The aim of this article is to quantitatively analyze the presence of traffic and road safety in the Spanish press during the years when there was the greatest reduction in road accidents in Spain (from 2000 to 2008). Communication campaigns and news issued by the press do not only seek to inform but also produce a positive change in the population [
57]. Pro-social behavior is the result of a maturation and learning process that begins at early ages and evolves as cognitive, emotional, and social development progresses [
58,
59,
60]. In this sense, pro-social behavior is modifiable. It must be learned throughout one’s life, highlighting the important role that parents, teachers, and media can exert in this regard from the early stages of our human development [
61].
In this sense, social marketing is a tool that uses marketing techniques to influence human behavior to achieve social good [
62]. They are commonly used in the transmission of healthy behaviors and mental health [
63], ecology and recycling [
64], empowering aid to countries at risk of poverty [
65], or the promotion of appropriate behaviors while driving [
66], among many others. Therefore, a detailed analysis of the news related to traffic and road safety in the time period evaluated in this paper is of particular interest to understand how the population was influenced to achieve a reduction in road crashes that have followed this downward trend until today.
4.1. Evolution in the Presence and Typology of Traffic News in the Print Media
The most striking thing that can be observed in our data is that there is a pronounced increase in the number of news items, as well as in their intensity and tone of message. In other words, there is an increase in the use of terms with a greater component of aggressiveness or violence. These factors are fundamental to achieving an impact on the population and, thus, a greater recall and even a change in their behavior [
66]. Conveying a clear and informative message is important, but including an emotional component is directly related to the effectiveness of reducing traffic accidents [
67]. Research has shown that awareness campaigns that incorporate emotional elements, such as fear or empathy, have a significantly greater impact on the target audience [
68]. When people are emotionally moved by a message, they tend to remember it longer and are more inclined to take preventive measures [
68].
However, an excess of aggressiveness in the message might produce the opposite results from those expected. It has been demonstrated that an inverted U-shaped relationship exists between the emotional intensity of a message and attitude change, specifically referring to negative emotional messages or appeals to fear [
69]. That is to say, news with low levels of intensity, as well as those whose levels are too high, have been shown to be less effective [
70,
71,
72]. Thus, very low levels of emotionality or impact may cause the campaign not to capture the viewer’s attention sufficiently, while high levels of aggressiveness may cause the rejection of part of the audience, thus losing the message conveyed [
73]. Moreover, if messages and images with a certain level of violence are broadcast for long periods of time, their effect on the recipients is also reduced as they become habituated to such content, and, therefore, their perceived level of intensity will be reduced [
74]. Thus, news and campaigns must be calibrated and varied in the communication strategy to achieve the best effect.
In this regard, it is important to point out that previous studies carried out by our research group have identified five major time periods of Spanish communication campaigns broadcast on television, and their results are consistent with the data obtained in this research for the period 2000–2008 [
73]. To contextualize the information, it is necessary to know the general characteristics of the five time periods. Thus, the first spots, framed in the period called “The Beginnings”, have high educational and formative content but no emotional impact. They are campaigns that teach the user how to behave on the road, but in a positive tone, without exposing the consequences of the accident; this is a strategy that is not very effective both from a theoretical point of view and in relation to the data, given the increasing number of accidents during the 1960s and 1970s [
20]. Later, in “Soft Line”, the consequences of traffic accidents began to be broadcast, but without using violent or aggressive methods [
73]. On the other hand, in the 1990s, with the new Traffic and Road Safety Law, the “Hard Line” was developed, in which what happens after a road accident is presented in a crude and bloody way, including the visualization of dead and injured people in a very realistic way [
73]. Although a decrease in the number of deaths is identified at the beginning of this stage, it quickly stabilizes due to the habituation and rejection that these images provoke in the audience, as previously mentioned and as the scientific literature supports [
75].
However, and entering specifically into the period that concerns us in the present study, the stage developed in the 2000s, called the “Multivariate Period”, includes the presence of very heterogeneous campaigns in terms of message tone and the communicative strategy employed [
73]. Not only are techniques of one typology used, but also informative, emotional, aggressive, and high-impact strategies, as well as other new resources such as humorous, metaphorical, and others. This change of approach has been shown to be effective, at least as a complement to the rest of the measures developed in these years [
76]. In fact, in terms of strategy, in the “period of recent years”, the heterogeneity and diversity of communicative approaches to convey messages in traffic and road safety spots and news, gauging the degree of use of all of them over time, are maintained.
In this sense, congruencies are identified in the formal aspects of the campaigns developed by the DGT in the period analyzed and in the presence and typology of news in the most relevant written press media in the country. This concordance occurs in relation to the number of news items, which increases over the years, as does the number of traffic advertisements. Moreover, the tone of the message, in which the use of emotional and informative strategies is observed in the news, is similar to that shown in road safety advertising [
77].
