Journalism and Media

This study addresses public perception of the relationship between artificial intelligence (AI) and disinformation. The level of general awareness of AI is considered, and based on this, an analysis is carried out of whether it may favor the creation and distribution of false content or, conversely, the public perceive its potential to counteract information disorders. A survey has been conducted on a representative sample of the Andalusian population aged 15 and over (1550 people). The results show that over 90% of the population have heard of AI, although it is less well known among the eldest age group (78%). There is a consensus that AI helps to produce (86%) and distribute (84%) fake news. Descriptive analyses show no major differences by sex, age, social class, ideology, type of activity or size of municipality, although those less educated tend to mention these negative effects to a lesser extent. However, 54% of the population consider that it may help in combating hoaxes, with women, the lower class and the left wing having positive views. Logistic regressions broadly confirm these results, showing that education, ideology and social class are the most relevant factors when explaining opinions about the role of AI in disinformation. Full article

The Trump era marked a turning point for political satire, where The Daily Show’s coverage of the last two election cycles reveals a dynamic interplay between satire, ideology, and democratic processes. This study examines how The Daily Show has progressively altered its satirical voice and multimodal strategies to capture the changing landscape of U.S. presidential elections, spotlighting the different eras of Trevor Noah in 2020 and Jon Stewart in 2024. It decodes how news satire along with visuals reflect political and cultural moments, and the way social and political representations are depicted in this show. To achieve these aims, a Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis (MCDA) approach is used to analyze the semiotic and multimodal features of four episodes of The Daily Show, ranging from Noah’s pandemic-era coverage of the 2020 elections to Stewart’s live studio format in 2024. This article reveals both hosts’ role in social and political representation by different means of satirical and multimodal techniques. It highlights how The Daily Show has remained a cultural touchstone, adapting its style and substance to meet the demands of its time. Full article

This study conducts a Critical Discourse Analysis of the masculinities of male characters in Doraemon, a famous Japanese manga series. It explores the masculinities in Doraemon from three perspectives by utilising the following Critical Discourse Analysis framework: text, process and society. Five male characters in Doraemon were selected as the main research objects. Firstly, the text analysis of the male characters in terms of their appearances, characteristics, behaviours and values reveals major masculine traits such as the maintenance of patriarchy, the pursuit and yearning for fame and fortune, competition and aggression. Analysing these masculinities can help remind audiences and consumers to be cautious about works that seemingly do not convey gender stereotypes to viewers. The process analysis identifies corresponding masculinities of the creator of Doraemon through his life experiences. Innovative spirit led him to create characters and manga that could both reflect and confront social reality and promote new gender concepts and ideas that were different from the mainstream at the time. The social analysis of Doraemon attributes the masculinities in the manga to Japanese culture, which has been deeply influenced by the culture of the salaryman, Confucianism, androcentrism and Bushido. For audiences in Japan, anime is a way of spreading and consolidating traditional Japanese cultural ideas, at the same time provoking reflection on whether these inherent gender roles are reasonable and should be perpetuated in the contemporary era. For audiences outside of Japan, this manga and cartoon is equivalent to a typical case of the export and recreation of Japanese culture to the world. This study conveys gender equality values, especially in children’s TV programmes. Full article

This study investigates the impact of the media’s secondary agenda-setting on public perception and policy priorities regarding the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) projects in Myanmar from to 2011–2024. Three hypotheses (Hs) were examined: H1 posits that media coverage aligns with public and policy perspectives; H2 proposes that media emphasis on specific attributes influences their prominence in public opinion and policymaking; and H3 suggests that public opinion mediates the relationship between media coverage and policy priorities, indicating an indirect media influence on policymaking. This study employed a cross-sectional research design, utilizing both quantitative content analysis and survey methodologies. The content comprises the analysis of two news outlets’ coverage (n = 144), surveys with 385 respondents (n = 385), and in-depth interviews with 30 participants (n = 30), and the findings revealed a significant positive correlation between media coverage and public opinion and policy priorities (r = 0.86, r = 0.81, respectively). SEM path analysis reveals that the media agenda indirectly shapes the policy agenda through the public agenda, with an indirect effect path coefficient of 0.718, highlighting the media’s role in policymaking processes. This is evidenced by a significant correlation between media coverage and public opinion (p < 0.05), and a strong direct association between public opinion and policy priorities (p < 0.05). This study extends the agenda-setting theory by empirically demonstrating the media’s indirect effect on policy formation in global infrastructure projects within a developing Southeast Asian country. Future studies should examine the evolution of media patterns across different administrations, including the current one. The results also suggest examining the broader media portrayal of governance issues and conducting extensive research on the media’s impact on public opinion. Full article

