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

Ibermedia is the most important institution in the Ibero-American audiovisual space. It was created as a result of a bottom-up project that aims to include stakeholders in policy-making. The paper investigates the participation of stakeholders in the Ibermedia decision-making in order to assess if it maintains its original cooperative character. We applied the salience theory to identify who and why is being taken into account by the organization. Our findings are based on a literature review, qualitative document analysis, and semi-structured expert interviews. The findings reveal that Ibermedia maintains its bottom-up proposal and the stakeholders can impact its policies. The interactions are marked by informal relations and affection. The stakeholders consider Ibermedia vital and are generally satisfied with its functioning, besides its low budget. The paper provides an overview of the internal functioning of Ibermedia, revealing the level of interaction with the stakeholders and contributes to add light in the lack of transparency.

COVID-19 has generated a social crisis that has required the production of vast amounts of information of various types, including medical. In this scenario, hoaxes and fake news about health issues have also increased, encouraging disobedience of lockdown restrictions and opposition to vaccination against the disease. At the same time, because of their structure and functioning, social media networks have facilitated the production and distribution of such false information. YouTube has also been identified as a source of medical information including COVID-19 hoaxes. This research focusses on an analysis of a video viewing network on YouTube to trace the connection between various videos recommended on the platform and determine the content of the videos that compose that network. To achieve this, we carry out a content analysis supported by specialised software to extract and analyse the videos. The results reveal a limited network of videos about COVID-19, strongly related to each other. Its amateur aesthetic stands out, as well as the frequent appearance of certain personalities who, as opinion leaders in a scenario of the delegitimization of traditional institutions, become catalysts for hoaxes and fake news that call for civil disobedience and, sometimes, show links with the extreme right.

Fact-checking is a thriving journalistic discipline that, in recent years, has gained great prominence as a tool in combating disinformation. The effectiveness of the work carried out by these journalistic initiatives depends not only on the quality of their content, but also on their ability to reach large audiences through the same channels by which disinformation spreads. In this context, we consider it important to know to what extent fact-checkers use social networks and other types of digital channels in order to deliver their fact-checks to a wide audience, whether there are differences between the practices developed by these actors according to the type of organisation to which they belong and whether there is a distinguishing element in this regard for Ibero-American fact-checkers. This article focuses on analysing the presence on social networks and the use of content distribution tools by 104 fact-checkers from all over the world pertaining to the International Fact-Checking Network in 2020. The results show significant differences in terms of network presence based on the type of entity to which fact-checkers belong, the independent fact-checkers being the ones using a wider variety of distribution channels. It has also been confirmed that Ibero-American fact-checkers have a greater presence on social networks, use more digital tools and provide more channels to share their content than the rest of the international sample.

This article analyzes Santiago Abascal’s non-verbal communication, exploring the development of his communication skills, thus adding to heretofore limited research on non-verbal expression and political communication by providing empirical evidence from the field. Content analysis has been carried out on the basis of a quantitative systematization of non-verbal communication, encompassing kinesic, prosodic and proxemic aspects. The corpus of study comprises 24 audiovisual documents, representative examples of Abascal’s public communication actions between the years 2014 and 2021, to which a tailormade frame of reference has been applied. Our findings show that Abascal’s communication skills have progressed and improved during that time period, and may now be defined as evincing notable intra-systemic and inter-systemic coherence in verbal, kinesic and paralinguistic language, which enables more effective and persuasive communication; a clear, precise and constant gestural style that amplifies the persuasive impact of his discourse; the use of consistent expressive signals interpreted by his audience as markers of credibility; and a mode of non-verbal expression that is emphatic and vehement, which underpins the meaning of the message, enables emotional connection, and fosters effective communication as a form of spectacle. The conclusion drawn here is that the Abascal’s development in expressive communication may be one contributing factor, among others, that has led to the rise of his political party, VOX.

Netflix has shaken up audiovisual industry, but what about academic research? This bibliometric analysis focuses on 210 papers indexed in Web of Science that address this issue. We examine the author, university of affiliation, language, journal, keywords, year of publication, citations received, and categories covered in WoS. We also conducted a quantitative analysis of abstracts and papers to identify the most recurrent methodologies, themes, and samples. Our results highlight a rise in Netflix studies in recent years and their tendency to analyse specific audiovisual works. There are many qualitative analysis of specific Netflix hits, but none of the shows particularly stands out. It also shows a rise in “Communication” and “Film, Radio & Television” papers (40% of them), although academic interest relies on Netflix corporate culture, business, and algorithm. These studies are mainly carried out using a qualitative methodology (83%). More than half of the articles focus on one of the Netflix series and, among them, the greatest interest lies in the representation of specific issues; gender, race and sexuality are present in 25% of the works in the sample (n=210). At the same time, among the 367 authors signing these research papers, the parity between men (51%) and women (49%) is almost absolute. It appears that the geographical and linguistic variety of papers is related to Netflix’s global expansion and that the sheer number of titles covered reveals a fleeting attention due to Netflix’s trademark: swift and concentrated consumption.

