Scipedia: Documents published in 2020

Publicación de los valores de las bibliotecas universitarias españolas a través de sus sedes web

Scipedia content — Thu, 02 Feb 2023 11:46:08 +0100

El objetivo del trabajo es analizar los valores que orientan las decisiones y la práctica profesional de los bibliotecarios de las universidades públicas españolas, así como la forma en que los comunican a través de sus sedes web. La búsqueda de estas declaraciThe article aims to shed light on the values that guide professional practice in Spanish university libraries and the strategies deployed to publicise them on library websites. Identifying the statements that inform each library staff’s behaviour called for analysing the corporate documents published on such sites. Value visibility and accessibility were assessed on the grounds of the length of the route from the home page. The prominence of the corporate document containing theThe article aims to shed light on the values that guide professional practice in Spanish university libraries and the strategies deployed to publicise them on library websites. Identifying the statements that inform each library staff’s behaviour called for analysing the corporate documents published on such sites. Value visibility and accessibility were assessed on the grounds of the length of the route from the home pagThe article aims to shed light on the values that guide professional practice in Spanish university libraries and the strategies deployed to publicise them on library websites. Identifying the statements that inform each library staff’s behaviour called for analysing the corporate documents published on such sites. Value visibility and accessibility were assessed on the grounds of the length of the route from the home page. The prominence of the corporate document containing the information was also studied. The analysis initially revealed values relating to the administration of public assets, such as engagement with the institution, its services and users. That was followed by professional values such as defence of access to information, data and science. The values most frequently espoused were innovation and professionalism. Libraries are encouraged to define their values which, along with their mission and vision, are a significant component of their internal and external strategy and communication policy. Their publication, in turn, redounds to transparency and enhances the relationship with their target audience. e. The prominence of the corporate document containing the information was also studied. The analysis initially revealed values relating to the administration of public assets, such as engagement with the institution, its services and users. That was followed by professional values such as defence of access to information, data and science. The values most frequently espoused were innovation and professionalism. Libraries are encouraged to define their values which, along with their mission and vision, are a significant component of their internal and external strategy and communication policy. Their publication, in turn, redounds to transparency and enhances the relationship with their target audience. information was also studied. The analysis initially revealed values relating to the administration of public assets, such as engagement with the institution, its services and users. That was followed by professional values such as defence of access to information, data and science. The values most frequently espoused were innovation and professionalism. Libraries are encouraged to define their values which, along with their mission and vision, are a significant component of their internal and external strategy and communication policy. Their publication, in turn, redounds to transparency and enhances the relationship with their target audience. ones que enmarcan el comportamiento del personal de cada biblioteca conllevó el análisis de los documentos corporativos publicados en la web. Para evaluar la visibilidad y la accesibilidad que cada biblioteca otorga a los valores, se tuvo en cuenta la ruta de acceso desde la home de la biblioteca. Asimismo se consideró el nivel de relevancia del documento corporativo elegido para su difusión. Fruto del análisis se detectaron, en primer lugar, valores vinculados a la administración de lo público como el compromiso hacia la institución, los servicios y los usuarios. A continuación valores propiamente identitarios de la profesión como la defensa del acceso a la información, a los datos y a la ciencia. Los que más se repiten son la innovación y la profesionalidad. Se recomienda que las bibliotecas definan y comuniquen los valores por ser, junto a la misión y la visión, elementos de gran interés estratégico y comunicativo, tanto interno como externo, porque aportan ventajas a cualquier organización, al mostrarse transparente y permitir la identificación con su público objetivo.

Evolution of the big deals use in the public universities of the Castile and Leon region, Spain

Scipedia content — Thu, 02 Feb 2023 11:45:45 +0100

The evolution of the use of electronic scientific journals in the 2007-2018 period by the academic communities of the public universities of Castilla and Leon, members the Bucle consortium, is studied. Downloads of articles distributed by four broad-spectrum providers are analyzed: Emerald, ScienceDirect, SpringerLink, and Wiley. Unexpectedly, in spite of the new ways of accessing content, this analysis shows that the number of downloads in public universities in Castile and Leon has increased. However, it has been found that despite the growth, a few journals concentrate most of the downloads and that a large number of titles are not used. It has been verified that the universities with a higher number of staff and greater diversity of knowledge areas use a wider range of titles and thus obtain a higher benefit from their contracts. All of the above leads us to question the system of contracting big deals, i.e., bundles of hundreds of multidisciplinary journals and other resources. In a moment of change promoted by Plan S, we consider it more necessary than ever to understand the situation of the provision of serial scientific publications and to find the best strategy to have access to them.

Meloda 5: A metric to assess open data reusability

Scipedia content — Thu, 02 Feb 2023 11:45:27 +0100

An updated metric developed to assess the degree of open data reusability, called MEtric for the evaLuation of Open DAta: Meloda 5 is presented. Previous version of the metric, Meloda 4, had six dimensions: the legal licensing of data, the mechanisms to access the data, the technical standards of the datasets, the data model, the geographic content of the data and the updating frequency. With all these dimensions, the metric provides a quantitative evaluation about how reusable the datasets released are. During the last five years, this metric has been cited and used by some other authors but the extensive use of the metric has brought to light some of its limitations. In order to get deeper insights into the topic, a panel of international experts has been surveyed about two aspects of the metric. First aspect was what other factors should be considered in order to qualify the reusability of a released dataset. And the second aspect was the internal structure, the levels for every dimension of the metric; if they should be increased, merged, removed or divided. Considering the results of the survey, first, we identify the factors / dimensions that should be kept: legal licensing, access to information, technical standard, standardization, geolocation content and updating frequency of data. Second, we consider the inclusion of two new dimensions: dissemination and reputation. Then, we present the new internal structure, the levels for each dimension, and the measures to evaluate the degree of reuse of each dataset. Finally, a standardization of the metric for other steps of the data impact process, data reuse analytics and data-driven services generation are presented together with future research lines.

Evolución del uso de los big deals en las universidades públicas de Castilla y León

Scipedia content — Thu, 02 Feb 2023 11:45:11 +0100

Se estudia la evolución del uso de revistas científicas electrónicas en el período 2007-2018 realizado por las comunidades académicas de las universidades públicas de Castilla y León adscritas al consorcio Bucle. Se analizan las descargas de artículos distribuidos por cuatro proveedores de amplio espectro: Emerald, ScienceDirect, SpringerLink y Wiley. Inesperadamente, dadas las nuevas vías de acceso a los contenidos, este análisis muestra que en las universidades públicas de Castilla y León se ha incrementado el número de descargas. Sin embargo se ha constatado que pese al crecimiento, unas pocas revistas aglutinan la mayor parte de las descargas y que un elevado número de títulos no se utiliza. Se verifica que las universidades con más plantilla y mayor diversidad de áreas de conocimiento utilizan un abanico de títulos más amplio y obtienen así un mayor rendimiento de las contrataciones. Todo lo anterior nos lleva a cuestionar el sistema de contratación de paquetes cerrados y multidisciplinares de centenares de revistas y otros recursos o big deals. En un momento de cambio impulsado por el Plan S, consideramos más necesario que nunca conocer la situación de partida en la provisión de contenidos de publicaciones científicas seriadas que ayude a establecer de manera fundamentada las estrategias adecuadas y más eficientes de acceso a la información científica.

Governance of European public service media: Centralized and politicized power

Scipedia content — Thu, 02 Feb 2023 11:44:51 +0100

The different governance models of the European public service broadcasters reflect the centralized structural political power of the country centralized in each of their States or regions, lacking normative changes to ensure and reinforce their independence, trust and legitimacy. The recent controversies around RTVE and RAI are two examples of how the governance of these organizations reflect the power structures of the society. None of the three models that characterize the European configuration presents young and communication-related profiles. Most of their board members are still men aged over 50, and even over 65, professionally linked to legal or economic backgrounds. The study is completed with an analysis of the professionalism of governance bodies, an essential requirement to eliminate systems based on partisan quotas.

