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

Departing from a broader sociological study, this article presents exploratory research seeking to analyse practices of online information exchange on the consumption of medicines and food supplements among students, mainly to improve cognitive performance. It aims to show that the Internet is a relevant space which should be considered when analysing where lay people, specifically students, get information about medicines. The empirical field was limited to online open discussion forums, websites, and blogs registered in Portugal, and the collected information was subjected to a qualitative content analysis. The research took place between January 2021 and February 2022, and the analysed threads date back to March 2015. The results show that young people use these platforms to ask questions related to the consumption of medicines and supplements for cognitive performance. While sharing experiences is central to the validation of practices and behaviours, key elements in this discussion also include the construction of a shared social identity, the possibility of anonymity, and the attribution of credibility to the sources of information.

Today’s audiovisual advertising is heard more than seen, as many viewers feel overloaded with visual information or engage in multitasking while viewing. The fact that many viewers are not watching the screen is a problem that should concern the entire advertising industry. Are there technological solutions that enable us to hear what we do not see? Audio description (AD) is an established option in the field of visual impairment, but is it the only option to make advertising accessible to people who are not looking at the images? This study considers these questions, applying a methodology based on Qualitative Data Analysis (QDA) and combining Grounded Theory and the focus group model as a data collection technique. Three focus groups ⎼two comprising people with a visual disability and the third made up of people without one explored the question of whether contemporary advertising has been drifting towards an exclusion of spectators with visual impairment. Participant responses were split between the view that commercials should incorporate AD but with clear improvements that take viewer opinion into account and the belief that advertising should return to its origins and make its soundtrack more explicit, perhaps rendering AD unnecessary.

This study analyses the extent to which European legislation and, in particular, the latest regulatory initiatives for audiovisual media and for digital markets and services affect the regulation of public service media (PSM) in Spain. A three-fold analysis is performed using a document review methodology. Firstly, the influence of European competition policies on the origin, development and adaptation of PSM to the digital market is studied. Secondly, the transposition into Spanish law of the 2018 Audiovisual Media Services Directive (EU, 2018) is evaluated. Third and lastly, the impact of the draft European Acts referring to digital platforms on PSM in Spain and the European Union (European Commission, 2020a; 2020b) is analysed, as is that of the European Media Freedom Act (European Commission, 2022). The concept of Europeanisation (Harcourt, 2002) is taken as the basis for the assessment of such impact. The conclusions show that while the European regulatory umbrella is a necessary and influential framework, it is insufficient when it comes to understanding the regulatory and political development of PSM in Spain. The path dependence and circumstances of each country are crucial to understanding the why and how of specific regulation. There is European convergence on economic and competition policy protection issues, but not on political and cultural issues, such as the definition of PSM governance or structure, where the European Union’s influence is much weaker.

Social media and prosumers have encouraged participatory creativity in the era of platformization. In this context, successful platforms such as YouTube and TikTok have facilitated users interact with music content in a wide variety of meaningful and evocative videos. In the light of research on the cultural prosumption of Internet content, as well as the global exchange of musical data, which is leading an emerging and innovative digital convergence, this study analyses the intersection between digital music and users through the Music Prosumer Questionnaire (MuPQ). This tool consists of three dimensions and 21 items based on (a) music preferences, (b) use of social media, and (c) music engagement. For this purpose, we collected the response of 698 users from Spain and Italy. The results showed that digital and visual music is essential to users’ life as a means of expression and relationship with other people. In particular, in their role as music curator, are more interested in “music watching” than in blind listening, which is related to mainstream music viewing dynamics. These findings provide new insights for understanding how music evolves according to the relationship between users and social media beyond technological progress.

This study explores the specific characteristics of science news stories posted on social media platforms during the first phase of the global pandemic crisis (the first semester of 2020). The focus of the study is to enhance our understanding of the selection criteria for science-related news content posted on social media platforms. Our approach takes into consideration the evolving technological environment of these platforms and the new relationships between media professionals and social media users. Our findings indicate that, under specific circumstances, scientific discoveries may be prioritized in the selection of news stories. We also suggest specific additions to the framework proposed by Harcup and O’Neil (2017), indicating that news stories during crisis situations are more internationally oriented, where audience proximity is created not around “nearby” events but those occurring in other countries around the world. In times of crisis, the main target of news stories is not simply to attract the audience’s interest with classic clickbait tactics but to respond to the immediate socio-political context in a meaningful way.

