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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]

The social sciences have coined a number of concepts and theories often elaborated from a critical perspective, that give account for the close relationships in contemporary societies between power and the media. However, studies that reveal these relations within the socialist countries are less frequent that, as any other society, they have certain groups that hold political and economic power, and act as symbolic elites. The difference often lies in the way in which these countries justify the use of the media, with strict ideological purposes, attributing the guidance of their communication system to the Communist Party, "the working class vanguard". This study provides a review of the Cuban case, from the description of its communicative structure and the analysis of the normative discourse that sustains it, from 1959 to 2018. Adopting a structural methodological approach, and from the research paradigm proposed by the critical analysis of discourse, it is noted that the symbolic elites that control public discourse in Cuba have instituted an effective mechanism of legitimation for almost six decades, supported by a media organization according to their interests, and in the development of a regulatory framework that conditions the access and content of the media to the recognition of their ideology. It is also observed that their forms of communicative production coexist and dialogue with a public communication model where a logic of sociocultural profitability prevails that marks a notable difference with other communication systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research characterizes Fidel Castro's speeches on journalism and communication between 1959 and 2008, time in which his political mandate elapsed. It describes the communicative context in which discourses are inserted and discusses strategies and discursive structures present in them, as forms of legitimization of power that -as in so many other societies- use dominant groups. The results indicate the use of strategies of positive self-presentation of the power elites, framed in a concept of "the revolutionary", and negative presentation of all those social actors that manifest models of society contrary to their ideology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]