CHAPTER 7 Framing TTIP Across the Spanish, French and British Public Spheres: The Bursting of the Brussels Bubble 1 Overview of the TTIP Debate Across the Spanish, French and British Public Spheres The empirical analysis has been based on a sample of 1049 media arti- cles from nine different news outlets (three per country, Spain, France and the UK), which refer to TTIP in the headlines or main image. Spain is the country with the most articles published on TTIP. Most of them were published in the progressive eldiario.es, while the figures are more moderate at the mainstream EL PAÍS and even lower at the economic Expansión. However, the wide mobilisation of eldiario.es exem- plifies Spanish civil society actors and activists’ strong involvement in pushing TTIP into the Spanish public sphere and how TTIP resonated within Spanish left-wing audiences (Table 1). In terms of article type, the ratio of information to opinion articles is similar across the three countries. The largest difference is the consider- able number of letters published in the British media, a format particularly salient in the British news outlets. On the other hand, the Spanish and French media published a high number of interviews, while the British media did not (Table 2). The articles’ chronology reveals a similar evolution over time. While TTIP receives little attention during its early phase in 2013, it increases progressively over time. Its salience peaks during the first semester of 2016 in Spain and France, coinciding with the Greenpeace leaks. The © The Author(s) 2021 A. Oleart, Framing TTIP in the European Public Spheres, Palgrave Studies in European Political Sociology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53637-4_7 179