How media face the crisis: Challenges, failures and opportunities of the digital fracture

Scipedia content — Thu, 02 Feb 2023 11:44:38 +0100

In this review and analysis article we try to describe which is the polyhedral scenario the media industry, and most specially the legacy media, are facing to try to solve the crisis provoked by the digital disruption. Media are in a hybrid system where some other actors and platforms are competing to attract users’ attention and to achieve the revenues generated by news reporting activity. Journalism, as we knew it, was the industrial society’s son. The new social and economic model is bringing major changes to media companies, an industry that opted for a rather conservative strategy of taking a position in the World Wide Web, a shy development and adaptation to the possibilities of the digital language. New media are giving their contents mainly for free, a phenomenon that only recently seems to be reverted in some way. In this article we analyze those movements, the nature of news, first a commodity and now maybe a utility, and its value in the digital market. Also, we discuss the business models that the media companies are intending to implement decidedly in the next future, the lobbying activity of that industry in order to modify legal structures such as intellectual property and copyright, and the position that journalists adopt in this complex scenario.

Counterpublics on YouTube: The case of trans communities

Scipedia content — Thu, 02 Feb 2023 11:44:24 +0100

The accessibility and democratization of online media has allowed voices to emerge around issues with low visibility. In this study we are looking at the trans community. Whereas publics are generated in mainstream media, counterpublics emerge from the margins, generating alternative spaces for debate and discussion. YouTube has emerged as a space for collaborative learning and participation, breaking the boundaries between public/private and collective/personal. Taking Elsa Ruiz Cómica and Alejandro P. E.’s YouTube channels as a case study, we intend to understand how their respective counter-publics are configured, and to analyze their strategies of technological appropriation and activism. Thanks to the debate generated by their videos, these trans youtubers manage to transfer innovative concepts to a wider audience, contributing to the recognition of diverse (sexual) identities, and to the questioning of gender binarism.

Digitization of protected works: Software for the detection of out of commerce works

Scipedia content — Thu, 02 Feb 2023 11:44:09 +0100

The digitization of protected works in the context of cultural preservation is becoming more important, according to the latest proposal of the European Commission directive on copyright in the digital single market, pending final approval. This may represent an opportunity for European libraries, which can create digital collections with those works that are manifestly outside commercial channels. This requires a set of computer programs capable of extracting information from catalogs, and provide a first detection of the owners of the works. This research approach the methodology for the development of a software capable of crossing information from library bibliographic catalogs, with commercial catalogs, in order to determine the presence or absence of their books. In its development, the difficulties and solutions used for its construction are explained, derived from the heterogeneity of the consulted catalogs. Finally, it is concluded that the creation of this type of computer applications is feasible and very useful, since an average of more than 90% correct answers can be obtained in the distinction of non-commercial works. However, there are still problems when trying to differentiate the editions or even interpreting the false positives, derived from aspects such as the algorithms of automatic suggestion of works.

Measuring the quality of management in education. Review article

Scipedia content — Thu, 02 Feb 2023 11:43:54 +0100

The objective of this study is to perform a review and contextualize the existing definitions of educational quality from the managerial point of view. We will be presenting also the factors that have been considered to support managerial decision making within educational institutions. Relevant research related to the different models for measuring educational quality and the different factors that affect this quality are discussed. The existing methodological gap of the statistical processes, the theoretical evidences and the number of investigations in every level of education are identified. The results provide a framework for future research and can become the basis for the design and construction of multidimensional models for educational management quality measurement needs of educational institutions. The results evidence also the lack of a single criterion to build the indicators, as well as the fact that there is a strong of subjectivity in the measuring processes.

5G as an opportunity for the rupture of the duopoly in the mobile market

Scipedia content — Thu, 02 Feb 2023 11:43:39 +0100

Mobile networks transformation into the main support for Internet access since last decade made Apple and Alphabet the most lucrative companies in a market where they were not present until then. The reinterpretation of platform model as multilateral markets where the value of service providers tends to increase, largely relinquishing control over supply, relegated telecommunications operators to access providers role in a market built on their own networks. The evolution towards the 5G could reverse this tendency to concentration by opening new markets for operators in the industrial sector within the Internet of Things (IoT), but also deepening the personalization of the offer to the user. This article analyzes the main milestones in the evolution of mobile networks, the strategies employed by Apple and Alphabet to position themselves as leaders in the most profitable niches, the basic characteristics of 5G and why this system can be an opportunity for operators to overcome the current duopoly.

Technological distance between knowledge bases of partner organizations and the value of joint innovation in inter-organizational alliances. Study based on technological patents

Scipedia content — Thu, 02 Feb 2023 11:43:26 +0100

This research examines the relationship between technological distance (DT)and four indicators of the value of innovations or new knowledge - relative position of the patent (RPP), revealed technological advantage (RTA), Herfindahl-Hirschman Patent Index (HHI) and patent cites (PC), in inter-organizational alliances of the biotechnology sector. The research was developed using the multiple correspondence analysis. The results confirm that the technological distance of the partners (DT) of the alliance is not related to the patent cites (PC) indicator. On the other hand, it was established that there is a relationship of the DT with the RTA, RPP and the HHI; however, it was observed that the DT with the RPP have a strong linear relationship, while the relationship of DT with RTA and HHI, it seems to show an inverted U configuration. In this way, statistically it is demonstrated that the technological distance, measured in terms of the difference of the knowledge bases between the organizations that make up the alliance, is a factor that is associated in a significant way to the value of innovation.

Scientific communication related to digital technology topics in archival science in Spain (2001-2018)

Scipedia content — Thu, 02 Feb 2023 10:55:05 +0100

Between 2001 and 2018, the period covered by this research, it is perceived through the scientific publications on Archival Science in Spain that the topic of digital technology is increasingly present in the theoretical reflections, practices, and archival methodological options. Based on this observation, the objective of this article is to identify the scope of the thematic interrelations between archives, archival science, and digital technology. The research is exploratory, descriptive, and analytical in nature, based on a quantitative and qualitative analysis of scientific articles available in the Tábula, Lligall, and Boletín de la Anabad journals, published from 2001 to 2018, and organized by categories. The results in quantitative terms indicate that the most prominent category is what we call “Mutual influences between archives, archival science, and digital technology.” The category that occupies the second place is “Description of experiences,” followed by “Relations between archives, archival science, and digital technology” and “Theoretical and practical challenges” at almost the same level, albeit far behind the first two categories. In addition, it is concluded that there is a tendency in current archiving to explore the technological possibilities for its development rather than innovate in theoretical or epistemological terms.

Analysis of national scientific domains in the Communication field (Scopus, 2003-2018)

Scipedia content — Thu, 02 Feb 2023 10:54:48 +0100

Scientific research in the communication field has experienced great growth in recent years. Recent technological changes, as well as the emergence of Web 2.0 and 3.0 and new forms of communication, such as social networks, have led to new and varied studies in the discipline. This paper analyzes the scientific production of the 27 countries with the greatest scientific production in the communication field in the period from 2003 to 2018. The results indicate that: the most productive countries are the USA, UK, and Spain; there is less international collaboration than in other disciplines, but there is a network of European collaboration that is quite dense and has great impact, and another network in Pacific countries (Asia + Oceania), albeit with lower density and impact.

Impacto de las emociones vertidas por diarios digitales en Twitter

Scipedia content — Thu, 02 Feb 2023 10:54:29 +0100

The use of Twitter by newspapers is widespread and is a way to keep readers informed in real time. In this article, we analyze the discourse of the messages released by the ten main general information newspapers in Spain and the reactions they provoked on the social network. The objective is to analyze whether the emotional discourse of the news in each newspaper caused greater dissemination among and attention from users, as well as to determine the emotions and feelings expressed by them. To do so, news about important events such as court judgements, street riots, and general elections was followed between October and November 2019. A total of 124,897 tweets collected using machine-learning techniques were analyzed by the application of algorithms which allowed the determination of emotions and valences of feelings. We carried out statistical studies and produced graphs showing the dependence between emotional variables and positive or negative sentimental valence. The results showed that, in general, newspapers do not use an excessive amount of emotional speech with the aim of impacting their public. However, differences were found among the newspapers in terms of trying to encourage reader loyalty. The reaction of the users was more linked to the informative facts themselves and the emotions they provoked than to the type of emotional and/or polarized discourse. The day-to-day information determines to a large extent what is consumed by Twitter users, in which changing modes of speech are observed depending on the editorial line of each newspaper.

