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

Most of us now have instant access mobile phones with integrated cameras so we are able to record an unplanned video at any time and place within a matter of seconds. Modern technology has provided us with the ability to create spontaneous videos. Spontaneous videos are a new way of portraying our society and communicating events and, by means of the internet and web 2.0 applications, they have the potential to reach every corner of the globe, form an integral part of mass media news reports, and influence public opinion. This study establishes the basis for identifying and understanding the spontaneous video, analysing its application in video activism and citizen journalism, and investigating its impact on the digital press. To this end, we have analysed spontaneous videos created and shared online by IES Lluís Vives students in Valencia on the 15th of February, 2012. Students held a protest on this date against education cuts carried out by the Valencian Community government in Spain. The resulting spontaneous videos had a great impact on the media and were reported by Spanish digital newspapers including El País, El Mundo, La Razón, ABC and Público.

The rapid spread of social media on the Internet has resulted in strong changes in the information and communication landscape. Their inadequate use has given rise to new discussions on truth and post-truth, what is trustworthy and what is questionable, the credibility of messages and their sources. Through this article we aim to examine what citizens believe about the information they receive and if they feel whether or not there is withholding of information. This will be achieved through data obtained from a survey of a statistically representative sample of the Andalusian population over the age of 18 (1,103 respondents, with a maximum margin of error of +/- 3%). One of the main results of this research is the serious lack of credibility of the information received, as many Andalusians (68.1%) believe that information is withheld from them. We have also observed several factors explaining a greater likelihood of finding a high belief in the conspiracy theory on the withholding of information. Finally, the article reflects on the consequences of mistrust in information and we propose an inter- and transdisciplinary approach in order to counteract this mistrust.

This paper seeks to compare and analyse the differences in the use of Twitter that, Partido Popular, as a traditional political party, and Ahora Madrid, as a new political party, make of the institutional channels for the public institutions that they administer. In addition, the present study analyses three different periods in the electoral process: the pre-campaign, campaign and post-campaign during the Spanish general elections of December 20th, 2015 in order to see if the election periods caused changes in their communications on Twitter. The sample consists of four cases divided into two groups for content analysis. On one hand, the Government’s Twitter profile (@desdelamoncloa) and of its ruling party, Partido Popular (@ppopular), comprise the old political group, while the Madrid City Council (@Madrid) and its ruling party, Ahora Madrid (@AhoraMadrid), are integrated into the new political group. Additionally, word clouds provide a visual representation of the main terms used by each group. The study results show which group uses and better leverages Twitter’s potential, in that Partido Popular and Moncloa have clearer differences between party and institutional channels, while Ahora Madrid and the Madrid City Council do not seem to be as clear about the difference between the two concepts and use the party channel as the city council channel. However, the results demonstrate that the new political profile leverages Twitter’s potential more.

The personality of a political candidate, above and beyond governments and parties, is understood increasingly more as a brand image. The new political influencers are making a clean sweep of social networks and it is the media that reproduce an information model that, far from being grounded in transparency and quality, promotes a post-truth discourse, halfway between provocation and spectacle. This initial hypothesis focuses on Donald Trump’s profile, first as a presidential candidate and later on as US President. In parallel, Twitter users have swiftly succumbed to the leader’s appeal. Thus, this paper studies the impact of Trump’s tweets on the US reference press during the first 100 days of his presidency. More specifically, it analyses the correspondences between the tweets posted on his personal Twitter account (@realDonaldTrump, with more than 45 million followers) and the front page news in USA Today, The Boston Globe, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times. Regarding public response, digital prosumer metrics (“likes,” retweets and comments) have been quantified in order to verify the degree of influence exerted by Trump on public opinion. The method employed here includes a quantitative and qualitative content analysis based on three categories: the politician’s tweets, front page news and online user metrics. The results confirm Trump’s empowerment on Twitter as both a main source of news and a political influencer as regards the media and the citizenry.

In recent years, the political arena has been transformed into a space of public debate, a phenomenon which is both evident, yet hitherto unparalleled. A new range of digital social communication tools framed within the Web 2.0 era, with the blog often proving the tool of choice, has displaced the traditional dominance of the communication scenario previously enjoyed by the mass media, thanks to a series of more interactive, diverse and credible dynamics which place the user at the very heart of the political discussion process and facilitates processes of social mobilization and collective civic action. This study takes the above situation as its point of departure and guiding principle to propose and define political blogs as a new means of creating information and opinion, and communicating and occasioning effective influence in public agenda-setting. This theoretical work undertakes a detailed critical analysis of the potential of these tools and explains the extent to which they should be considered appropriate platforms for the communication and discussion of public issues. Moreover, it will also consider their engagement in a new, more open form of citizen journalism, free of the bias and pressures exerted by large media corporations, thus creating a digital public sphere with far greater capacity and agency for change.

