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

This article analyzes the news coverage of the COVID-19 health crisis by Televisión Española (TVE1), to determine if this media reported the news with rigor and in accordance with journalism professional codes and best practice guidelines. For this purpose, content analysis was conducted on the universe of news stories (n=1,449) in the TVE1 daily newscast, starting with the first outbreak of the pandemic on the Iberian Peninsula on February 26, 2020, until the end of the first state of emergency on June 21, 2020. Our categories of analysis were: information sources, news frames, predominant topics, resources used for dramatic effects, and breaches of journalism ethics in reporting news. In general, TVE1 did not engage in sensationalized or dramatized news coverage, but instead attempted to transmit a message that was educational and instructional. Its policy was to provide information on measures adopted by authorities to help prevent the spread of the pandemic. Nevertheless, TVE’s benevolent attitude towards the government and its policies can be observed in its news reporting, revealing a lack of impartiality and editorial independence by this media. Despite the importance of specialized and expert information in times of a pandemic, eyewitness sources were those most used in reporting news, even in economic news framing. Furthermore, these latter sources were employed instead of expert ones, which were in fact the least used, and whose presence progressively declined during the analyzed period.

To study how power is configured, this article analyzes the first and second seasons of the TV Series House of Cards. The behavior patterns of the main character, Frank Underwood, were tracked to analyze his foundations, the means used, the scope and the type of power he wields. The theoretical approaches of Dahl (1957) and French and Bertram (1959) were used for constructing a group of categories that served as a guide in the search for index units. Therefore, the methodology is based on units (Barthes, 1970) identified within the dialogues, the iconic composition, and the actions of the character. The results obtained reveal that in the first season argumentation as a means to exercise power predominates, and manipulation predominates in the second season. Also, the media repertoire is much broader in the first season when the main character builds the scenarios to achieve his goals. These findings contribute to the construction of a broader understanding of power and its exercise.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effectiveness of the Egyptian Personal Data Protection Law No. 151 for 2020, as well as its implications for journalistic practice. More specifically, the focal point of this study was to explore how Egyptian journalists interpret the law and its implication for press freedom in Egypt. The underpinning theoretical framework was informed by the Authoritarian school of thought. Questionnaires were distributed to 199 journalists from both independent and semi-governmental representing thirteen official newspapers of Egypt, while in-depth interviews were done with (3) Editors, (4) journalists, and (3) human rights lawyers. The finding of the study indicated that the government placed restrictions on journalists by using Data Protection Law relating to the media. That law is negatively impacting journalists and media houses. It was clear from the findings that the journalists see the law as an obstacle to media independence, as it allows the government to exercise greater information control through digital policy and puts rules of regulation against journalists.

Companies use social media in their communication strategy to connect with their audiences via online brand communities and social media fan pages. In this context, the scientific community defines the term ‘engagement’ as the primary metric used to identify the degree to which brand and consumers are organically connected. This phenomenon gets measured by audience interactions with the brand content, which is the main factor stimulating participation and value perception in their relationship with the brand. Prior investigations show that the timing and duration of the messages published by the brand can predict the degree of social media engagement, however they do not provide the time and length patterns required for messages to increase engagement. For this purpose, we carried out a quantitative and descriptive content analysis of 14,067 Instagram posts from 14 Spanish brands across 10 industries. Findings allow us to conclude that brands are not fully optimising the scheduling of their timings during the working days and hours that drive the best level of interaction. Nonetheless, they do take advantage of the opportunity to publish longer messages to increase engagement. From a theorical and practical point of view, this analysis contributes to the understanding of the content factors that stimulate fan page engagement and provides guidelines for brand managers to efficiently define the content marketing strategy on Instagram.

Social media platforms are being used to shift the balance of power, functioning as tools of resistance for activist publics on social justice issues. This article uses a postmodern approach to public relations with the purpose of clarifying the role of dissensus in social media contexts, connecting it to the principles of the ethics of care that promote dialogue but not necessarily with the aim of achieving consensus. Scholars and practitioners can claim a broader role for public relations in society by considering and analyzing conflicting perspectives in digital communication as a way to engage with activist struggles in social justice and human rights causes. By applying critical discourse analysis (CDA) to a case study that articulates interdisciplinary concepts, this research analyzes the first national weekly Portuguese newspaper Expresso support for the anti-racist cause through its promotion of a manifesto and a Facebook post against racist intimidation. In a contemporary society characterized by fragmentation, taking a public stance on important social and political issues, as in the case analyzed, demands moving beyond consensus-driven communication. The data confirm that social media platforms are not necessarily dialogic spaces and that conflicting communicative perspectives may be a useful way to analyze social change in public relations theory and practice. By taking a public stand against racist intimidation, assuming the possible alienation of specific publics –and “Facebook bullying”– this private newspaper also demonstrated the practical application of the assumptions of the ethics of care.

