Search

Democracy is considered to be the ideal foundation of societies today. In a democratic society, news media play a highly relevant role as avenues by which public and political powers can interact with society and facilitate civic participation. The public’s perception of the news media’s reputation is a crucial factor for enhancing trust and citizen engagement. This article presents a study of the reputation of the media (paper press, digital press, radio and television) in ten European countries: Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. A quantitative method was applied to the results of a survey conducted to determine the reputation of news media among a sample of the informed population in those countries (1,000 residents of legal age who used media at least two or three times a week). The concept of reputation is thereby characterized in its association with the media, identifying its integrating attributes and assessing its incidence in each type of medium. The results indicate that, although television is the most widely used medium, the printed press enjoys a higher reputation in most of the countries studied, being seen as having the attributes of credibility and informative rigor. This study provides a detailed analysis of the scores given to media reputation attributes in the considered countries. It also offers a ranking of the media with the highest reputation in the countries examined, as well as a description of the reputational position of each medium. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fact checking is becoming an essential journalistic task because of the proliferation of misinformative content disseminated massively through social media and other channels. Based on this observation, the fundamental objective of the research that serves as the basis for this paper was to learn about the Spanish journalists' professional routines and training in fact-checking. The authors developed a 29-item questionnaire distributed via email to journalists nationwide between May and June 2023 to collect the information. We obtained 326 responses, resulting in several findings: a) the implementation of data verification is not uniform, being more frequent in some types of media --newspapers and verification platforms-- and in large corporations; b) workload is an obstacle that prevents most journalists from devoting as much time to verification as it would require; c) some areas generate more problems when it comes to cross-checking data --such as politics and economics--; d) the preferred sources for verification are academic and official sources --governments, state security forces-; e) the digital tools that are known or used by professionals still have low penetration rates, with only some exceptions; f) although the perception of the respondents is that they are sufficiently trained for verification work, only a minority have received specific training in this area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public diplomacy is an international political communication activity used by countries to achieve political objectives abroad and establish positive relationships with foreign publics. There are four types of public diplomacy: cultural, media, branding, and niche. Methodology: Following the SALSA framework and the PRISMA statement's four-phase flow diagram, this paper seeks to answer the following research questions: How has the production of academic literature about Latin American public diplomacy evolved? What are the characteristics of the production country by country? What characterizes such production according to the type of public diplomacy it is focused on? The systematic review of the academic literature on Latin American public diplomacy resulted in a sample of 95 items published in databases such as Scopus, Science Direct, SpringerLink, ProQuest One Academic, Jstor, and DOAJ. Results: Academic publications on Latin American public diplomacy emerged in 2007 and have grown consistently since 2016. The primary focus has been on Brazil, Mexico, and Colombia, with Brazil and Colombia being the primary editors of journals publishing articles on the topic. Studies on Brazil and branding constitute a significant portion of the research, representing 28% and 60% of the sample, respectively. Conclusions: Academic production about Latin American public diplomacy begins later than that focused on other parts of the world, consistent with its later practice in the region. The dominant powers have the leading role. Branding focused on promoting tourism, investment, and exports, is the type of public diplomacy generating the most interest, to the detriment of strategies with more political weight such as media diplomacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The field of Communication in Spain is analyzed, contextualizing Spanish output at a global and local level between the years 2000 and 2020. Based on a descriptive bibliometric analysis of the Communication category of the Social Sciences Citation Index database, part of Web of Science, the impact of the main countries is identified. The weight of the output in the Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI) database between 2015 and 2020 is also studied. An analysis of the output by universities in Spain for the period 2010–2020 is also carried out, comparing it with the impact and the works in the first quartile. The results reveal that Spain has been the fourth country in terms of output in Communication in the last decade and that Austria stands out as the country whose works have the greatest impact. It is also observed that 67% of Spain’s works in Communication are published in journals that are indexed in ESCI. The impact of Spanish universities is very close to the world average. The