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The transformation that the communicative environment has undergone in recent decades poses a challenge for the media in relation to their audiences, as trust is sensitive to social, economic, cultural, and technological changes. The aim of this research is to deepen the understanding of the reasons and factors that influence the loss of trust in the media by audiences who traditionally trusted news more (young people and adults aged 25-54), examining the relevance of disinformation and polarization in discrediting the media. Firstly, the state of the issue is reviewed from the theoretical point of view and the data provided, among others, such as the Digital News Report and several studies about the global loss of trust in other institutions, with special reference to the Edelman Trust Barometer. Secondly, the article adopts a qualitative methodology to investigate the motivations and expectations of citizens regarding the media. Specifically, three discussion groups were held in various Spanish cities. To ensure representativeness, sociodemographic diversity was considered, including gender, age, and educational level criteria, among others. Among the findings, it stands out that one of the main reasons for distrust towards the media is the perception that news is biased for political or economic reasons. The Covid-19 pandemic, which was rife with disinformation, has influenced attitudes towards the media and the way news is consumed. Once the pandemic was overcome, trust in the media decreased and participants sought alternative sources of information. However, some differences in perceptions and consumption habits are noted depending on age and educational level. Finally, the research indicates that distrust extends well beyond the media ecosystem, affecting all institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is the first review of selective exposure studies in Spain, offering comprehensive insights into the diverse findings and analytical strategies employed over almost three decades by studies that explore the politically oriented media consumption of Spanish audiences. The article divides the evolution of this research line in Spain into two main phases -an initial phase (1995-2016) and a consolidation phase (2017-present)- according to the methodological approaches used during each period. Despite the challenges posed by working with secondary data and the lack of experimental designs, we note a robust initiation of this research line in Spain, accompanied by increasing methodological sophistication and diversification and a substantial accumulation of evidence on how Spanish audiences selectively consume like-minded news media. The paper also identifies the blind spots of selective exposure research in Spain, such as the scarcity of primary data sources, which overlooks phenomena such as online selective exposure and selective avoidance, the need to supplement multivariate analyses with other techniques that allow the direction of causal influence between variables to be established, and the significance of assessing the role of public media as facilitators or inhibitors of cross-cutting exposure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On the basis of the argument that media platforms generate journalistic micro-cultures and that the nature of journalistic roles is contextual, the possible existence of a journalistic model of digital native media coherent with its own professional culture is addressed. Through a content analysis of a sample of 2,729 news items published in four Spanish digital native media, the presence of six professional roles (interventionist, watchdog, loyal-facilitator, service, infotainment, and civic) is measured and compared with the implementation of these roles in news items published in press, radio, and television (N = 3,362). In addition, the factors that influence the presence of each role in the news of the selected digital native media are analyzed. The results show that digital native media distinguish themselves by putting into practice all the journalistic roles, except for the civic one, to a greater extent than other platforms. Likewise, the service role presents similar levels of presence in the four newspapers analyzed, indicating an approach to audiences more as customers than as citizens. In terms of the factors associated with the presence of each role, we found that the subject matter of the news item has a greater predictive capacity in all roles than other elements. Although we cannot confirm the existence of a journalistic micro-culture, we do find some particularities of the digital native media, mainly stemming from the need to build audience loyalty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Incorporating a gender perspective in the media entails implementing strategies to work with information in a democratic way. The mobilisation of Las Periodistas Paramos in Spain in 2018 influenced a change towards such a perspective, which is also one of the most relevant innovations identified in Spanish media. The purpose of this work is to draw, for the first time, a map of the initiatives adopted by the Spanish press to incorporate the gender perspective into its newsrooms. To do this, style guides and other initiatives aimed at providing guidance on the introduction of the gender dimension are examined, and semi-structured interviews are used to find out how four women journalists responsible for such an incorporation carry out their work. The results show a substantial, although also uneven, presence of initiatives in the 21 newspapers analysed. Most of the style