Citizenship memory: preservation of archives and records of social movements and citizen mobilizations in Spain

Scipedia content — Thu, 02 Feb 2023 10:54:15 +0100

We analyzed the archiving strategies of five citizen mobilizations that have taken place in Spain since 2004. All of them have in common an explicit will of the protagonists to keep the records generated during the events, in order to build an account of what happened “from below” and to achieve recognition of their interests and rights. In this article, we analyze why each group of documents constitutes an archival fonds, the involvement of citizens in its configuration (capture, management, preservation, and dissemination of information), and the response of archival institutions for its preservation and custody. We confirm that citizens want to leave their documentary trace and use archives as a weapon of empowerment. We argue the need for greater involvement of trustworthy public archival institutions to safeguard, beyond the institutional memory, records created by citizens. The archives should make them accessible and should facilitate citizen participation. Their acquisition policies should be transparent and open to all of society.

Gender disparities in UK research publishing: Differences between fields, methods and topics

Scipedia content — Thu, 02 Feb 2023 10:53:57 +0100

Gender disparities persist in UK research, with female minorities in most science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) subjects but female majorities in others. The nature of the gender disparity differences between subjects needs to be understood if effective remedial actions are to be targeted at STEM subjects suffering from a lack of women, in contrast to other subjects without shortages. Evidence from the USA suggests that women engage more in people-related subjects, qualitative methods, veterinary science and cell biology and men engage more in thing-related subjects, power/control fields, patient-related research, abstraction and quantitative methods, except surveys. This article investigates gender disparity differences in UK first authorship for journal articles in nearly all of science split into 26 broad and 308 narrow Scopus fields. The results largely replicate the USA but suggest that more life science topics may be female-associated in the UK and patient-related research might not be male-associated. UK STEM gender parity initiatives might therefore emphasise people-oriented, and perhaps socially positive, aspects of currently masculine STEM topics and approaches (e.g., abstraction, mathematical quantitative methods), and promote female-friendly topics, methods and goals within male-dominated fields in addition to tacking implicit and explicit sexism and providing a supportive working environment.

The brain drain in Spanish Communication research: the perspective of Spanish academics abroad

Scipedia content — Thu, 02 Feb 2023 10:53:41 +0100

Spanish Communication scholars working at foreign universities offer a vantage point to examine the access to an academic career in Spain and the international impact of Spanish scientific production. The reasons for their departure to other countries lie in the deficiencies of the Spanish university system. Drawing from the concepts of habitus (Pierre Bourdieu) and autopoiesis (Niklas Luhmann), 13 semistructured interviews were conducted with researchers chosen by snowball sampling. The informants highlight faculty hiring mechanisms, which in their view have not improved significantly even after the introduction of an accreditation system in 2008. The results also show the poor image of Spanish Communication research abroad, as it is regarded as disconnected from the international trends in the field. The improvements identified by the consulted sample indicate a slow but steady incorporation of Spanish research into the international sphere. However, this is insufficient, in the opinion of the interviewees, to stimulate a possible return of emigrated talent to Spanish higher education institutions. Insufficient and intermittent research funding is one of the most relevant roadblocks. Convergence with the systems leading the world’s scientific production today is still perceived as an unlikely and remote scenario.

Framing effects in experimental realism designs: frame consumption and political engagement in the 2018 Mexican election campaign

Scipedia content — Thu, 02 Feb 2023 10:53:28 +0100

International literature demonstrates the influence of news media on the political attitudes and behaviors of citizens, stemming from the coverage and framing of politics. In the context of election campaigns, this news framing effect has usually been analyzed based on experimental designs, mainly through the manipulation of strategic game and issue frames. However, the need to conduct studies with greater realism has recently been raised, to increase the external validity and generalization of the findings. This approach, called experimental realism, seeks to link media content with opinion measurements to generate consumption indicators of certain types of news frames. Taking this procedure as a reference, this paper presents results on the impact of informative content consumption, focused on either the electoral strategy or programmatic proposals, in the development of the political engagement of citizens during the 2018 Mexican presidential campaign. The findings reveal an important effect of issue frame consumption on citizen political engagement according to all the measured indicators.

Why are some websites researched more than others? A review of research into the global top twenty

Scipedia content — Thu, 02 Feb 2023 10:53:14 +0100

The web is central to the work and social lives of a substantial fraction of the world’s population, but the role of popular websites may not always be subject to academic scrutiny. This is a concern if social scientists are unable to understand an aspect of users’ daily lives because one or more major websites have been ignored. To test whether popular websites may be ignored in academia, this article assesses the volume and citation impact of research mentioning any of twenty major websites. The results are consistent with the user geographic base affecting research interest and citation impact. In addition, site affordances that are useful for research also influence academic interest. Because of the latter factor, however, it is not possible to estimate the extent of academic knowledge about a site from the number of publications that mention it. Nevertheless, the virtual absence of international research about some globally important Chinese and Russian websites is a serious limitation for those seeking to understand reasons for their web success, the markets they serve or the users that spend time on them. The sites investigated were Google, YouTube, Facebook, Baidu, Wikipedia, QQ, Tmall, Taobao, Yahoo, Amazon, Twitter, Sohu, Live, VK, JD, Instagram, Sina, Weibo, Yandex, and 360.

Discovering, reading, publishing, sharing, and monitoring progress: behavior of junior researchers

Scipedia content — Thu, 02 Feb 2023 10:53:02 +0100

The scientific communication habits and practices of the new wave of Spanish researchers are analyzed based on the results of an international survey (2019). The results obtained from 100 participants support those previously obtained from interviews conducted between 2016 and 2018 in Spain under the Harbingers Project, and show similarities to and differences from those collected from the mentioned survey in other countries covered by the Project in its second phase. Spanish researchers have two contradictory faces: They are innovative in their perceptions but slightly less so in their practices regarding open access and the use of social media. However, these new attitudes and habits are motivated by a desire to promote their own work and gain recognition; In this sense, they are conservative. The competition in which they are immersed regarding the achievement of tenure and, therefore, the need to focus on their abilities that will be evaluated represent a limitation on enjoying the learning process and dedicating themselves to the practices of open science to which their generation is naturally prone.

A decade of scholarly research on Communication in Spain (2007-2018)

Scipedia content — Thu, 02 Feb 2023 10:52:47 +0100

We analyzed the results obtained for the total count between 2007 and 2018 of (1) doctoral theses defended in the 55 universities with undergraduate and/or graduate studies in communication that offer doctoral degrees, (2) competitive projects in state calls in the social sciences and humanities areas where the object of study includes a socially significant dimension of “communication” practices, and (3) papers resulting from R&D projects published in reference journals in the area of communication. These documents are the most representative of the research activity of faculty, because they constitute the published results originating from research that is recognized and legitimized by academic life, without which such documents could not have been published. Thus, the articles collected here constitute a census of publications based on previous research, since all those articles whose object of study was not previous research were not selected, e.g., essays, or epistemological reviews of authors, schools, and/or theoretical or methodological trends. Papers presented at Asociación Española de Investigación de la Comunicación (AE-IC) congresses, which are also being studied as part of the MapCom project, could also have been included; however, they are only considered tangentially herein because only a minority of them are expressly linked to research results. This overview of the productivity of communication research in Spain over a decade analyzes documents grouped by universities, Autonomous Communities, author gender, and years. A total of 4,158 documents have been analyzed. The results reflect the influence of the scientific policies of the research quality assessment agencies.

