Electoral Debates in Television and Democratic Quality: Value Indicators

Electoral debates in television are one of the most powerful instruments that broadcasters, namely those of a public nature, have to comply with one of their more relevant objectives: to contribute to the shaping of an informed and educated public opinion, strengthening citizen participation in public issues, legitimizing those institutions with which, this way, they identify, and, ultimately, improving their trust on their political system and reinforcing democracy. On this ground, after conducting a thorough study of the electoral debates that have been organized in Spain thus far, this chapter proposes a set of indicators of value for television debates that allows for the standardization of the evaluation of this format.