guides –10 of them have one and nine of them have been accessed– are outdated, obsolete or being updated. Most also contain aspects related to the gender perspective, although they do not include this term explicitly and often do not adapt to today’s reality. In the newspapers that do not have a Style Guide or other types of measures, a sensitivity towards the subject is perceived. On the other hand, four newspapers have a gender editor whose main function is to ensure that the perspective is transversal and reaches all sections, genres and content. These professionals make a positive assessment of their still brief trajectory and agree that journalism has advanced considerably and done important pedagogical work in society in terms of gender, although it seems that this figure will remain necessary for quite some time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper makes an important contribution to comparative research by examining data journalism in Spain and Austria. This paper examines the practice of data journalism from a triple perspective: (a) the common features of day-to-day work, (b) the organizational structure and the role of the teams in newsrooms, and (c) the obstacles to and the future of data-driven reporting. Results from content analysis of data-driven news stories in El país and Der standard (N = 136) show differences and similarities in the covered topics, sources, narrative style, visualizations, interactive functions, and levels of transparency. Interestingly, only 36.8% of the analyzed news stories correspond to the normative expectations of transparency by incorporating both sources and methodological details. While the Spanish newspaper shows significantly higher levels of transparency compared with the Austrian newspaper, both newspapers perform very similarly when it comes to providing access to raw data, which was the case in only every fifth news story analyzed. Findings from focused interviews with the heads of data journalism teams deliver interesting insights into specific challenges that each news outlet is facing when creating day-to-day data-driven news stories. This research confirms the relevance that data journalism has achieved in countries such as Spain and demonstrates the effort of journalists in countries without access to information and transparency laws to create data-driven stories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Convictions of political corruption depend on public communication, since for citizens, to perceive deviant behaviours, these must receive attention. In Spain, this type of behaviour is part of the agendas of citizens, media, and politicians and, to fight against it, accountability is essential. In addition to the judiciary and legislature (in their oversight role), the media and social media help voters, MPs and others to make informed decisions and press for action. However, the interrelationships between different agents, types, and forms of control for accountability are a rather unexplored research topic, especially when considering non-accountable institutions (those that have power, but are not directly accountable to the electorate, such as the monarchy). The debate on the inviolability of the emeritus presents a perfect scenario to describe what formulas and what kind of sanctions (legal, labour, reputational or personal) for accountability have occurred in Spain in the case of a non-accountable institution. This study explores the agendas of media, Parliament, and Twitter (and their inter-influences) during the Geneva papers scandal. We analyzed 189,037 tweets, 1,220 journalistic pieces and 78 parliamentary initiatives related to the former monarch. The main results show that the media, social networks, and Parliament have acted as agents of accountability with Juan Carlos I, as if it were an accountable institution. Online newspapers and Twitter have led the oversight, while the parliamentary initiative has been ineffective and has essentially served as an instrument of partisan communication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to dissect the presence of female writers in the main four cultural supplements of Spanish reference press: Babelia (El país), Cultura/s (La vanguardia), El cultural (El mundo) and ABC cultural (ABC). For this, we analyzed the "books of the year" recommended between 2010 and 2021 (n = 1,286), as well as the juries in charge of elaborating these ranks. The results show the subsidiary role reserved for women in this sphere of cultural information: they barely author 25.3% of the selected books, although some degree is progress is observed in the historical series, after going from 4.8% in 2011 to 37.8% in 2020. The increase in the presence of women in the juries has contributed to this phenomenon --the correlation between ratio of women in both lists being statiscally significant (rs = 0.647, p < 0.001)--, together with the commitment of supplement such as Babelia and Cultura/s to literature written by women. On the contrary, there still seem to be pockets of exclusion in El cultural and ABC cultural, which reduce the visibility of work of female writers in Spain. According to our findings, women authors stand out for their youth (they are between 8 and 20 years younger than men, depending on the indicator), cosmopolitism (there are more foreign female writers, especially American, than Spanish) and origin (mainly, Madrid and Barcelona). This article evinces the collective imaginary, settled for centuries, by which literature was considered a men's affair, and reflects on the role of cultural journalism and its prescriptive function when it comes to breaking down