Supervision of doctoral dissertations as a reflection of Library and Information Science in Spain: actors and topics

Scipedia content — Thu, 02 Feb 2023 10:52:32 +0100

Doctoral dissertations enable the transfer of research skills and capacities to future generations and the consolidation of lines of research in a given area of knowledge. The field of Library and Information Science in public universities in Spain is characterized by the supervision of doctoral theses by academics in the area. We identified active professors during the 2019–2020 academic year, their date of appointment as civil servants within the public university system, the dissertations that they supervised, and their participation in papers published in scientific journals. The analysis included 644 theses. About a quarter (23%) of university faculty have never supervised a doctoral thesis, and most faculty members and tenured professors (60%) show a lower than average rate of adviserships per year since their academic appointment. There is a high concentration of PhD advisers in just a few institutions and academics (8% of university professors have supervised 42% of the dissertations), with an important gender imbalance: women supervised an average of 1.8 dissertations, compared with 2.6 for men. Information units and services, study metrics and scientific publications, and information sources are the topics of 47% of the dissertations. Many of the professors with 10 or more adviserships (n/N = 12/18) lack a subject area specialization, and their role in PhD supervision was not related to their participation in research activities oriented toward publishing in scientific journals. Our results suggest that considering supervision of doctoral theses as an important academic merit could contribute to a further concentration of power and social capital among a small group of advisers. This phenomenon could reduce the plurality of topics addressed and favor suboptimal adviserships. The imbalances described emerge as another threat, exacerbating the epistemological crisis in the discipline and in the university studies in this area of knowledge.

Contribución de la comunicación institucional de la investigación a su impacto y visibilidad. Caso de la Universidad Carlos III de Madrid

Scipedia content — Thu, 02 Feb 2023 10:52:17 +0100

Institutional offices for the communication and dissemination of science are gaining in importance at Spanish universities, and their activities can contribute to increasing the visibility and reputation of researchers. The objective of this study is to analyze the relations between the institutional communication of research results to the public and the impact and academic visibility of scientific papers. For this purpose, science communication and dissemination undertaken through press releases on R+D+i results from the Science Culture and Innovation Unit (SCIU) at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M) were selected as a case study. This SCIU was chosen because it has published yearly reports for more than a decade on the impact in the media of its press releases. Press dossiers of the last five years available (2014-2018) were examined, and a database was created of the citations received by texts published in scientific journals indexed in the Web of Science as well as their mentions on social networks through the company Altmetric.com. After that, this information was statistically analyzed. The main results show that the journal impact index is important for obtaining academic citations or appearing in Twitter conversations. However, the influence of the journal impact factor turns out to be lower when it comes to popularizing scientific publications in the media. Furthermore, the statistical evidence points to the fact that scientific publications disseminated through the SCIU receive proportionally more citations than research that has not been disseminated through the institutional channel.

Topics and research methods in Information Science (2000-2019): a literature review

Scipedia content — Thu, 02 Feb 2023 10:52:03 +0100

A systematic literature review is carried out, detailing the research topics and the methods and techniques used in information science in studies published between 2000 and 2019. The results obtained allow us to affirm that there is no consensus on the core topics of information science, as these evolve and change dynamically in relation to other disciplines, and with the dominant social and cultural contexts. With regard to the research methods and techniques, it can be stated that they have mostly been adopted from social sciences, with the addition of numerical methods, especially in the fields of bibliometric and scientometric research.

Fifty years of digital literacy studies: A meta-research for interdisciplinary and conceptual convergence

Scipedia content — Thu, 02 Feb 2023 10:51:50 +0100

The following research has as its starting point the previous existence of different approaches to the study of digital literacy, which reflect a specialisation by area of study as well as connections and complementarity between them. The paper analyses research from the last 50 years through 11 key terms associated with the study of this subject. The article seeks to understand the contribution of each term for an integrated conceptualisation of digital literacy. From the data science approach, the methodology used is based on a systematized review of the literature and a network analysis using Gephi. The study analyses 16,753 articles from WoS and 5,809 from Scopus, between the period of 1968 to 2017. The results present the input to each key term studied as a map of keywords and a conceptual framework in different levels of analysis; in these, we show digital literacy as a central term that connects and integrates the others, and we define it as a process that integrates all the perspectives. The conclusions emphasise the comprehensive sense of digital literacy and its social condition, as well as the transversality to human life. This research aims to understand the relationships that exist between the different areas and contribute to the debate from a meta-theoretical level, validating meta-research for this interdisciplinary purpose.

Accessibility for people with low vision of statistical graphics in the digital press: A methodological proposal based on heuristic indicators

Scipedia content — Thu, 02 Feb 2023 10:51:33 +0100

A new set of heuristic indicators is presented for the evaluation of the accessibility of statistical charts for people with impaired vision and color vision deficiency (CVD), as well as a methodology for their application. To validate the proposal, a heuristic evaluation of the accessibility of 35 charts published in 5 Spanish and 2 international newspapers is carried out. The results show that the proposed indicators enable the detection of a greater number of unique problems, present a better distribution of problems among heuristics, and enable the detection of more severe and specific problems compared with the Web content accessibility guidelines (WCAG). Regarding the problems detected, the lack of text alternatives to charts in bitmap format stands out, a problem that also occurs in the case of charts in SVG format, for which standards such as WAI-ARIA are not used for labeling the marks. The latter also underlines the poor use of indicators to highlight the elements that receive focus, or their inaccessibility through a keyboard interface. Other common problems with both types of charts are the non-text contrast ratio, which in many cases is below the minimum required, too small a font size, or the non-systematization of the use of color palettes appropriate for people with CVD. The comparison between national and international media reveals that, although higher scores are obtained by international media, they share a significant number of the problems identified for Spanish media. The list of principles obtained, beyond proving helpful for evaluative purposes, is also useful as a guide for creating accessible charts that could be easily incorporated into the style guides of the analyzed media.

Historiography and symbolic capital of Communication, Film and Television Studies in Spain

Scipedia content — Thu, 02 Feb 2023 10:51:18 +0100

The current positioning of research on Communication from a historiographic perspective and its legitimacy through the creation of symbolic capital are addressed. The research is divided into three parts: (1) the origins of the academic disciplines of Communication are inspected through the creation of the first faculties of Communication Sciences and the incorporation of their first professors; (2) the emergence of the areas of knowledge, which establish the current division within the disciplines of Communication Sciences, is observed; (3) the creation of symbolic capital related to the discipline is analyzed through the awarding of honorary doctorates (honoris causa) by the faculties of Communication Sciences in Spain.

Analysis of Library and Information Science research projects of the Spanish RTD plan on societal challenges (2012-2018)

Scipedia content — Thu, 02 Feb 2023 10:51:05 +0100

An analysis of RTD projects supported by the Spanish RTD plan on societal challenges whose research focuses on the field of Library and Information Science between 2012 and 2018 is performed. Having identified the projects, the following variables are studied: percentage of projects with respect to other areas, beneficiary institutions, relationship with other disciplines, area and gender of main researchers, research topics, duration of projects, average funding, and degree of proximity to Library and Information Science. After commenting on the results obtained, a series of conclusions and proposals for improvement are established and future lines of research are presented.

Assessment of the thematic evolution of Library and Information Science (LIS) research in Spanish in the LISA database using latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) (1978-2019)

Scipedia content — Thu, 02 Feb 2023 10:50:49 +0100

The thematic evolution of LIS research in Spanish between 1978 and 2019 is analyzed within the international context. To this end, relevant bibliographic references were retrieved from the Library and Information Science Abstracts (LISA) database, and their titles and abstracts were treated using the latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) method, a statistical thematic modeling technique. Nineteen thematic sets were found and analyzed, labeled, and systematized in four main areas: processes, information technologies, libraries, and specialized documentations. Next, the results in Spanish were compared with international results obtained previously using the same methodology. In conclusion, LIS literature in Spanish mainly follows the international trends: during the last 50 years, the thematic focus of research has shifted from libraries and informational organizations to users and the development of specific systems and solutions. However, LIS research in Spanish also presents distinct characteristics: the importance of bibliometric research and biomedical documentation; research in the library area; and a certain delay in addressing technological, legal, and educational aspects. Although the selection of LISA articles depends on editorial decisions, the application of LDA to the peer-reviewed literature in Spanish provided results that are consistent with the international global trends, studies on other similar sources, and overall the state of the art.