As the issues of the world’s overreliance on fossil fuels still remain unresolved, mainstream media play a central role in influencing public attitudes towards energy sources. This article aimed to consider Aristotle’s rhetorical appeals as manipulation means in the news coverage of the 2021–2022 global energy crisis. Using computer-aided text analysis, media framing, discourse, and rhetorical analyses, this paper analyzes 600 news articles published on the websites of the four mainstream media sources from the key countries that were affected by the crisis. The results confirmed emotionalization of the news coverage that occurred through the use of similar rhetorical appeals and emotive language means aimed at inducing positive or negative feelings and shaping public opinion. The UK and US mainstream media appeared to rely more on the opinions of political, business, and energy authorities, highlighting a high level of politicization of their coverage. The findings also indicated polarization of the attitudes in the coverage, with mainly negative narratives about fossil fuels and more positive narratives about renewable energies, which contributed to public opinion manipulation and energy decision-making. This study opens up perspectives for future research on media emotions and rhetorical appeals as powerful manipulation means in applied linguistics, rhetoric, and journalism. Full article

This work focuses on the digital communicative practices of influencers, as the COVID-19 pandemic has opened a communicational doorway from diverse perspectives, and social media has emerged as an important tool for people to maintain contact and acquire information. Additionally, the preventive and obligatory social distancing measures have driven us to reconsider methods of human interaction. Digital communication as the primary means of connection in the context of COVID-19 encompasses social interaction, entertainment, and informative channels. These facets usually coalesce within a single space or intersect when the practices of influencers are observed. Therefore, three influencers of Chinese origin residing in different countries are analysed, given that China was the initial epicentre of COVID-19. Influencers of Chinese descent living in the United Kingdom, Spain, and Argentina are selected to enable an exploration of more sociocultural diversity. The significance of influencers in disseminating information and content to society continues, according to observation, particularly among younger demographics. Although their main efforts do not reside in communicating COVID-19 within the context of the pandemic, their contribution indicates a complementary solution to fostering social interaction and debunking discourses of hatred aimed at individuals of Chinese or Asian descent. Full article

In a political climate of social polarization and distrust in public institutions, which in turn fosters misinformation, the European Union (EU) faces the challenge of becoming closer to its citizens. At the same time, the EU has well-established collaboration mechanisms at the local and regional levels. In this context, this study aims to analyze the Euroregions project, one of the strategies used by the EU to manage the different regions of Europe through cross-border collaboration. Thus, the main objective of this study is to find out, using the social network X (formerly Twitter), the communication strategies deployed by the regional governments that make up each of the five Spanish Euroregions on institutions of cross-border cooperation. The results show that regional governments do not promote effective communication strategies to publicize these Euroregions. Rather, these governments try to communicate their management success, focusing their discourse on the issue of European funds and thus generating a situation of misinformation around the benefits of belonging to the European Union. Our findings contribute to the budding literature on regional European areas, arguing that certain political actions could ameliorate the feeling of disaffection of the population towards European institutions. Full article

Public mass shootings pose a critical safety challenge in the U.S. This study investigates how media framing relates to public online engagement, focusing on gun regulation, mental health, and individual and political accountability across five major TV networks: ABC, CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, and NBC. Using a mixed-methods approach, the research analyzes 678 news reports and 7605 audience comments. Findings reveal significant differences in audience engagement based on framing, and in key variables show audiences taking opposite positions to their news network’s narratives. ABC, CNN, and NBC’s thematic framing, highlighting systemic failures, elicits more balanced responses, whereas Fox News and MSNBC’s episodic framing, emphasizing individual or political accountability, correlates with polarized reactions. This research extends media framing theories by showing how episodic framing reduces support for systemic reforms, emphasizing personal responsibility. The study offers crucial insights for scholars, policymakers, and journalists on media’s role in shaping public discourse on gun violence. Full article

