The impact of university rankings in the Spanish press

The proliferation of university rankings in the last few decades and their increasing role in the evaluation of university systems justify the study of their impact on the media. The present work aims to measure the impact of university rankings in the Spanish press over 160 months, between January 1, 1998 and April 30, 2012. Using the news database MyNewsOnline as the main source of information, we analysed the production of news according to the following variables: timing, geographical distribution, newspaper and rankings. Results show an increasing interest in these tools. The Shanghai Ranking and Times Higher Education University Ranking stand out in the national press, while in the local press the Scimago Institutions Ranking draws the most attention from media. The newspapers with the most news about rankings are "El Pais", "La Vanguardia" and "ABC".