Exploration of the nonprofessional profile of the fashion micro instagramer in Spain

Scipedia content — Thu, 02 Feb 2023 10:50:33 +0100

The evolution of social networks in general, and Instagram in particular, has led to the emergence and proliferation of digital influencers, a figure that has taken over from fashion bloggers and managed to capture the attention of communication professionals in the sector due to their potential to generate engagement with their public. The objective of the present research is to determine the profile of micro fashion influencers, their casuistics, and the protocols of action that they use when managing their Instagram accounts. For this, qualitative research was carried out through a semistructured interview of a sample selected using the nonprobabilistic snowball technique. Specifically, between May and June 2018, fieldwork was carried out with a group of ten fashion micro instagramers in Spain, analyzing four research questions regarding how micro instagramers interact with and their relationship with brands and communication companies, the nature of their publications, and their motivations for being active on the mentioned social network. The responses of the micro instagramers, with a combined audience of 240,439 followers, suggest that their nonprofessional profile is characterized by the absence of collaboration agreements and minimum economic remuneration. In addition, they are aware of their technical deficiencies when creating and editing their posts.

How European adolescents get engaged with films?: Psychometric properties of the narrative engagement scale

Scipedia content — Thu, 02 Feb 2023 10:50:19 +0100

Narrative engagement is a fundamental factor in understanding the enjoyment of narratives and their effects. This study seeks to develop a measure of engagement for youngsters and to gather evidence of validity and reliability for a sample of European adolescents. After watching a dramatic film, 310 European high school students (68.71% Italian, 17.74% Spanish and 13.55% German) responded to the proposed narrative engagement scale. The results confirmed the existence of a common factorial model of four factors for Germans and Italians and invariance measurement between samples. The mean score comparison shows that German adolescents have a greater understanding of the narrative than Italians. Also, Germans demonstrated greater emotional understanding than Spaniards. These results contribute to the comprehension of the narrative engagement and illuminate the conceptualization of the psychological phenomena related to the reception of dramatic narratives by youngsters of different cultures across Europe.

Informative coverage in Twitter by the Spanish reference newspapers on the 10N electoral campaign

Scipedia content — Thu, 02 Feb 2023 10:50:07 +0100

This paper analyzes the information coverage by the Spanish newspapers El país, El mundo, ABC, and La vanguardia in Twitter on the electoral campaign prior to the 10 November 2019 general elections. A content analysis of all tweets published by these media regarding the elections (n = 1,462) between Friday 1 and Saturday 9 November reveals that, although there are differences in the production patterns and features of the messages, the subject received notable attention in all the newspapers. The coverage gravitated around two main themes: the 4N electoral debate, and campaign events. The results reveal that, although most of the tweets had a neutral tone, messages with clear positioning corresponding to the editorial line of the newspaper were also published, albeit to a lesser extent. During the electoral period, the media agenda revolved around this issue, accounting for around one-fifth of all pieces published on Twitter. Newspapers do not take advantage of the dialogic nature or possibilities offered by this social network to create a community among their readers, limiting themselves to the dissemination of content from their digital edition.

The commoditization of the publication culture in Spain: a cost- and time-effective model to systematize Communication Sciences

Scipedia content — Thu, 02 Feb 2023 10:49:54 +0100

This paper explores the current paradigm of the publication culture in Spain, examining the negative and positive forces that shape the dominant dynamics in the production, dissemination and evaluation of scholars’ works. Following the intentional sampling of maximum variety, we planned a set of interviews with scholars in the area of communication that represented the heterogeneity of academic ranks, gender, and territories of Spain. The final output consisted of thirty-five semi-structured interviews that took place between May 2018 and May 2019. Scholarship on how researchers and university professors experience publication cultures is abundant, however the national and international studies that address this phenomenon from a holistic approach are practically non-existent. Comprising three actions or systems -production, dissemination and evaluation-, the current publishing culture is depicted as a structure tuned to a set of global-accepted requirements that seem easy to understand and replicate. Under such model, most of the scholars experience discomfort because overproduction is widespread, social transference is rare, and the production and diffusion of scientific works frequently occur at the expense of scholars themselves. The goal seems to be inspired by the cost- and time-effective system of evaluation processes that, despite academics’ general opposition, official bodies and university departments have adopted to circumvent the costly task of assessing scientists’ outcomes on an individual basis.

Impact of university social responsibility communication on university selection and the mediating effect of reputation

Scipedia content — Thu, 02 Feb 2023 10:49:40 +0100

The emerging concept of university social responsibility (USR) consists in the fulfillment of the mission of the university in terms of ethical standards, community support, respect for human beings, and respect for the environment. Thus, universities must not only provide professional training but also instill ethical principles in students to allow them to behave as good citizens and help solve community problems. On the other hand, competition for students requires efficient management of university reputation and communication with their stakeholders, to demonstrate the accomplishment of the university’s mission and attract potential students. The objective of this paper is thus to explain the causal relationship between communication about university social responsibility (USR) activities through institutional websites and university selection, as well as the role of reputation. Research work was carried out based on an explanatory cross-sectional design, with a sample of 356 subjects from a population of 11th-grade students from public and private schools in the City of Barranquilla (Colombia). The results revealed that USR communication through institutional websites has a significant influence on university selection, not only directly but also indirectly, through reputation as a mediating variable. These findings contribute at a theoretical level by providing empirical evidence to understand and explain the analyzed topic. Furthermore, the results provide useful information to evaluate USR disclosure and implement strategies to make progress on USR issues.

Transparency and citizen participation web pages and portals for managing public relations with local stakeholders

Scipedia content — Thu, 02 Feb 2023 10:49:25 +0100

The aim of this research is to determine whether web pages and portals aimed at municipal transparency are in fact used as public relations tools directed at liaison with local stakeholders. The study focuses on the municipalities of the Autonomous Community of Valencia, using a methodology based on the InfoParticipa map via a content and regression analysis. Five main models of transparency web pages and portals were identified in this study, all showing, in general, a low level of compliance with transparency and participation indicators. The online site, although the most heavily used by the municipalities, was the model with the lowest levels of compliance. Separate websites or website sections, the model most widely used by municipalities with more than 50,000 inhabitants, greatly favor relations with citizens and local associations. In contrast, the media and participatory bodies are the stakeholders that are less well addressed from the perspective of public relations in the transparency web pages and portals adopting all the models. The results obtained by linear regression analysis show that independent websites and website sections are significant for the whole dataset. Nevertheless, for small municipalities, independent websites and the Diputación (provincial government) template are the most significant models. The latter model provides the opportunity to address stakeholder relationships for small municipalities that cannot afford to draw up their own designs.

A taxonomic proposal for multiliteracies and their competences

Scipedia content — Thu, 02 Feb 2023 10:49:11 +0100

The aim of this study is to analyze information and communication competences and their alphabets, both of which are necessary for effective knowledge-based content management. The evolution of the associated specialties or techniques, i.e., literacies, which have emerged to address this task more effectively are considered. The hypothesis that a taxonomic model can be used to order and coordinate literacies, in combination with an application metamodel within the framework of the Voremetur research project, was investigated. The methodology used to complete this analysis adopts an evolutionary approach comprising: (1) a first divergent phase describing the era of literacies and multiple literacies, in which field-specific competences and tools prevail; (2) a second convergent phase of information and digital literacy, whose associated competences become the targets of knowledge; and (3) a third divergent phase, based on multiliteracies, as a consequence of Big Data and its effects, to address which data literacy, together with “digital competences,” emerged as new and complex ways of processing web content. Based on this premise, the classifications introduced by Bawden, Stordy, Secker & Coonan, and Mackey & Jacobson are proposed as a taxonomic model, using the metamodel definition from the Voremetur project. This results in the proposal of a multiliteracy including implementations that range from visual literacy and new media literacy, strategies for the selection of keywords as taxonomic labels, semantic control to define taxonomic categories, to a metamodel definition based on the categories obtained in the taxonomy. The development of the metamodel is presented through a program oriented at higher education within the framework of academic literacy, as a means for incorporation into curricula, including a definition of its paradigmatic and conceptual framework, the factors relevant to its programming and instructional design, educommunication as a didactic methodology approach, and digital educational objects as didactic materials, followed by an appropriate evaluation.