gender stereotype --a task that, in view of the data provided in this paper, is still far from been completed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When the first university schools of journalism and communication started in Spain in 1971, only a few European and North American countries had preferentially adopted an academic model. Variety was their dominant feature, exhibiting diverse professional cultures and sometimes political contexts. In countries with a long journalistic tradition such as the UK, learning on the job was the practice at that time. Labor unions were also prevalently responsible for the training of aspiring journalists in France and Germany. In contrast, in the USA, university journalism schools had been established some decades before. In addition, teaching and research in communication evolved via different paths in those countries that had a more noteworthy influence on Spain. The beginning of university-based schools of communication theoretically contributed to the establishment of a more suitable institutional platform for the delivery of communication research trends in the West. An analysis of historical, political, and institutional contexts converging in Spain in the 1970s is useful to describe how the first university schools were shaped in terms of both their incipient teaching and research challenges. A review of the literature covering both fields in Spain and other countries, along with some previously published archival sources, helps us to frame the case of Spain from a transnational viewpoint that considers the impact of contemporary foreign influences. The resulting broader comparative perspective provides a better overarching understanding of the case, even to the point of measuring the extent to which it can be considered a pioneer in this context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this work is to study the news coverage by the main Spanish generalist newspapers on Twitter during the campaign for the Community of Madrid elections in 2021 (n = 2,709). Natural language processing techniques and machine learning algorithms are applied to identify the predominant topic related to the elections and the mentions of candidates and political parties by each media, and to calibrate the emotional value of the messages published by El país, El mundo, Eldiario.es, and El confidencial. Among other findings, the results reveal how the media coverage focused mainly on campaign events and electoral debates. Despite the detection of minor differences between the newspapers, a general pattern emerges through this content, with a notable dominance of Isabel Díaz Ayuso but little influence of Rocío Monasterio as the lead candidates for their party. The sentiment analysis reveals the political alignment of each newspaper, using mainly negative messages with the aim of reducing the importance of a candidate or political party. While El país and Eldiario.es focused their criticism on Vox and the Partido Popular, El mundo and El confidencial criticized the actions of the national government, the PSOE's proposal to join forces with Unidas Podemos, and Vox's position, as well as emphasizing the disaster faced by Ciudadanos. It can be deduced that the media contributed to Ayuso's success and to the consolidation of her image as an individual distinct from her own party. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The evolution of participatory interview formats that appeared from 2015 to 2020 in the leading digital newspapers in Spain (El pa's, El mundo, ABC, AS, El diario.es, and El confidencial), as well as Facebook live because it is a new channel for content distribution via social networks, is analyzed. The content of a sample of more than 300 digital interviews was analyzed, considering the narrative scheme between the interviewee and interviewer, the style that the new format acquires on the Internet, the level of audience participation, and the interconnection of the interviewee with the audience/ reader. The levels of interaction and reaction of the audiences were analyzed, as well as the possibility of a new type of journalistic storytelling with different levels of interaction that seeks to achieve audience participation, allowing them to feel part of the dialogue, and to expand other possibilities for participation with the interview. This new format encourages online media to evolve towards more dialogic spaces with their audiences using textual, graphic, or auditory language to build a narrative story that fuels curiosity and arouses interest in participation by the audience/reader. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study of think tanks in Spain has been growing in the last few years with an equally increasing number of social and grassroots movements. This article offers content analysis results from a selection of eight Spanish think tanks in the digital press during a seven-year period, adding new conclusions to previous literature for the same period. Not only does this research explore the appearance on the media, but also the type of mentions and authorship of the articles and blogs included in the digital press, contributing to a deeper study of think tanks. The objective of this study is to analyse the limited presence of Spanish think tanks in media outlets and whether their appearance is ideologically motivated. The article built a constructed week sampling and followed a content analysis methodology to gather quantitative and qualitative elements from the selected sampling (n=1,101). The paper concludes that the presence of think tanks in the Spanish digital press is limited, causing not only a lack of