The present work aims to analyse the meaning of the concept of friendship through the study of the work of the doctor and philosopher Pedro Laín Entralgo. The initial hypothesis of the study is that the concept of friendship has been used instrumentally by social media networks, and that these do not offer the conditions necessary to fully experience true friendship. To verify this, we focused on the study of the psychological dimensions of friendship proposed by the author, identifying a series of variables and conducting an analysis by means of a survey of university students who are active users of the platform. With these results the descriptive statistics were extracted and a nonparametric analysis was performed of the variables to determine if Facebook does in fact offer the conditions necessary for to experience true friendship in its psychological dimensions. As the results show, to experience true friendship on social networks is difficult, given that the nature of the interactions between users of the platform are not appropriate for this experience. In calling this different type of relationship friendship Facebook benefits from an attractive hook which leads users to generate contacts as a form of currency which benefits the business model of the social media platform. The concept of true friendship is altered, deformed and displaced in favour of other types of relationships.

Over the last decade, Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become gradually more prevalent in mass media and news agency newsrooms. This growing tendency has prompted intense debate about the negative impact on journalism, particularly on quality standards and ethical principles. Taking an explorative approach, this study aims to analyse the application of AI in newsrooms, focusing on the impact on news-making processes, media routines and profiles, highlighting the benefits and shortcomings, and finally, analysing the rise of ethical dilemmas. For this purpose, 15 in-depth interviews were conducted in two rounds, in 2019 and 2021, with a sample of journalists and other media professionals, academics, experts on the media industry, and providers of technology leading the work on AI. The international sample includes interviewees from the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany and Spain. The interviewees agree that AI will enhance journalists’ capabilities by saving time, augmenting the efficiency of the news-making processes and, therefore, increasing mass media industry productivity. However, a change of mind-set in the media environment is needed, and training on the use of these tools must be a priority given the lack of knowledge observed. Finally, the emergence of ethical issues underlines the need for continuous control and supervision of the processes undertaken by AI.

The news media have a strong influence on people’s perception of reality. But despite claims to objectivity, media organizations are, in general, politically biased (Patterson & Donsbach, 1996; Gaebler, 2017). The link between news media outlets and political organizations has been a critical question in political science and communication studies. To assess the closeness between the news media and particular political organizations, scholars have used different methods such as content analysis, undertaking surveys or adopting a political economy view. With the advent of social networks, new sources of data are now available to measure the relationship between media organizations and parties. Assuming that users coherently retweet political and news information (Wong, Tan, Sen & Chiang, 2016), and drawing on the retweet overlap network (RON) method (Guerrero-Solé, 2017), this research uses people’s perceived ideology of Spanish political parties (CIS, 2020) to propose a measure of the ideology of news media in Spain. Results show that scores align with the result of previous research on the ideology of the news media (Ceia, 2020). We also find that media outlets are, in general, politically polarized with two groups or clusters of news media being close to the left-wing parties UP and PSOE, and the other to the right-wing and far-right parties Cs, PP, and Vox. This research also underlines the media’s ideological stability over time.

Alternative news media in Norway have become visible in public debates. Partly because of news sharing on social media. Social media has become an arena for news, information, and public debate, and has also become a place to fight for the news agenda. The present study examines news sharing in social media in Norway and how right-wing alternative news outlets use social media to impact the news agenda. These are small organizations with only a handful of employees, but they have very proactive readers and feature a considerable amount of user-generated content. They are critical of immigration, particularly from Muslim countries, and of the political elite. They mimic traditional media in the way they organize and label their content, but their reporting is more subjective. The present study uses quantitative content analysis to reveal which topics are the most shared on social media, and from which news type of news organizations they come. It also looks at how news sharing differed in the days following a series of terrorist attacks and how the pattern changed during the course of a normal day. This leads to a discussion on participatory journalism and how news sharing can be seen as a part of the public debate.

The goal of the following text is to analyze the changes in television advertising in the banking and automobile sectors, according to the social context. The hypothesis is that communication is significantly influenced by the situational context, causing differences between the advertising of the two sectors. A multimodal discourse analysis is used, comparing twenty commercials from the banking and automobile sectors in 2019 and 2020, the period during which the lockdown due to COVID-19 took place. Based on a qualitative and quantitative analysis tables were developed with which to analyze general data such as the value proposition or target audience of the advert, or other special data like the text (verb tenses, rhetorical figures…), the image and the sound used. The fact that context is decisive in communication is made evident, and since this is different in every sector, the communication strategy is clearly different as well. However, the points that the two sectors have in common are remarkable: these range from talking about brands and products, to speaking for and about people.