LAUSR

The commercialization hypothesis stresses that the increasing pressure of the press to profit it´s business make them exclude the substance of political coverage to emphasize strategic, game and human interests frames, particularly during elections; since this depends on the main commercial factors in a given media market, the present paper aims to confirm the influence of some of these in the performance of the Mexican press, our case study. Using a theoretical model that relates factors of economic pressure to organizational responses and a method of commercialism indices per outlet, a content analysis of the 2012 presidential race in six newspapers (N=482) finds that there is rather a tenuous relationship between commercialism levels and the strategic coverage of the elections, probably related to particular conditions of the Mexican market and some limitations of the proposed research design.