This study seeks to investigate gender inequality in the Spanish’s official music charts from 2008 to 2020, using a quantitative methodology. The dataset comprises 1300 entries sourced from Promusicae’s official charts, evenly divided between albums and singles. Firstly, this analysis evaluates the frequency of artist representation; secondly, it assesses the success achieved by gender; and finally, it examines disparities in featured collaborations. The findings indicate that male artists appear almost three times more frequently than their female counterparts on both charts, achieve a higher amount of points, and dominate the role of featuring collaborations. Notably, Spanish female artists are predominantly absent from the top positions in the singles chart. Moreover, there is an absence of female bands in the top 50. The observed outcomes align with previous research concerning gender inequality in the United States and the United Kingdom, highlighting a persistent structural gender inequality within Spain’s music industry throughout the reviewed period, which systematically undermines the creativity of female artists. Full article

The Hamas surprise attack on southern Israel on 7 October 2023, and the Israeli military response unleashed a catastrophic episode of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and exacerbated broader tensions in the region. This study compares Al Jazeera English (AJE) and BBC’s coverage of and discourse around key events in the early stages of the 2023 Israel–Gaza War. Using critical discourse analysis as an analytical framework, this study employs mixed methods to compare transitivity, intertextuality, and lexicalization as key discursive features in the two outlets’ coverage of the war. Counter to previous qualitative works, this study quantitatively reveals no variation between AJE and BBC’s use of active voice yet points to key qualitative differences in the discursive treatment of Palestinians and the reporting on death tolls. It further demonstrates drastic differences in the quoting patterns and negative lexicalization of the early phases of the war, with AJE taking a more balanced approach and BBC refraining from emphasizing accusations against Israel of committing “genocide”, “ethnic cleansing”, “terrorism”, and “war crimes”. The study concludes with a discussion of the implications of differential discourses around the Gaza War and the Israeli–Palestinian conflict in international media. Full article

This study examines the correlation between Online Privacy Literacy (OPL) and privacy protection behaviour (PPB), including evidence of any correlation between the two. In addition, it considers whether factors of intention, attitude, perceived behaviour, subjective norms, and perceived behaviour control mediate the relationship between OPL and PPB online, and whether the relationships between demographic variables may act as moderators. This research took a sequential mixed-methods approach, with Study One employing an online survey of 1040 voluntary digital media users in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), and Study Two undertaking online interviews with ninety-five participants. The results found a relationship between OPL and PPB. In addition, subjective norms and perceived behaviour control also mediate relationship between OPL and PPB in MENA. Furthermore, while all the participants revealed paradoxical attitudes to PPB, the empirical study highlighted that the male participants tended to demonstrate greater concerns in relation to OPL. Full article

The study aims to investigate, describe, and contextualize the media theoretical characteristics of podcasts. Initially, it examines the media technological advancements that facilitated the emergence of podcasts, followed by an exploration of the parallel innovations in content production. Subsequently, the analysis focuses on key dimensions relevant to defining podcasts as a medium: the evolution of audio technology, the heterogeneity of content, and the patterns of individual and collective usage. The transition of podcasts from a novel cultural form to a recognized medium was a gradual process spanning approximately two decades. The aim of this study is to examine how podcasts emerged as a distinct medium, combining the characteristics of traditional radio with modern digital technologies, using Bolter and Grusin’s remediation concept as a media theoretical framework. This paper posits that the most suitable theoretical framework for understanding podcasts as a medium is Bolter and Grusin’s theory of remediation. According to this framework, media are defined through processes of remediation. In the case of podcasts, however, a unique form of convergent remediation emerges, wherein the medium integrates elements of traditional radio with the distinctive characteristics of networked communication. Full article

We investigate the use of Facebook in the Danish system over a two-month period in 2021, with an increased political polarization, during the COVID-19 lockdown. Based on the analysis of 5093 posts, we find indications of how party-system dynamics shape niche parties and catch-all parties’ use of Facebook. While catch-all party members share political information with relatively low reach, niche parties are much more inclined to criticize opponents, a strategy that often produces higher interactivity. Finally, we discuss the impact of party-system dynamics on the strategic use of Facebook among different parties. Our findings indicate that the social media use of niche parties with irrelevant features is often shaped by a centrifugal logic (competition towards the poles), while the social media use of catch-all parties is often shaped by a centripetal dynamic (competition towards the center). Full article