Universitat Pompeu Fabra stands out, publishing the most articles and, furthermore, being the Spanish university with most papers in the first quartile of the JCR in Communication between 2010 and 2020. The study of the Shanghai Ranking by area includes eight Spanish universities, only three of which have output in Communication that comes mainly from professors in this area. The role of the Spanish journals Comunicar and Profesional de la información is notable, as they publish a large fraction of the output by Spanish universities in the Communication field. Finally, this paper presents the challenges of research in Communication, as well as those related to its bibliometric analysis, and a reflection on the problems that affect scientific production and research in this subject area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The journal Sustainability, published by MDPI, was the journal that published the most papers by researchers from Spanish institutions in 2020. This justifies a detailed examination of the Spanish scientific production in this journal. At the same time, the work of editing monographic issues in which papers with Spanish authors have been published is analyzed. For this purpose, we have identified whether each paper belongs to regular or to special issues of the journal, identifying whether the author of the paper is also editor of the monograph, or a university colleague. The nationality of the editors was also studied. The subject matter of the articles and their belonging to the area of the journal were analyzed. Most of the papers published by Spanish authors were published in special issues (81.6%), mainly edited by authors of the same nationality (63.1%). It is also found that there is an important production carried out by the same editor of the monograph, or by colleagues from the same institution. It is also found that a substantial number of works published in Sustainability (42.3%) have minimal or no relationship with the subject of sustainability. Finally, the implications of these findings are discussed under the light of the publication strategies of Spanish researchers and the science evaluation policies applied in Spain. The main controversial aspects identified have to do with the publication of papers on other subjects, the value of publishing in monographs, which in some cases could be considered as inbreeding, and the short editing times. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the use of Twitter by the candidates for the presidency of the Government of Spain of the five main parties at the national level -PSOE, PP, Vox, Podemos and Ciudadanos- of the general elections campaigns held in April and November 2019. The main purpose of our study is to determine the strategies used of the microblogging network by the leaders, both in terms of activity, interaction and notoriety and in terms of topics and discursive development, as well as their similarities and differences. The secondary objective is to study the evolution of these strategies both between the two campaigns and with respect to previous elections. To this end, the research is based on a content analysis methodology that studies quantitative, qualitative and discursive elements. The results reveal an uneven use of Twitter in terms of the frequency of updates, but similar in terms of its unidirectionality, with scarce interaction with other users and a predominance of tweets with their own content over retweets. The dissemination of other people's content was used almost entirely to promote the candidate's political party and, to a lesser extent, to interact with journalists. Dialogue with citizens was almost always residual, both in retweets and in responses. This utilitarian conception of the microblogging network was accompanied by a polarizing thematic selection, with an almost general preponderance of political issues over policy issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Disinformation is one of the great challenges threatening the health of the public space and democratic systems, which must be based on truth to facilitate decision-making by citizens. For this reason, the fight against fake news has attracted attention from professionals and researchers during the last five years. In the journalistic field, numerous fact-checking outlets have been established. They use the media at their disposal and, above all, social networks to make verified content visible. TikTok, an emerging social video platform (very popular among the youth population), is the latest tool to be explored by fact-checkers to make the truth public. In this context, this paper aims to (1) determine the characteristics of fact-checkers' videos that drive their engagement on TikTok and (2) identify the factors that predict the number of likes, comments, views, times shared, and engagement rate of such content. All the videos published on this platform by the Spanish fact-checkers Maldito bulo and Newtral (n = 320) during the first 26 months of activity of both outlets were analyzed. Bivariate correlational studies, multiple linear regression, and binary logistic regression tests were applied. The type of content (verification versus explanation) has a greater impact on engagement than the topics of the videos. Verifications multiply the probability of a content getting an above-average number of likes, by 2.42. If the video is hosted by a woman, it doubles its chances of getting an above-average number of shares. Our results provide other valuable data that can help fact-checkers make their content more easily spreadable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Technological transformations and, especially, the accelerated process of digitalization have changed the profiles and production routines of the