knowledge of their existence but also raising questions about how they try to impact on the policymaking process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the information coverage by the Spanish newspapers El país, El mundo, ABC, and La vanguardia in Twitter on the electoral campaign prior to the 10 November 2019 general elections. A content analysis of all tweets published by these media regarding the elections (n = 1,462) between Friday 1 and Saturday 9 November reveals that, although there are differences in the production patterns and features of the messages, the subject received notable attention in all the newspapers. The coverage gravitated around two main themes: the 4N electoral debate, and campaign events. The results reveal that, although most of the tweets had a neutral tone, messages with clear positioning corresponding to the editorial line of the newspaper were also published, albeit to a lesser extent. During the electoral period, the media agenda revolved around this issue, accounting for around one-fifth of all pieces published on Twitter. Newspapers do not take advantage of the dialogic nature or possibilities offered by this social network to create a community among their readers, limiting themselves to the dissemination of content from their digital edition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study analyses the media coverage of immigration in Melilla, the land frontier between Spain and Morocco and one of the access points where immigrants enter the European Union, and the role that journalists and other agents play in spreading news on immigration. By means of a field study we analyse the type of news professionals and media that are present near the border, the logics followed by institutional press offices when providing information, and the particular conditions in which journalism is practiced in a space of juridical exceptionality. Amongst the results obtained we underscore: the predominance of a media market that, while apparently diverse, is highly dependent on institutional advertising; the relevance of figures like activists or freelance journalists in providing differentiated news on immigration; and the difficulties in working that journalists face due to arbitrariness and obscurantism when accessing images and data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The consumption of news has become a social experience. In this scenario, we set out to answer the following question: What are Spanish journalists talking about on Twitter? This work studies what type of content they emit on Twitter to establish if the link between these professionals and the mass media or with the cybermedia influences the thematic orientation of their tweet. The study has worked with three samples (a sample of covers of five newspapers of reference of Spain, a sample of ten accounts of Twitter corresponding to journalists from mass communication media and a sample of ten accounts of cyberjournalists). The two-year research has analyzed 3.500 tweets based on a classification system of registration units made up of 35 thematic categories. The study concludes, among other aspects, that politics (national and international) is the great theme of Twitter along with a growing concern for jihadist terrorism and issues of the Ibero- American context over Europe. The work also warns of the existence of thematic gaps in certain areas (such as society, culture, art or science). In addition, an increasing tendency of the use of the platform for the purpose of self-promotion by journalists is detected. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aims of this article are twofold: to examine attitudes towards news media in Spain in order to measure to what extent consumers are critical about them, and to establish possible predictors that characterize the individuals who are the most skeptical. A national survey showed that, in general, Spaniards trust their media, although they do not consider them to be impartial; it also revealed a set of typical characteristics of the more incredulous media consumer group: they are mainly middle-aged men with a high level of education living in large cities in the north of Spain who are distrustful towards interpersonal relationships and watch less TV than the average. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a profoundly changing context, media accountability systems have clearly undergone a process of evolution by taking advantage of the internet and web 2.0 possibilities. While traditional instruments have a limited impact on professional practice and are scarcely used by citizens, the digital environment allows new ways of self-regulation, transparency, and monitoring of news quality, in which users' participation plays a decisive role. The article identifies, describes and categorizes the new online accountability systems that have emerged in the Spanish media landscape, examining those that operate both within and outside digital media. The analysis of the identified systems has allowed the elaboration of a first classification of the innovative accountability systems existing in Spain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Transmedia storytelling has become a useful strategy for fiction, documentaries, and for marketing and corporate communication. However, the study of this new tool applied to journalism and reporting has received less attention and has been more recent and theoretical. The aim of the present work is to determine whether or not Elpais.com has employed transmedia storytelling in the press coverage of the first confirmed case of ebola in Spain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study