In this article, we present the findings of research focused on the emergence and development of an immigration-related news hate cycle in Spain. During the period from 24 to 29 October 2023, there was an unusual increase in social media posts about the Spanish government’s transfer of immigrants from the Canary Islands to the Spanish mainland. Based on the monitoring of 918 posts collected through AI media-monitoring software (Determ d.o.o), our study identify how hate speech against immigrants was generated and spread. In particular, we aim to identify the main actors and influencers involved in its creation, dissemination, and transformation, and how these actors manipulate interpretative frameworks by introducing arguments about a supposed comparative grievance between the Spanish people and immigrants in order to foment hatred and strengthen attitudes of rejection towards immigrants, presenting them as invaders, criminals, and terrorists. In this news cycle, hate speech reaches its peak when the press of trustworthy information echoes the disinformation. The analysis of the actors involved and the temporal sequence on social media and websites reveals how they achieve this. It also allows us to develop tools to counter the spread of hate speech. Full article

Since the 2015 refugee crisis, when over 850,000 refugees and migrants reached European shores, migration has sparked intense political and social debates that dominate Europe’s political and media agenda. As a key entry point for refugees and migrants, Greece plays a central role in this ongoing crisis. This study examines how migration has been framed in three major Greek news outlets from 2015 to 2022. This study is groundbreaking as it goes beyond analyzing how mainstream media portray migration, migrants, and refugees. It also examines how the media frame the rhetoric and actions of far-right and right-wing populist parties in relation to migration, offering a more comprehensive and nuanced perspective. Analyzing 9840 opinion articles, it identifies two dominant frames: (a) a ‘political threat’ frame, reflecting concerns over the rise of the far-right in Europe driven by anti-migration rhetoric, and (b) a dual ‘security-humanitarianism’ frame, highlighting tensions between security needs and the imperative to uphold the human rights of refugees and immigrants, reflecting broader societal anxieties. The existence of a political threat frame and a dual-identity frame leads to question the prior conceptualization of security threats and strictly segregated frames in prior literature regarding established framing practices on migration. Full article

This research analyzes to what extent qualified digital audiences perceive, understand, and value the factuality of news published by news media within a communicative ecosystem where unverified information proliferates on social media. Additionally, it examines which factors may influence what highly educated and critically capable information audiences expect to find when consuming journalism. A qualitative, comparative study was conducted from a sample obtained of the ten most relevant statements on socio-political topics with the highest number of interactions published on the Twitter (X) accounts of six European digital and legacy media (Médiapart and Le Monde, France; Tortoise and The Guardian, United Kingdom; El Diario.es and El País, Spain), along with their reflection and development on the respective websites. With an expanded analytical scope to 300 tweet-news items (n = 300), two in-person focus groups were held at the College of Europe in Natolin (Poland) with postgraduate students from nine countries to assess their perception of the degree of truthfulness, bias, quality, and credibility of the displayed information. The results indicate that young, qualified digital audiences feel secure and capable of detecting any disinformation disorder. They value the variety of mentioned and verifiable sources, the presence of expert voices, and data-based claims as key elements in constructing credible media narratives. Full article

This study examines the psychological and social impacts of the April 2024 Iranian combined attack on Israel—a new, globally unprecedented experience for civilians. Aware of incoming missiles and drones, Israelis followed real-time television coverage, including countdowns and visual simulations, which allowed them to anticipate the impacts of potential strikes on their homes and communities. The attack and its coverage blurred the boundaries between crisis and media spectacle, creating a rare convergence of immediate personal threat with real-time media framing. This paper explores how this unique format influenced public anxiety, news consumption, and crisis perception. The results reveal the profound psychological effects of this real-time threat monitoring, raising important questions about the media’s impact on framing crises such as live events and the corresponding effects on public mental health. Full article

Risk communication from the perspective of Extreme Event Attribution (EEA), which assesses the extent to which climate change influences various extreme weather events, has significant potential for climate change communication due to its ability to make the phenomenon more relatable to citizens. This study examines the digital conversation generated following the wave of wildfires in Spain in 2022, which was declared the worst year of the 21st century in terms of hectares burned. By using the Social Network Analysis (SNA) methodology, 145,081 tweets were analyzed to construct a mention network, capturing the digital clusters formed around this discussion and highlighting the predominant tones in the debate. The findings reveal that the conversation predominantly adopted a tone of outrage and assigned responsibility. This research study offers a renewed perspective on risk communication, highlighting significant challenges faced by environmental activism on social media and underscoring the need to improve communication strategies to increase awareness and mobilization around climate change. Full article