Public relations research in Spain

Scipedia content — Thu, 02 Feb 2023 10:48:58 +0100

Between 2004 and 2006, the two most relevant scientific associations for academics and researchers in the field of public relations and communication were set up in Spain with the mission of strengthening and disseminating research and promoting forums and networks for scientific exchange: the Association of Researchers in Public Relations (AIRP) and the Spanish Association for Communication Research (AE-IC). Based on a study of the doctoral theses presented and contributions to international conferences organized by both associations in the period between 2004 and 2018, our main objective is to determine, describe, and analyze research trends in the academic field of public relations in the Spanish context. To this end, content analysis is applied as a qualitative and quantitative method in the social sciences. Among the most relevant results, the following stand out: the predominance of women researchers in the field, public relations and digital communication as the main topics, the use of mixed methodology, and content analysis as the main research technique. The diagnosis of the evolution and management of public relations research in Spain presented herein defines the corresponding trends and challenges.

Crisis communication and food safety. Case of listeriosis in larded meat

Scipedia content — Thu, 02 Feb 2023 10:48:43 +0100

The purpose of this research is to study the main communication policies carried out by various public institutions, in accordance with national and European food safety control systems, in order to manage the growing number and severity of food crises. To this end, the outbreak of listeriosis in La Mechá tufted meat company registered in the summer of 2019 in Spain has been selected as one of the cases, together with the crisis caused by the bacteria E. coli in 2011, in which the communication policy of institutions has caused more controversy. Given the commitment of national and European authorities to strengthen the systems of alerts and health and food control, the study of this case aims to put on the table the suitability of the crisis communication management and to underline its importance as the main tool for managing food crises, so that conflicts can be controlled and alarmism caused by certain information can be reduced. In the face of a food crisis, the only instrument available to the final consumer to protect his health is information. If the competent authorities issue discrepant, ambiguous, speculative or contradictory messages, the feeling of lack of control and misinformation will increase. On the other hand, the complexity of the area in which these crises develop, food safety, requires that public authorities and those responsible for developing these communication policies know how national and European safety controls work, including the Rapid Alert System for Food and Feed (RASFF), which allows the responsible national and European bodies to exchange information quickly and efficiently, and the relevant legislation.

Corporate image or social engagement: Twitter discourse on corporate social responsibility (CSR) in public relations strategies in the energy sector

Scipedia content — Thu, 02 Feb 2023 10:48:27 +0100

Social media have opened up new opportunities for the creation of innovative public relations strategies focused on establishing and cultivating relationships with stakeholders on the basis of meaningful dialogue. Consideration of the interrelation between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and public relations highlights new areas for exploration and engagement. Both the dialogical and semantic perspectives reveal the performative and conversational aspects of social media. In general, both the linguistic panorama of CSR and digital media as part of a PR strategy open new possibilities for a dialogical, interactive, meaningful relationship strategy for corporate image management. Based on the linguistic approach to CSR and the Communication Management Approach, this paper explores the linguistic use of Twitter as a primary dialogical strategy to effectively enhance interactive dialogue-based relationships with the stakeholders of the top 50 companies in the energy sector based on tweet data from 2016. Semantic analysis was conducted by advanced text mining and clustering techniques on 3042 tweets monitored in 2017 that contained the leading CSR-related hashtags and keywords. The results demonstrated that the top energy companies apply a defensive and symbolic perspective, mainly for branding purposes. The corporate discourse dominates over a meaningful conversational strategy to foster interaction with stakeholders around sustainability issues on Twitter. The study reveals a homogenized interrelation between CSR, social media, and public relations. The results reveal a tendency for isomorphy in the communication models applied by the companies in the energy sector. Furthermore, similarities in semantics and thus strong tendencies to mutually mimic dialogical strategies are also observed. The semantic narrative built around the brand indicates a limited orientation towards CSR and sustainability. As such, it does not contribute to the creation of a dialogical interaction and meaningful relationships with multiple stakeholders on Twitter, in the high-risk sector represented by the energy industry.

Organizational communication strategies on social networks: analysis of the French far-right’s electoral campaigns on Twitter

Scipedia content — Thu, 02 Feb 2023 10:48:13 +0100

Since the 2014 European elections, populist organizations have been gaining a share of power, as finally ratified by their voters in May 2019. In the case of France, the rise of National Rally (NR) is, partially, due to a change of its communication strategy. In particular, in its online strategy framework for the European elections, a total of 1,256 tweets published by its official Twitter account during the 15-day electoral campaigns in 2014 and 2019 have been analyzed. The results confirm a reconfiguration of its online communicative strategy and how this shift allowed the organization to create a closer link with its audience to increase and build loyalty among the number of users who could become NR voters.

Connected minors and online risks: inappropriate content, inappropriate use of information, and excessive use of the internet

Scipedia content — Thu, 02 Feb 2023 10:47:58 +0100

This article presents some of the most relevant results of a survey of 2,900 Spanish minors aged between 9 and 17 years who are Internet users and who were asked about their online habits. It focuses on an analysis of their exposure to inappropriate content on the Internet, typified as information about injury to others or self-injury, ways to commit suicide, anorexia, bulimia, hate messages, drug use, or violent images. It also analyzes the exposure to experiences with viruses or malware and online fraud, and risks related to the misuse of personal information, sharenting, and excessive use. Differences are observed by age groups, and also by gender, for example, regarding the exposure to hate messages against certain groups, which during adolescence is noticeably more frequent among girls than among boys. The results, which are partially comparable to those of two equivalent surveys carried out in 2010 and 2015, allow us to conclude that the exposure to online risks has increased in recent years.

Estándares de calidad en el periodismo de datos: fuentes, narrativas y visualizaciones en los Data Journalism Awards 2019

Scipedia content — Thu, 02 Feb 2023 10:47:43 +0100

Este estudio examina las características de los trabajos de periodismo de datos con mayor reconocimiento internacional, con la intención de ofrecer una radiografía actual y extraer elementos comunes en el ejercicio de esta práctica periodística. Mediante un análisis de contenido se diseccionan 42 proyectos nominados a los Data Journalism Awards 2019, seleccionados por la Global Editors Network por cumplir estándares de calidad en el marco de esta especialidad. Las piezas se examinan desde tres perspectivas: las propiedades de la historia, los datos y las visualizaciones empleadas. Entre otras constataciones, los resultados evidencian la transversalidad de esta técnica de tratamiento de la actualidad, moldeable para ser empleada en cualquier área temática, y el predominio de temas como la salud, la ciencia y el medioambiente, debido en parte a circunstancias relacionadas con la urgencia climática y los desafíos medioambientales establecidos. Existe variedad de fuentes pero se detecta una fuerte dependencia de las documentales procedentes de gobiernos u oficinas públicas (59,52%) y un uso mayoritario de las infografías como forma de visualización (45,24%), presentadas generalmente en forma de scrollytelling. Asimismo, se deduce que la calidad está condicionada por la naturaleza de las fuentes, el carácter innovador del análisis estadístico realizado, la forma de recopilar la información y la complejidad de las visualizaciones incorporadas. El periodismo de datos es una práctica periodística en constante cambio, por eso resulta necesario repensar los parámetros de calidad a medida que evoluciona como especialización para adaptarlos a las nuevas formas de materialización de la información.