Facebook’s advertising platform provides political parties with an electoral tool that enables them to reach an extremely detailed audience. Unlike television, the sponsored content on Facebook is seen only by the targeted users. This opacity was an obstacle to political communications research until Facebook released advertiser-sponsored content in 2018. The company’s new transparent policy included sharing metadata related to the cost and number of impressions the ads received. This research studies the content sponsored on Facebook by the five main national political parties in Spain during the two General Elections held in 2019. The research corpus consists of 14,684 Facebook ads. An extraction algorithm detected the key terms in the text-based messages conveyed in the ad. The prominence of these topics was estimated from the aggregate number of impressions accumulated by each term. Different content patterns were assessed following three categories: user mobilization, candidate presence, and ideological issues. PSOE and PP positioned themselves more toward calls to action. Podemos had the greater number of issues related to policy among the most salient topics in its advertising. Ciudadanos’ strategy focused more on its candidate and mobilization. Vox sponsored few Facebook ads, and they barely included policy issues. Spain was a highly prominent term in all parties’ campaigns. Ciudadanos shared the middle ground on the ideological axis: they promoted social issues more aligned with left-wing parties as well as economic topics usually advocated by the right-wing. Overall, our results point to a greater emphasis on candidates rather than issues.

During lockdown, as a consequence of the coronavirus crisis in 2020, the majority of Spanish people (70% of social media users) were exposed to a social media consumer space: news without journalistic filters, with a multitude of fake data and a systematic existence of misinformation that has had a close relationship with the perception of credibility. 1,000 surveys were conducted between March 30 and April 30, in Spain. This work describes the consumption patterns of political parties in social networking sites, describing the facts that determine to what extent Spanish people trust the news they receive. The amount of information consumed online, age and the party identification with Vox and Ciudadanos are the most relevant communicative, structural or political variables that explain the increase or decrease in the credibility of the information that Spaniards receive through these channels.

The growth of e-commerce and the ageing of the world population converges in a situation which represents significant challenges for the economy: a large population of over 65year-olds with major limitations for online shopping. The digital division, although reduced in certain sectors, in others, such as e-commerce persists. This research involves the study of 405 subjects, Spanish seniors aged between 60 and 79, to discover and analyse the barriers, motivators and behaviour with regards to shopping online. Using a telephone survey and a random sample, a typology of users was established as per their behaviour and perception of e-commerce. The main finding is the segmentation in eleven typologies of users, identified through cluster analysis. The major conclusions confirm the barriers related to data security or levels of confidence. Furthermore, with basic digital skills, seniors consider themselves capable of completing purchases on the Internet. Online shoppers feel empowered being digitally self-sufficient, while non-shoppers desiring to be independent, require the implementation of measures to aid the process on commercial websites.

Disinformation is not only a phenomenon of modern democratic societies, but also a tool at the service of states. In the current communication ecosystem, politics and society interrelate in the face of a phenomenon characterised by multiple information channels and sources in which emotions now play a central role. In international relations, the expression of a state’s political will through charisma and populism are the chief aspects detected in the analysis of emotions in political science. This has led to the construction of a narrative based on security threats and the friend-enemy distinction, among other things. On the basis of an exhaustive literature review, this study offers an overview of the political and social factors underlying the use of emotions in disinformation as regards four aspects: politics, economy, diplomacy and security. Likewise, it identifies the main defining traits and behaviours of domestic and international audiences. The analysis and verification of the research question contribute to elaborate an international theory of emotionally driven disinformation which has begun to play a leading role in both academia and politics.

Populist actors have more success than other parties on social media –particularly Facebook– where their posts receive higher levels of engagement. The entry of populist parties onto the Spanish political stage can spread the use of their rhetoric and influence citizens’ political decisions, affecting the configuration of supranational institutions such as the European Union. The aim of this study is to use a quantitative content analysis to verify the presence of populist discourse in the 844 messages published on Facebook by Spanish parties during the 2019 European Parliament election campaign and to analyse their impact on user interaction. The results show that the newest and most extremist parties monopolise the messages with empty, anti-elite populism. However, the use of exclusionary populist discourse is also detected in more moderate conservative parties. Populist parties, especially VOX, lead user interactions, irrespective of whether the populist style appears in the messages. The results of the research show that the populist style is inexorably consolidating in Europe as an electoral communications strategy on Facebook. As with other European countries, extremist and opposition parties also adopt the populist style as a communications strategy. The results suggest that the success of populist actors on social media may be conditioned by the populist attitudes of their followers and less by the characteristics of these parties’ publications.