Sistema Regional de Información
en línea para Revistas Científicas de América Latina,
el Caribe, España y Portugal

As part of the study of electoral behavior in digital environments, the question arises as to whether electoral campaigns with a high presence in socio-digital networks stimulate online participation by citizens and if this translates into a higher offline participation. In order to know and compare the relationship between online and offline political participation, in its conventional and non-conventional modalities, we applied a post-electoral digital analytical survey to the electoral campaigns of the Mexican states of Nuevo León in 2015 (N = 294) and Puebla in 2016 (N = 301), the first highly focused on digital media as opposed to the second. We found differences in digital involvement, which have an impact on the electoral game. For Nuevo León, we found a greater relationship between the use of social networks and the predisposition to participate online, while in Puebla nonconventional political participation was most related to the predisposition to participate politically online. We explain these findings in relation to the degree of digitization of each campaign and the techno-social context in general.

In this paper, we discuss the relationship between media and education based on the Chilean press coverage of the SIMCE standardized test. Using critical discourse analysis and framing, we conclude that the newspapers tend to naturalize the deficiencies of this evaluation instrument and to dismiss the arguments that criticize its continued use. Therefore, the processing of conflicts around this measurement is subject to the normalization that these journalistic discourses provide to the educational field, thus reinforcing the growing influence of the media in the formulation of educational policies, in a process known as mediatization of education.

This paper studies the characteristics and reliability of 76 YouTube videos about breast cancer, relating them to their repercussion and value for users. The analysis is based on a template that includes quantitative and qualitative elements. The results show a great diversity of formats and promoters, as opposed to a greater uniformity regarding the type of content and tone. Although neutral-tone informative videos predominate, the data reflects users' preference for more subjective and less reliable videos.

This research explains the relationship between political, media and public agendas on experiential topics in Santiago de Cuba during the first quarter of 2014 and 2015. For this, we used theoretical methods, such as analysis-synthesis and inductive-deductive, and techniques such as quantitative content analysis, interviews and discussion groups. The results show a thematic transference relationship between the political and media agendas, and a low one between the latter and the public agenda. This complex phenomenon derives from influences related to the construction of the media and the public agenda.

The emergence of the neologism post-truth raises once again the question of journalism's capacity to distort reality. Social networks have entered the world of communication with great force, but their responsibility is not comparable to that of journalism. Non-professional communicators have a personal ethic code, but the profession has a deontological code. Informative journalism is based on its credibility and the truth of its stories. In this paper, we will reflect on the ethical crises of journalism and the dangers they entail to its credibility, if not resolved properly.

Even though Latin American cinema is well consolidated now, there are not many comparative studies besides generalist approaches. This article presents an inventory of female Argentine and Spanish directors, as well as their films, from 2000 to 2010, a period marked by the generational change in film industry of both countries and determined by a sociopolitical context democratically consolidated and hampered by economic fluctuations. The objective is twofold: to make women filmmakers visible and to assess their meeting points and divergences. As a method, we chose a descriptive design, applying both a quantitative and qualitative comparative analysis. We conducted a compilation, synthesis, and correlation of works and themes, reaching a corpus of 72 female directors and 138 productions. The results show that there are common issues that reveal the report of unsolved situations for women: motherhood, female homosociality or ideas about love and sex, the experience or the memory of repression, the structural violence of the authoritarian state and the transformations of the ways of life. There are also differences in terms of times and opportunities, styles and genders, which are typical of the coexistence of diverse but creative film trajectories, all of which are stories that break with limited social models and open up to social commitment.

The aim of this article is to study which are the main topics that female columnists address in a Colombian regional newspaper, explore the intention and style of their opinion columns, and establish if female columnists can be classified as opinion leaders. To do so, we conducted a content analysis of 36 opinion columns, of the total of 95 written by women in 2015 and published in the online medium Vanguardia.com, from Bucaramanga, which allowed the identification of themes, styles and intentions of these publications. We concluded that their columns are analytical, preserving the informative style and interpretive attitude, and that the interaction of their readers on Facebook with their arguments would allow them to be considered as public opinion leaders. According to our findings, their position is the product of the deep and critical approach they have on current issues related to the environment, public management and gender violence, abandoning female stereotypes related exclusively to sex, beauty and fashion. These data support the evidence that shows that women are advancing in their position in the public eye, both politically and in the media, thus overcoming the habit of being only installed in private and discreet spaces, and increasingly reaching an open and explicit insertion in society and in decision-making.

Even though the current media landscape allows to choose between very diverse platforms, sources and means to get information, there are users who decide to avoid the news. This article explores the reasons behind this news avoidance, relating it to the proposals of the so-called constructive journalism. Taking Spain as case study and through a qualitative and quantitative analysis of the Digital News Report –based on a pilot study and a survey to 2,006 users–, the results show that 50% of digital users in Spain actively avoid news, a practice more common among women, young users and low-income people. The reasons allude to two major factors. On the one hand, the users’ situation, either due to lack of interest concerning current events or to the perception that exposure to the news flow has negative effects on their state of mind (the main reason to avoid them, 37% of the cases). On the other hand, the media –both at the corporate level and the journalists who produce the information– are accused of failing to comply with some basic principles of the profession. Specifically, 29% of users do not consult the news because they mistrust their veracity. The media could address these motivations by opting for a more constructive approach to journalism, based on a news coverage aimed at generating a positive social impact.

This paper studies the imaginaries attached to the Northern border of Argentina in the discourse of its national press during the presidential transition between Kirchnerism, of national-popular ideology, and conservative-neoliberal Macrism (2015-2016). In the north, Argentina shares international borders with all its neighboring countries: the entire border with Bolivia, Paraguay and Brazil, and part of the border with Uruguay and Chile. However, the name northern border has not been precisely defined in the academic or official discourse. Despite this, in journalistic discourse it has often been empirically associated with the international border that Argentina shares with Bolivia and Paraguay. A critical discourse analysis was applied to 47 journalistic articles that mention the Northern border of Argentina, published in La Nación (conservative) and Página/12 (progressive), national newspapers based in the political-administrative center of the country, the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires. The results show that there are differences in the treatment of the subject, consistent with their respective editorial lines, although they coincide in representing the Northern border of Argentina as a distant, degraded and disadvantaged territory.

In recent years, feminism has increased its social presence, which sparks interest in learning how the media discourses transmit their values and demands to society. This study analyzes the presence and characterization of feminism in ten of the main Ibero-American digital media by analyzing 2.712 terms included in the tags corresponding to the keywords that appear in the information metadata. The analysis of the interrelation of terms allows us to know which concepts, topics and people are linked to feminism, and the way in which the media approaches information on the subject. The results show, on the one hand, an unequal treatment of the subject by the Ibero-American media, as well as an unstructured use of tags to organize the media discourse. The results also show the important association between feminism and the personalities of culture and entertainment, compared to a less direct impact of the campaigns conducted on social networks and by activists. The study also corroborates that despite the increase in the total number of news stories, the discourses of victimization of women continue to be dominant among the topics associated with feminism.