Software applications for managing digital repositories: an updated review

Scipedia content — Thu, 02 Feb 2023 10:47:31 +0100

A review of software applications for managing digital repositories is presented. Information managers have at their disposal several alternatives beyond those that have achieved greater popularity in the area of academic repositories: DSpace and EPrints. Existing alternatives have evolved and implemented mayor improvements in their more recent versions, with the aim of adopting the latest standards for the semantic web and linked data. This paper provides a description of the new features incorporated into the latest versions of the most popular open-source products. The selection has been made using as a reference the information offered by the Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC), Digital Curation Center (DCC), National Digital Stewardship Alliance (NDSA), and Open Preservation Foundation. The conclusions of the study indicate that the combined use of different tools is needed to support a complete archive and digital preservation program, as no single application seems to be able to provide the features required for an effective strategy.

Opportunities for content co-creation in digital native newspapers

Scipedia content — Thu, 02 Feb 2023 10:47:16 +0100

The participation of readers in the creation of information products increases the value of the media and the satisfaction of co-creators. Such involvement of the public especially affects productive processes, although without ignoring their participation in development and marketing, and implies a democratization of information, personalized experiences, and diverse points of view that favor informative pluralism. In this research we analyze an international sample of five digital native newspapers to verify the extent to which they allow their audiences to co-create content. We use an exploratory methodology to verify the existence of spaces designed for co-creation and prepare evaluation scales for the level of utility of these sites and examine their accessibility from the perspective of citizen empowerment, openness of content, and web architecture. The results show that the degree of implementation achieved by newspapers is lower than may be expected for purely digital media and provide a warning about the need to devise new formulas for co-creation and involve audiences more in generating content, while also indicating the need to review in depth the role of readers as sources. The limitations on citizen empowerment that derive from the absence of advertising in business models restrict open access, while web hierarchies hamper collaboration. The need for citizens to clearly identify which products have been produced by journalists versus co-creators is also diagnosed.

Academic impact and perceived value of Wikipedia as a primary learning resource in higher education

Scipedia content — Thu, 02 Feb 2023 10:47:00 +0100

Wikipedia is an open educational resource whose frequency of use and importance in higher education are growing. However, empirical evidence about Wikipedia’s contribution to students’ academic performance is scant and many higher education actors express concern regarding its value. By applying a combined theoretical and empirical approach, we examine the impact of Wikipedia as a primary learning resource on both students’ academic performance and the perceived value of Wikipedia. Based on an experimental research design conducted with 2,330 university students, we show that the primary use of Wikipedia in combination with conventional learning resources has a positive effect on students’ academic performance, and that this effect is moderated by course discipline. Furthermore, the students’ perceived value of Wikipedia is positive and, generally, not influenced by individual academic performance.

Origins and development of the agenda-setting theory in Communication: trends in Spain (2014-2019)

Scipedia content — Thu, 02 Feb 2023 10:46:45 +0100

The core hypothesis of the theory of agenda setting is that there is a process of transfer of salience from the media agenda to the public agenda. Since its original conception in the early 1970s, the explanatory model of ‘issue-agenda setting’ (first level) has been extended to help explain the transfer of the media’s ‘attribute agenda’ (second level) and ‘network agenda’ (third level) to the public agenda. This article provides a review of the agenda-setting model and its theoretical and empirical development, ending with a section that summarizes and discusses research studies published in this area in the last five years in Spain. Despite the broad influence of the agenda-setting theory in communication research in this country, Despite the broad influence of the agenda-setting theory in communication research in this country, many of the studies use the theory as a general framework for conducting a content analysis, withouh empirically testing any process of salience transfer.

Treatment and participation of older people in mass media: qualified opinion of specialized journalists

Scipedia content — Thu, 02 Feb 2023 10:46:31 +0100

A deliberative democracy should be characterized by the principle of justice regarding the participation of those affected in matters of interest to them. However, this principle is not always satisfied in many areas of social communication. This becomes particularly serious in the case of those who are affected by such matters but are in a vulnerable condition. This is the case in the area of information concerning older people, who remain underrepresented in terms of both quantity and quality in content related to them. This article presents data that highlight this fact, obtained from a questionnaire sent to 100 media professionals specialized in content for the elderly in Spain. The results of this questionnaire reflect, among other aspects, the extent to which professionals specialized in this field consider the presence of older people in the media to be low or very low and also serve to raise awareness of the discriminatory image that the media often transmits. The data obtained from the questionnaire sent to professionals also confirm that the image transmitted by the media is stereotyped, does not show the plural image of this group, and therefore does not fit its reality.

Presence of think tanks in the Spanish digital press

Scipedia content — Thu, 02 Feb 2023 10:46:18 +0100

The study of think tanks in Spain has been growing in the last few years with an equally increasing number of social and grassroots movements. This article offers content analysis results from a selection of eight Spanish think tanks in the digital press during a seven-year period, adding new conclusions to previous literature for the same period. Not only does this research explore the appearance on the media, but also the type of mentions and authorship of the articles and blogs included in the digital press, contributing to a deeper study of think tanks. The objective of this study is to analyse the limited presence of Spanish think tanks in media outlets and whether their appearance is ideologically motivated. The article built a constructed week sampling and followed a content analysis methodology to gather quantitative and qualitative elements from the selected sampling (n=1,101). The paper concludes that the presence of think tanks in the Spanish digital press is limited, causing not only a lack of knowledge of their existence but also raising questions about how they try to impact on the policymaking process.

#lasperiodistasparamos, gestation of a feminist professional conscience

Scipedia content — Thu, 02 Feb 2023 10:46:05 +0100

The gestation and consolidation of feminist activism that has brought together thousands of communication professionals in Spain, following the strike called on March 8, 2018 are analyzed. United through the Telegram messaging application and through the hashtag #lasperiodistasparamos on Twitter, a speech analysis of the 13,163 tweets published with this label, from February to September 2018, has been carried out. The content of the conversations on their Telegram channel has also been analyzed as well as the opinions formulated in in-depth interviews with 20 activists of this cyber community. Through a quantitative and qualitative methodology applied to categories extracted in the speeches, the causes of this activism, the effectiveness of its channels of organization and communication and the initiatives derived in the urban space have been observed. In conclusion, this pioneering awareness of union between Spanish communication professionals has been motivated by the crisis of capitalism and by a new global, technological and intergenerational feminist wave. This activism has managed for the first time to cover feminism from the mass media and has added to the protest women of different ages, ideologies and professions. In addition, it has resulted in the constitution of various organizations and associations of journalism professionals, smaller networks with the ability to decide and act for feminism within the urban space in regional areas. Especially they work for deontological awareness for the gender perspective in journalistic production.

Spanish think tanks: longitudinal analysis of their presence in national and international media (2004-2018)

Scipedia content — Thu, 02 Feb 2023 10:45:51 +0100

The objective of this study is to explore the presence of Spanish think tanks in national and international media based on a quantitative analysis of content published on 70 think tanks over 15 years (2004-2018). The published content was obtained through Factiva®, a database from Dow Jones & Company, that provides access to more than 35,000 mass media around the world. The results suggest that the representation of think tanks in the media has gradually increased over the years, regardless of the economic cycle or political situation, quadrupling over the analyzed period. Moreover, an increase of the hegemony of a few think tanks in the grouping of messages on the public debate and their concentration in a few media and media agencies are confirmed.

Research on Library and Information Science in Spain: diagnosis 2020

Scipedia content — Thu, 02 Feb 2023 10:42:55 +0100

Spanish research in Documentation (or Library and Information Science, LIS) began to stand out in the 1980s, in parallel with the creation of university studies in Library and Information Science, and it increased its activity significantly until the year 2000. In this period, research in Documentation was oriented to disseminate rather than innovate, and also had a low international impact, shortage of economic and human resources, and poor methodological quality. In the first 20 years of the 21st century, we have witnessed an outstanding growth and diversification of this research activity, which has led to the overcoming of most of the problems mentioned before. The objective of the text is to present a general overview of the development of Documentation research in Spain in the last 20 years based on the analysis of five fundamental aspects: publications (articles and monographs), topics and methodologies, scientific journals, research projects and doctoral theses. General descriptive data from public statistical sources and comments from a bibliographic review are provided for each of them. As a conclusion, a very positive global balance of Spanish research in Documentation in the last 20 years stands out, not only a quantitative increase (in publications, theses, research projects, etc.) but also a qualitative improvement in the use of research methods and techniques, as well as a diversification of the research topics. In any case, internationalization (collaboration with foreign authors) and the presentation of international projects could be improved. Finally, there is a risk in near future related to aging and the absence of generational renewal of the research staff that can will slow down this growth.

