreneurship phenomenon is revealed by the results. It is shown how attributes such as “success”, “innovation”, “ecosystem” and “woman” appear as very relevant and are linked to different co-occurrence scenarios. Relevant thematic groups are also identified related to lexical associations such as innovation, digital economy and public policies linked to entrepreneurship.Research limitations/implicationsIt is important to emphasise that this study has identified and explored relationships between words, but not their evolution. Furthermore, conclusions cannot be drawn concerning whether there are differences in how each newspaper has dealt with entrepreneurship because of the way the corpus was constructed.Originality/valueThe study provides empirical evidence that helps to identify the way media approaches entrepreneurship. The authors carried out the analysis on the media contents and not on the perception of the public on the phenomenon.