takes the old myth of objectivity in media discourse to one of the most important but unrecognized actors in the process of its construction: the mass media information scientist or documentalist. Accepting the subjective presence of the documentalist in his/her productions this article opts for the recognition explicit statement of this role recommending two actions. First we suggest that public higher education institutions combine the technical training of mass media documentalists with training in critical thinking skills. Our study analysed the subjects covered in course syllabi to detect the deficiencies to be addressed in meeting this objective. Second we propose alternative lines of training that can contribute to cross-training of mass media documentalists in those degree programs to ensure that they acquire the needed skills in critical analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The notion of "information subsidy" was introduced by US media researchers to refer to informational materials that an organization's press officers place at the disposal of journalists covering an informational event. Based on this idea, this research examines the online pressrooms of Spanish ministries, as organizations of high media interest, to see how they optimize these online spaces for journalists to provide such information subsidies. The content offered as well as its architecture and usability, according to the effectiveness criteria identified by previous researchers, are analyzed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary of developments presented at the traditional annual congress of Swets users held on June 4, 2009 in Barcelona: the tool SwetsWise Selection Support, PressDisplay news portal, the ALPSP Learned Journals Collection, and the e-book platform MyiLibrary. e-Books sales are soaring. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The pathway to the complete digitisation and substitution of printed press is now a reality. The imminent commercialisation of new mobile devices using e-ink, licensed by Philips, and especially the new model of Sony's Portable Reader System in Spain (announced for Spring 2009), a determined commercial strategy, and incipient research by some Spanish newspapers make us wonder whether we are facing the end of the printed press. At the moment, the new devices are much better than their predecessors, but enough problems remain to make us doubt that we are at the beginning of the end of newsprint. The strengths of some other devices that differ from the e-book but could eventually be able to present books or newspaper on their screens, such as iPhone-like cell phones or Amazon's Kindle (not yet available in Spain) opens an interesting era of competition and convergence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Digitization of media archives has improved both news librarians' and journalists' work. However, a significant proportion of Spanish journalists prefer searching for information on the Internet rather than in archives. Moreover, the quality of journalists' work decreases because few journalists receive proper training on information retrieval. Our research is based on ethnographic observation and interviews with more than 70 professionals from several newsrooms carried out between 2001 and 2006, complemented by a survey of the heads of archives at the main channels and newspapers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The majority of online newspapers provide access to retrospective information through press archive services, a product of great interest for libraries and other information services. The aim of this study is to identify key indicators for the evaluation of digital press archives and also identify examples of good practices in Spain for each of them. We propose a list of twenty-seven indicators grouped into four main sections (general features, contents, query system, and presentation of results), describe each one and include some examples of successful implementation. Methodologically, the indicators are the result of the review of the literature on evaluating web resources, databases and digital press archives, as well as the analysis of press archive services of newspapers from Spain and Catalonia. The use of these indicators can be useful for libraries and other information services to guide their users in consulting retrospective press information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of our study is to measure the visibility of the Spanish press in Menéame, the most important social content manager in Spanish, during 2007 and the first quarter of 2008. To this end, the number of news items published in Menéame is counted and averaged with votes and comments received, focusing on the evolution of the five media with a greater presence; finally, the obtained ranking is contrasted with that of OJD Interactiva. The most represented newspaper is El País, followed by El Mundo and 20minutos and, farther behind, La Vanguardia and El Periódico de Catalunya. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

iMente is an information service covering the digital press, developed in Spain and offering access to the contents of online publications including mass communications media, press releases, blogs and official bulletins. This article positions iMente within the context of press information products. It describes the service's origin, evolution, technology, contents and user types and analyses its principal features for document services, such as press clippings, alerts, searches and headline publication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]