The aim of this experiment is to classify surprises in audiovisual narratives, and to measure the efficacy of surprise in audiovisual stories in terms of liking, long-term recall and comprehension in television commercials. The theoretical analysis leads to distinguish 3 types of audiovisual narrative surprises: non-diegetic, diegetic implausible and diegetic plausible. In order to test these types of surprises with complete and homogeneous stories in terms of duration, and to show many of these types of surprises to each participant, 16 narrative television commercials (M=40,68 seconds) were used as stimuli in this study. The experimental design was a 4 groups (3 groups of surprise, and 1 non-surprise group, 4 stories each) fully randomised experiment (N=120, Age: 18-24). The results showed that surprise had a significant enhancing effect on liking, on the day of the viewing (c² (3,N=480)=5.83, p=0.12), and one month after (c² (3,N=480)=10.38, p=.016); an ANOVA test showed a significant relation between surprise and the degree of comprehension (F(1,480)=12.14), p

This article goes in depth into the key mechanisms that enable a digital interaction between journalists and expert sources in political journalism, developing a scale that articulates these interaction mechanisms on Twitter. On the basis of this analytical proposal, this study tries to reflect the potential professional consequences which are generated by this social network throughout the journalistic work as well as some changes in important professional skills, such as data verification and contact with expert sources. Those are key aspects to determine the opportunities of the journalists in the future of the profession. It also tries to analyse the relationship between journalists and politicians into a digital context by assessing the impact of using different new media tools on the journalistic culture and political discussion.

Sports media coverage of mega-events is partly oriented to gamification, the use of game elements and game design techniques in non-gaming contexts. This infotainment approach to events has been developed by media outlets as an original and effective way to capture wider audience attention and to place events in context before a competition starts. This article examines 28 gamified sports pieces developed by media outlets from seven countries during the last two Olympics (2016 Summer Olympics in Rio and 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang) and Football World Cups (2014 in Brazil and 2018 in Russia). This sample comprises two categories following Ferrer-Conill (2015): “gamified pieces” (game like elements that are part of a bigger interactive feature) and “newsgames” (more sophisticated pieces often included in complex graphics or multimedia content). The results show that, despite its entertaining formula, gamification serves mainly informational purposes and adds value to sports coverage. Especially in the Summer and Winter Olympics, gamified sports pieces tend to be explanatory and data-driven in order to inform the audience about nonmainstream sports.

We analysed discourse produced in the Spanish press on a number of issues relating to disability (accessibility, education, employment, sport and institutionalisation). The aim was to identify the underlying paradigm: that of rehabilitation or personal autonomy. The analysis was based on 435 units of analysis including news, editorials, opinion articles, reports and letters to the editor, selected from two national newspapers (ABC and El País) published between 1978 and 2012. Discourses generally evolved from reflecting a medical-rehabilitation concept of disability to a more social perspective on disability. It was necessary, however, to examine discourses and practices in different domains separately, as this evolution was not reflected in equal measure in all of them.

This article analyses the consumption of audiovisual content in the Basque language by adolescents in the Basque province of Gipuzkoa and the influence of hegemonic languages on two levels: Spanish as the dominant language in a bilingual society, in which linguistic competence in Basque does not translate into its use; and an audiovisual industry in which English and Spanish are the dominant languages. For this study, surveys were completed by 2,426 students in the compulsory secondary school system (ages 12 -16) enrolled in either the “Model B” language stream (half in Basque and half in Spanish) or the “Model D” language stream (Basque as the language of instruction) at 60 schools across the province. Cluster sampling was used, stratified with proportional allocation in order to obtain data on the seven regions of Gipuzkoa. Audiovisual consumption was examined mainly in five significant areas: cinema, television, news, sports and the Internet. Special attention was also given to the use of subtitles when viewing fiction content. The study found that adolescents in Gipuzkoa consume audiovisual content mainly in Spanish, although not all to the same degree, as there is considerable variation between regions. Affectivity in relation to the language is a key aspect for interpreting the results of this research.