This paper aims to deepen our understanding of the relationship between young people in Mexico and disinformation, while shedding light on their practices and perceptions around this phenomenon. I have chosen a qualitative perspective to delve into the ways that Mexican college students interact and deal with the growing problem of false news in the current media landscape. Thus, I conducted semi-structured interviews (N = 28) using an elicitation technique, during which participants were exposed to real samples of disinformation content to encourage a conversation around the type of false news that they come across in their daily lives. Results reveal nuances in the ways that college students prefer social media over traditional media, even though they report finding more disinformation in the former. They also show the impact that students’ attitudes and habits have on their relationship with disinformation. Moreover, the study presents evidence that college students critically question disinformation, do not take it at face value, and are not prone to share it. However, findings also highlight differences related to the format in which the false content is presented. For example, TikTok videos were more likely to effectively deceive the viewer, more so than images shared on Facebook. Students also believe that older people are more likely to believe in disinformation, potentially indicating a third-person effect of this content. Lastly, this exploration emphasizes the need to further examine the broader consequences of disinformation and believing in false content, such as a reduced interest in political information.

If in recent years the European Union (EU) has had to face complex and multifactorial “poly-crises” (such as Brexit, refugees or the euro), the pandemic caused by COVID-19 has been an unprecedented event on a global scale with important implications at all levels. Indeed, it has reinforced public health issues aimed at protecting the population as nodal elements of the policies implemented by this organization. This research aims to analyze the different organizational communication strategies on Twitter implemented by the main EU institutions during the COVID-19 vaccination campaign, in order to examine the presence of this exceptional milestone. This study has been carried out using an eminently quantitative methodology, based on a content analysis to quantify the different variables and indicators established for the publications of the official profiles of the European Commission, the European Parliament and the European Council. The proposed categories focus on exploring their predominant thematic areas, as well as main purposes/attributed functions. In the light of the results obtained, it is concluded that the vaccination campaign is a milestone with a considerable volume of publications by all profiles. However, among the attributed functions, the distribution of aseptic information has been predominant, which is why it is discussed whether these institutions have sufficiently taken advantage of the possibilities offered by the digital environment of Twitter for the dissemination of the European message.

This bibliographic review of academic research on emoji reveals how the bulk of studies accepts it as a language but do not develop detailed linguistic analysis that could support this claim: they accept the clues provided by the initial studies, as if the scientific community had already reached such a consensus. However, the truth is that the fields in which emoji have generated the greatest academic interest (computer science, psychology and cognitive science) have considered the study of their linguistic nature a minor issue. Therefore, research on emoji has been growing over the years, widening the scope of its contributions, but with a common core made up of few basic notions about its linguistic condition that has important blind spots, in which Linguistics hasn’t done (generally) its work to place it in this new context for communication that the digital environments represent, despite the supports provided by multimodality and visual language theory. From these two disciplines, some authors have boldly suggested the emoji’s status as a gesture. However, to analyse its linguistic nature and behaviour, it is more accurate to understand the emoji, not as a gesture, but as a simplified representation of a gesture, without the unique features that a personal gesture has. The emoji seems to be the tool that, with fewer resources, best ensures that the interlocutor can understand the intentionality with which the sender has written the message.

Internal communication turns into the most valuable aspect of strengthening the relationship between the organization and employees since it causes employees to become involved in maintaining the organization's sustainability during the crisis, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic. By interviewing 10 Human Resource Officers, this study examines how to engage with the employees and enhance trust relationships through expanding the role of internal communication when COVID-19 was in the air. This study reveals that, as a department with a huge responsibility to build a relationship with employees during the pandemic, Human Resource Officers use various methods to communicate with the employees, including face-to-face and mediated communication. Internal communication built in this pandemic encourages trust and engagement with the employees. Human Resource Officers expand their internal communication role to strengthen employee engagement and build trust relationships, particularly in mediated communication. This study advances knowledge of the significance of human resource officers' roles in selecting internal communication strategies to foster employee engagement and trust during times of crisis.

In a climate of increasing social and political polarisation, there is much interest in dialogue and bridging differences. This article investigates the dramatisation of dialogic conflict resolution, examining how the psychological science of bridging differences can be utilised to create realistic and emotionally engaging narratives that highlight the transformative impact of dialogue on character development and relational dynamics. Relational conflicts have long been recognised as possible catalysts for character transformation, and complex narratives (Mittell, 2015) are particularly appropriate for a nuanced representation of characters’ psychological experiences throughout the process. This study draws upon extensive psychological and communication research on bridging differences compiled by Shigeoka et al. (2020) and UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center (2021). It reorganises this research into a horizontal timeline of behaviours, highlighting their practical application during the conflict resolution process. It then makes a cognitive poetics analysis of how these behaviours may be observed in a case study of relational conflict from the complex television series This is Us (NBC, 2016-2022). By observing the impact these behaviours have on the transformation of characters, the study explores how credible dialogic relational conflicts can lead to verisimilar character transformation on screen. In addition, it considers how an artistic interpretation of the science of bridging differences can contribute to our understanding of dialogue in practice.