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Since 2010 the Catalan secessionist movement has been reported on extensively in the global media. Beginning with the 2010 demonstrations against the decision of the Spanish Constitutional Court to reject a new Catalan statute of autonomy, and covering subsequent events such as the unofficial self-determination referendum in 2017, the trial and imprisonment of Catalan political leaders, and the violent protests against the verdicts; the events in the region have all featured heavily on the front pages of the international press. This study analyzes how US and UK newspapers have covered the Catalan independence movement during the period from 2010 to 2019. To do so, this study focuses on two US newspapers (The New York Times and The Washington Post) and two from the UK newspapers (The Daily Telegraph and The Guardian) and observes how the positions of the Spanish and Catalan governments are represented through the analysis of the frames used to construct the newspapers' coverage, as well as the overall tone and the sources used by the journalists. To detect the dominant framework, a framing analysis is undertaken from a communicative and deductive perspective, applying Semetko and Valkenburg's classification. In-depth interviews are also conducted with the newspapers' Spanish-based foreign correspondents which allows the analysis to include the correspondents' views on the difficulties faced by them during their time spent while covering the conflict. The study's primary conclusion is that the international press downplays the significant role played by social movements and civil society in the secession movement, with a strong preference shown by journalists to rely on representatives of official sources as the most valid spokespersons for the movement. Secondly, the study finds that media attention follows closely the flash-points of the conflict with more coverage appearing at the moments of greater political tension between the Spanish and Catalan governments. This suggests that civil society mobilizations attract less interest from the media that instead prefers to focus on developments in the political sphere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Spanish general elections of 20 December 2015 and 26 June 2016, which can be understood as an electoral continuum, were notable for being the first case of a repeated election in Spain's history, the consequence of the difficulty in forming a government due to the emergence of two new political forces, Podemos and Ciudadanos, led by Pablo Iglesias and Albert Rivera, respectively. We analysed the Twitter communications of these political leaders in both election campaigns using quantitative and qualitative research techniques, we also compare the overall results with the results of the Top Discussion Indicator (TDI). The main objectives of the study were: a) to determine the degree of influence and the ability to create community of both political leaders; b) to identify strategic communication differences between the two leaders and changes between the two campaigns; and c) to investigate the interconnections between their Twitter profiles and media profiles (mainly Spanish newspapers and TV channels). Our findings indicate that issues linked to their own campaigns were the most discussed by these politicians. It is noted that political leaders have little capacity to influence beyond their own community on Twitter, in this sense, hybridization with traditional media and, in particular, with television helps to penetrate beyond the digital sphere. In addition, it was found that Pablo Iglesias and Albert Rivera interacted most with Atresmedia and Prisa group media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine how Catalan election campaigns have evolved to postmodernization, a concept coined by Pippa Norris to refer to the current political scenario and how this is reflected in different electoral phases. We analyzed four electoral campaigns covering a decade (2003-2012) through 27 face-to-face in-depth interviews conducted with campaign managers for nine political parties. The results indicate that, although Catalan politics is progressing toward the postmodern phase, there are still aspects that are far from fully adapted to the changes affecting all levels of society. Catalan political parties seem to be more comfortable with modern or classical political approaches -- such as control over traditional media -- and are but slowly reacting to other issues such as citizen demands for more access to, and prominence in, politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The open launch of new artificial intelligence tools such as ChatGPT-3.5 (Generated Pre-trained Transformer) in November 2022 by the company OpenAI -and then its update to version GPT-4 in March 2023-poses new opportunities and challenges for journalism, and especially for professionals specifically focused on information verification. This research aims to understand and analyze the perceptions generated by the irruption of ChatGPT among fact-checking professionals in Spain with the aim of identifying disadvantages and advantages in its use, professional implications and desired functionalities. The study uses qualitative methodology with in-depth interviews with professionals from all Spanish fact-checking platforms belonging to the International Factchecking Network (IFCN) and the European Digital Media Observatory (EDMO). The results conclude that the use of ChatGPT presents notable ambivalences. On the one hand, there are perceived drawbacks in issues such as the transparency and reliability of sources, the scope of the data, and the format of the responses generated. However, fact-checkers also point to a possible auxiliary use of the chatbot in the tasks of gathering information, detecting falsehoods, and producing denials. The irruption of ChatGPT has a direct impact on the work routines of the fact-checkers, which can be made more difficult, reinforced or extended. Fact-checking professionals perceive themselves as "context agents" in a new ecosystem that also obliges them to further diversify their fields of action in the fight against disinformation and to accelerate the implementation of media education actions that empower citizens in the responsible use of artificial intelligence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on an analysis of several sampled political discussions on Twitter, a new methodology is proposed that allows researchers to obtain a significant, replicable, and manageable data sample from a universe of Twitter metadata. The proposal is a new model called Top discussion indicator (TDI). The aim of TDI is to assist researchers in obtaining a representative set of text from Twitter that includes the minimum amount of information needed to generalize the results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Spanish press handling of the swine flu crisis of 2009 was explored by studying front pages and editorials for the E l Pais, E l Mundo, L a V anguardia, E l Periódico and A vui newspapers over a period of 8 weeks. Major ethical issues arising during media coverage were identified, notably the use of scaremongering and sensationalist stratagems. The analysis revealed discrepancies between front page information and editorial stance. Specifically, front pages depicted a situation of alarm liable to generate social panic, whereas editorials tended to play down the crisis and complied rigorously with ethical and social responsibility criteria. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Artificial intelligence (AI) is already integrated into news production strategies in some media outlets. Recently, generative AIs such as ChatGPT and others have demonstrated their ability to enhance productivity in content production tasks, raising the question of how journalism faculties can address this new technology. This paper presents an academic study on the application of AI in higher communication studies. The study involved 4 in-depth interviews and 28 semi-structured interviews with university lecturers and researchers. The findings confirm varying degrees of convergence and divergence on different aspects of the technology, including the integration of AI in communication faculties, student training in AI usage, the introduction of AI and journalism as a subject area, and the potential uses of AI in news production and consumption. Additionally, this paper proposes a comprehensive training program on AI and journalism, focusing on its foundations, technical competencies and ethical considerations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the context of the dissemination of fake news and the traditional media outlets' loss of centrality, the credibility of digital news emerges as a key factor for today's democracies. The main goal of this paper was to identify the levels of credibility that Spanish citizens assign to political news in the online environment. A national survey (n = 1669) was designed to assess how the news format affected credibility and likelihood of sharing. Four different news formats were assessed, two of them linked to traditional media (digital newspapers and digital television) and two to social media (Facebook and WhatsApp). Four experimental groups assigned a credibility score and a likelihood of sharing score to four different political news items presented in the aforementioned digital formats. The comparison between the mean credibility scores assigned to the same news item presented in different formats showed significant differences among groups, as did the likelihood of sharing the news. News items shown in a traditional media format, especially digital television, were assigned more credibility than news presented in a social media format, and participants were also more likely to share the former, revealing a more cautious attitude towards social media as a source of news. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]