Strategies of the Spanish press in the face of the Twitter algorithm change. Analysis of tweets published between 2018-2020

Twitter recently celebrated its 15th anniversary. During this period, the platform has gone through several phases, culminating in a record number of subscribers and profits in 2021. Twitter is a household name all over the world and people know what it can or cannot provide, independent of the future growth that it may experience with new investments and updates. This article aims to verify two interrelated hypotheses, namely: the Spanish press already knows how to optimise the social network Twitter, as three decades have elapsed since its launch; and, secondly, the algorithm modification implemented by Twitter in 2018 has triggered a change in the positioning of the headers studied in this social network. In order to demonstrate both, the object of analysis will be conducted by a mixed approach through quantitative statistical processes (which will study the number of impacts and retweets and likes obtained), and inductive qualitative methods such as semi-structured interviews. This multidisciplinary approach will provide a more complete and in-depth analysis of the phenomenon. The research focuses on the period between 2018 and 2020, and addresses the participation on Twitter of the four main traditional newspapers (El País, La Vanguardia, ABC and El Mundo) as well as four native digital newspapers (20 Minutos, El Español, elDiario.es and El Huffpost). The analysis comprises more than 1.5 million tweets among the eight chosen newspapers.

Post-truth, gender issues and sports entertainment: the setting in Ibero-America’s main digital media for the Super Bowl halftime show 2020

The subject of this research topic is the frameworks and the media representation of the role of women in mass sports events. The case study corresponds to the participation for the first time in the halftime show of the “Super Bowl 2020” of two of the main Latin pop artists: Shakira and Jennifer López. The objective of the study is to characterize the treatment of the event given by the media (both generalist and sports-themed) of the 22 countries that make up Ibero-America together with that on social networks. The assumptions that have guided the research seek to determine whether an objectification of women in the image that is built from the media and on social networks really exists; and whether the frames that occur in both are identical or different. The methodological design includes a content analysis and impact measurement with Big Data technology. The main results and conclusions include the objectification of women in all the generalist media; and 50% in sports-themed media. Similarly, it should be noted that social media reflect the impact of conventional media more than tenfold and most importantly, a change in trend and progress is foreseen in media frameworks with a gender perspective.

The news gap in the «triple digital agenda»: The different interests of media, audience and networks

Digital transformations entail continually reviewing the various Communication models and processes. The influence of the media themselves as agenda setters for an ever more active audience and social networks that select and make certain content they receive viral are also affected by such a convergent context. This current research analyses a model called here the ‘triple agenda’ within the media themselves, in which the journalistic criterion of relevance and their audience’s preferences in the web and the networks travel along different paths. The proposal includes the users and the viral effect as influencing agents in the shape and selection of news, generating a news gap of interests between the media and their audiences. In order to test this model, we study an exploratory case in ElPaís.es, applying a content analysis to the information (n=420) distributed among the online front page, what is most read by the audience in its webpage, and the most viral in its Twitter account. The main objective is to check whether or not these three spheres of relevance operate independently, showing different informative interests f rom the thematic selection that the medium establishes f rom its agenda, its audience and its social networks. The results confirm that there is a gap in the informative interests of the three spheres analysed, especially between the agenda marked by the medium and the interests that are reflected in their web audience, which is more attracted to soft news and the clickbait technique; while there is a greater coincidence of interests between the newspaper’s front page and the users’ selection in their social networks.

Critical analysis of the main discourses of the Spanish press about the rescue of the ship «Aquarius»

This article presents an analysis of the main discourses that appear in a sample of Spanish newspapers before and after the arrival of the Aquarius at the port of Valencia in June 2018, in order to observe if there is a solidarity discourse or one that rejects the arrival of the rescued immigrants in Spain. The corpus consists of all the news published from June 10 to July 10, 2018 in the electronic version of the Spanish newspapers ABC, El Mundo, El País and La Vanguardia. The methodology is mainly qualitative-descriptive. Critical discourse analysis (CDA) was chosen to observe the main linguistic characteristics of the collected news items and the topics that appear in the articles. The analysis shows that the testimonies of politicians and members of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) predominate, but there are few testimonies of immigrants. The solidarity and acceptance of Spain are strengthened, as well as the defense of human rights. This contrasts with the discourses that the press presents after the arrival of the ship in Valencia. A discourse related to the health of immigrants and their need for help and resources predominates, a fact that contributes to the alarm of the majority group.

Investigating the efficacy of the Egyptian Data Protection Law on Media Freedom: Journalists’ perceptions

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.

Multimodal analysis of advertising discourse during the lockdown due to COVID-19: Comparison of the communication strategies of financial services and automotive products in Spain

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.

Analysis of COVID-19 news coverage by Televisión Española (TVE1)

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.

Expansion of the core business of traditional media companies in Spain through SVOD services

The strategic importance of the internet for television became evident in the early 2000s, even destabilizing its very concept and finally resulting in convergence towards a profound transformation of the sector. The introduction of global over-the-top (OTT) media services into local markets has led to strategic changes in multimedia groups. This study considers the subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) services of Atresmedia and Mediaset España, the two main traditional media organizations in Spain that form a duopoly in the country’s commercial television sector, with the aim of understanding and evaluating their positioning strategy in this market and the results obtained through the diversification of their core business. Based on an analysis of their content, price, and promotion policies and the results in terms of subscriptions and revenues, slight differences emerge regarding the strategy and scope of these two groups in their own environment in the sector. They compete for customers to achieve growth in the audiovisual market while seeking to retain a cross-media, multiplatform audience, as well as expand their core business of commercial linear television against a background of a reduction of advertising spend on television and the expected increase of hybrid financing models.

The ideology of media. Measuring the political leaning of Spanish news media through Twitter users’ interactions

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 on social media in Norway

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.