media. At the same time, universities have had to adapt their journalism curricula to new training needs. This paper analyzes the evolution of the technical-digital training of the journalism degree in Spain over the last two decades through a comparative study of three stages: before, during, and after the adaptation to the EHEA (2000-2010-2020). The research brings together, as valuable reference material, the curricular offerings of 112 programs and 242 subjects that show the educational evolution of the digital environment over the last 20 years, with a longitudinal and epistemological approach. The trends identified by this diagnostic work confirm, among other aspects, how the design of journalism curricula has evolved at a slow and asynchronous pace in digital training until the last decade and with disparate speeds between universities. Added to this is the conformation of a highly varied epistemological heritage that, beyond the specific names of the subjects, denotes a progressive commitment to digital and multimedia teaching, combining generic hybrid knowledge with more specialized training in terms of languages and formats. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Communication studies in Spain have now become consolidated based on their evolution over the last 50 years. The aim of this paper is to provide an in-depth analysis of the current state of Spanish higher education in Communication. To this end, an analysis is carried out of the structure and composition of the undergraduate and postgraduate degrees (master and PhD studies) in Communication at public and private universities in Spain, paying special attention to the centers that host these studies, the people who contribute to their operation, and their offerings and distribution. Using a descriptive methodology and the content analysis technique, an analysis form is applied to the universities composing the system of Communication studies in Spain, based on their offerings and the information available and accessible on their institutional websites. The results reveal the difficulty of accessing such data and the lack of common criteria (or compliance) for presenting such information on official websites. The results reveal a greater offering at the national level but a wide dispersion of the higher education offering in terms of type, location, type of university, and territorial distribution. We also highlight the gender gap in terms of faculty leadership as well as among teaching staff. We emphasize the phenomenon of double or combined degrees, especially at private universities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public controversies are an analytical opportunity to study the emergence of issues, the creation and alliance of actors, as well as the articulation of public arenas (politics, society, activism, academia, etc.). This paper analyzes how two actors in Spanish academia emerged, and how they became an expression of the polarized conflict on prostitution, sex work, and sex trafficking. Through a case study, this work traces the emergence and consolidation in the public space of the #universidadsincensura initiative and the International Academic Network for the Study of Prostitution and Pornography (Red Académica Internacional de Estudios sobre Prostitución y Pornografía, Raiepp). Methodologically, the technique of controversy mapping is applied through an analysis of the flrst phase of the controversy on Twitter with the hashtags #universidadsincensura and #universidadsinprastituáon and the monitoring of the platform's activities based on active participation in the #universidadsincensura initiative. The analysis shows that both actors emerge in line with the logics of the mediatized public space linked to a presence in media and networks. Endowed with different degrees of institutionalization, Raiepp and #universidadsincensura form the same public, that of those directly or indirectly affected by the public problem surrounding the status of prostitution, for which they seek a solution through a process of enquiry and experimentation that defines democratic participation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the last decade, the Internet, and the social networks in particular, have gained relevance as spaces for interaction and socialization. The multiplication and penetration of social media, as well as the volume and intensity of interactions, have led to a migration of the public sphere towards these platforms. In this (apparently neutral) virtual context, where social networks contribute to the construction or amplification of social relations, the Internet is configured as a space of inequality where power relations and patriarchal practices are reproduced, amplified by the sensation of anonymity and its disinhibiting effect. This paper analyzes the presence of hate speech and misogyny in the Twitter conversation around 50 Spanish women with public visibility online and in the real world, belonging to diverse professional fields: science, communication, culture, sports, business, and politics. Based on an automated search for insults and other hate terms, a content analysis of the direct interactions and indirect mentions received by these women on this social platform over a period of 1 year was carried out. The results of this study highlight the toxicity of the Twittersphere for female users. Thus, 15% of direct interactions and 10% of indirect interactions directed at these women included some kind of insult or disqualification, although not necessarily of a sexist or misogynist nature. This violence is especially evident against women representatives of those areas with greater visibility and social influence such as communication and politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]