4.2. Contribution and Potential Impact of Traffic News on the Reduction of Road Accident Rates
Our analyses indicate that there is a negative correlation between the number of news items and their intensity in relation to traffic accidents and deaths resulting from them. However, it should be made clear that Pearson’s correlation does not establish causality [
78]. In addition, the fact that no substantial differences in the influence of print news by age group are identified is an interesting finding that contradicts expectations based on previous literature [
79]. Traditionally, it has been assumed that young people reading fewer print media would be less influenced by print news compared to other age groups [
80,
81]. One possible reason is related to the fact that, although young people access less news through print newspapers, they have access to the same news through other media. In the years analyzed, news spreads rapidly and is available on a variety of platforms, including digital versions of newspapers, news websites, and social networks [
82]. Therefore, even if young people do not actively consume print newspapers, they are likely to be exposed to the same news through other channels [
83].
Therefore, it should be noted that there may be other variables, measures, or actions that can have an impact on the reduction of road accidents in addition to the news in the media. There are some measures that, together with the associated informative dimension, have had a differential impact on road accidents and mortality. The establishment of the points-based license [
27], the creation of the National Road Safety Observatory, the implementation of new technologies in traffic management, the improvement of infrastructure [
30], and the reform of the Penal Code [
31] are just some of the milestones that were reached in Spain during the years analyzed, and those, without doubt, are fundamental in understanding the sharp reduction in accident rates. However, once again, it is worth highlighting the role of the transmission of information to citizens through the media, since all these measures were made visible through news and campaigns broadcast in the press, radio, television, and internet [
84]. Therefore, the media greatly favored the dissemination of these changes and made more people aware of the new measures, comply with them, understand their importance, and, ultimately, modify their behavior in favor of road safety.
In this sense, in Spain, especially since 2004, the Directorate General of Traffic has implemented a new communication strategy that has proven to bear fruit [
85,
86]. This mainly consists of establishing surveillance and control campaigns accompanied by messages in the media, press releases explaining the causes of their implementation, information to the mass media through interventions by those responsible for traffic, informative actions with radio spots and inserts in the press, and communication of the results after the end of the campaigns.
Given the scarce scientific evidence on the degree of effectiveness of communication campaigns in this area, there is no unanimous conclusion in this regard. Some studies identify significant changes in attitudes and behaviors derived from the presence in the media of traffic spots and news [
87,
88]. On the other hand, the results of other studies either do not point to the existence of significant changes in behavior or demonstrate that they are very slight [
89,
90]. In any case, and following the line of argument previously presented, a finding expressed by much of the research is the capacity of the campaigns to increase the effectiveness of other preventive measures. Thus, preparing a high media presence for certain offenses or specific measures increases the effectiveness of these actions [
47].
In relation to this complementary role, in order to potentially increase the effectiveness of news and campaigns, the time of transmission must be taken into account. There are certain times when there is more travel than usual [
91]. These are usually holiday periods around summer, Christmas, and Easter when police control or traffic sanctions are generally increased [
92]. During these periods and their preceding days, traffic news and announcements issued by the media must also be increased so that users are especially alert and aware, thus causing a potential increase in their effectiveness for behavioral change in favor of preventive and safe behaviors [
17]. Additionally, when there are changes in legislation or regulations, it is especially relevant that citizens are aware of the new rules, so news in the media is fundamental in these periods [
93].
Therefore, the context in which news and campaigns are broadcast is relevant to explain their potential effectiveness, always taking into account the other preventive measures developed simultaneously and the consequences of this joint or complementary application on the prevalence of risk behaviors [
73]. In short, traffic accidents are multifaceted, and many different factors are involved in them, making them extremely difficult to manage and therefore reduce. However, the role of communication campaigns and informative actions is hard to neglect. This, however, goes hand in hand with other executive, management, and legislative actions, which together can impact accident rates in a significant way.
4.3. Limitations of the Study
It is important to take into account some limitations of the present research in order to correctly interpret the results. An analysis of the presence of news related to traffic accidents and their intensity has been carried out using a set of criteria designed for this study. Thus, although the methodology of Lawrence Bardin [
56] was followed for content analysis, since reading (textual and visual) was used as the instrument for collecting information, errors could have occurred in the coding of the news items. In any case, this potential bias has been minimized since the authors of the study conducted the categorization independently following the established criteria and, subsequently, shared their findings and discussed possible discrepancies. Furthermore, no subjective criteria have been established, but the categorization and scoring are obtained by the presence of terms and/or images that are not susceptible to interpretation.
In relation to the comparison between the presence and intensity of news items in the written press and road accident figures, as specified throughout the manuscript, causalities cannot be established but only correlations due to the simultaneous presence of preventive actions of various kinds that prevent the impact of news items and campaigns from being analyzed in complete isolation [
47]. However, this circumstance does not detract from the value of the research, which is one of the first approaches to evaluating the contribution of communication actions to road safety due to the lack of existing evidence dealing with this problem.