Covid-19 and public service media: Impact of the pandemic on public television in Europe

Scipedia content — Thu, 02 Feb 2023 10:42:42 +0100

This article analyses the response of European Public Service Media to the crisis caused by Covid-19, especially the impact of the pandemic on Europe’s major public broadcasters, with a particular focus on technical and professional constraints, alterations in audience volume and habits, production strategies, type of broadcast content and journalists’ routines. The research is based on public information from the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) and 19 in-depth, structured interviews with a convenience sample of innovation and strategy managers from public broadcasters in Austria (ORF), Belgium (VRT and RTBF), Denmark (DR), Finland (YLE), France (France TV), Germany (ARD and ZDF), Great Britain (BBC), Ireland (RTÉ), Italy (RAI), Netherlands (NPO), Portugal (RTP), Spain (RTVE), Sweden (SVT), Switzerland (RTS) and the European Broadcasting Union (EBU). The results indicate that the corporate projection of PSM was increased by emphasising their role as essential services and their defence of the values that characterise them. The pandemic forced the adaptation of programme production from technical standards to an emotional approach, accelerating a formal hybridisation with native online contents. Dependence on software grew and newsmaking processes were altered towards ‘remote journalism’. Changes are drawn that may be maintained in the future.

Integrating libraries into online university learning: the current situation in Spain

Scipedia content — Thu, 02 Feb 2023 10:42:28 +0100

Spanish university libraries have had to adapt their services to the virtual environment after the classroom-based teaching lockdown in March 2020 due to Covid-19. Given the possibility of a greater virtual dimension of learning and teaching during the next academic year, these library services should be improved. This paper analyzes how university libraries are strengthening their support for online learning and are progressively being integrated into the virtual campus, as well as the actions that are necessary to enhance these services and the main difficulties perceived by their librarians. For this purpose, a sample of professionals from university libraries was interviewed, and the research literature on this subject was also reviewed to identify the main international experiences that can be considered as benchmarks for improving virtual library services. Both the research literature and the librarians interviewed agree on two aspects: the need to increase collaboration with other university departments and the wide scope for improvement in the integration of the library into online learning, which is currently limited.

Digital transformation in the advertising industry from a gender perspective: an analysis of the top agencies

Scipedia content — Thu, 02 Feb 2023 10:42:13 +0100

This research departs from the strategies debated in an international framework for the achievement of gender equality through digitization and education, focusing in particular on the advertising industry. The advertising sector is immersed in a process of technological transformation that is precipitating substantial changes in companies, viz. advertising and media agencies, which are now demanding new professional profiles and adjusting traditional ones to the new media ecosystem. At the same time, and despite the feminization of the studies and workforce in this field, there is an unequal vertical and horizontal distribution by sex in Spanish agencies. Despite the previous evidence on the implications of the digital transformation for the work processes of agencies, no studies have explored this aspect from a gender perspective in Spain. In this context, this study investigates the roles and services of the leading agencies in the advertising industry more deeply, with the aim of evaluating both the digitization process and tasks close to R+D+I, and the roles of women therein. The results reveal parity in the sector and that the Digital and R+D+I areas play a central role in the agencies. There are no significant differences by sex, either in Digital profiles or in the area related to R+D+I, but women occupy fewer positions on management boards and in the Creative area. In short, this study provides evidence regarding the professional reality in the advertising sector, in order to delineate actions in the educational field to respond to the needs of the economy and society in line with the gender equality project.

Communication use in the times of the coronavirus. A cross-cultural study

Scipedia content — Thu, 02 Feb 2023 10:41:57 +0100

The results of an online cross-cultural survey conducted from mid-March to mid-April 2020 in various countries (N = 789) are presented. The theoretical basis of this work is uses and gratifications theory. This work provides a novel contribution regarding communication use in the context of the coronavirus pandemic. The results indicate that the consumption of information about the coronavirus is structured along four latent dimensions: (a) specialized health information on the Internet, official websites, and obtained through health personnel; (b) through “visual” social media; (c) through “written” social media and face-to-face contacts; and (d) through the mass media. Significant differences are found in all the dimensions of consumption depending on age and country of residence. Furthermore, it is observed that high consumption of information about the coronavirus increases perceived knowledge on the subject, which in return leads to the adoption of preventive measures. The present work provides a first snapshot of communication use in the face of the coronavirus pandemic crisis and provides a portrait of the behavior of communication users in the month immediately after the declaration of the Covid-19 pandemic worldwide. It can be concluded that communication has played a fundamental role in transmitting preventive information in the face of the coronavirus crisis.

Responsible research and innovation (RRI) as a driving force for change in corporate communication: New forms of governance and participatory structures

Scipedia content — Thu, 02 Feb 2023 10:41:42 +0100

Nowadays, the emerging discipline of Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) has great acceptance among the scientific community in general. Nevertheless, its presence in social sciences has not reached the development obtained in other disciplines. Studies describing RRI application to areas such as business, and more specifically, corporate communication, are scarce. The objective of this study is to show the possible application of the principles of the emerging RRI discipline to business and corporate communication, as well as the main barriers and benefits that could arise. For this, we provide a documentary review of the existing literature and an analysis of fifteen semi-structured interviews with Spanish experts in RRI. Likewise, the article addresses the relationship between RRI and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). As a main conclusion, we observe that RRI has the potential to become the driving force for new forms of governance and communication, but requires changes in corporate philosophy and performance, as it is a bottom-up participatory movement, promoted by the objective of a sustainable society for future generations. In addition, this study represents a contribution to the current discussion regarding the application of the principles and processes of RRI beyond the academic field.

Journalists and Public Relations professionals: from influence and dependence to journalistic disintermediations

Scipedia content — Thu, 02 Feb 2023 10:41:27 +0100

Relations between journalists and Public Relations professionals have been the subject of various investigations. In a context in which great precariousness in the media coincides with an increase and professionalization of communication agencies, we propose to study their informational relations. Our objective is to determine the perceptions of journalists and Public Relations professionals regarding their work and profession, identify how the influences between these two groups of professionals are established, and evaluate their routines and interactions. This research has been carried out using the qualitative discussion group technique (n = 43). Among the results, the media’s weakness stands out in the face of Public Relations that is experiencing a golden age, capable of exercising not only a relationship of influence that fits with the “determination model” but also aspiring to journalistic disintermediation.

Radio: the medium that best copes in crises. Listening habits, consumption, and perception of radio listeners during the lockdown by the Covid-19

Scipedia content — Thu, 02 Feb 2023 10:41:14 +0100

Radio is the medium best adapted to crises. This has been demonstrated throughout the history of Spain, both in the 1981 coup d’état attempt and in the terrorist attacks of March 11, 2004. The question that arises then is if in the situation of lockdown suffered by the Spanish population due to the Covid-19 pandemic radio is also playing an important role. This study answers this question through a survey answered by 560 radio listeners during the lockdown. The research has focused on knowing the listening habits, radio consumption, and the perception that these listeners have of the medium in this crisis. The data indicate that the respondents have changed their listening habits and have increased their medium consumption. During the lockdown, they are listening to the radio mostly in the living room, bedroom, and kitchen while cleaning or cooking. They are also consuming more hours of radio, more stations (of different ideological positions), and more shows. For these listeners, radio is positioned as the medium that is best covering information about the coronavirus and the one that they consider most credible, the closest, that most stimulates the imagination, that reduces loneliness, and is the most distracting. Overall, the results of this study allow us to conclude that the radio is once again playing a leading role in the coronavirus crisis, as it has occurred throughout the history of Spain.

Communication use in the times of the coronavirus. A cross-cultural study

Scipedia content — Thu, 02 Feb 2023 10:41:01 +0100

Disinformation in times of pandemic: typology of hoaxes on Covid-19

Scipedia content — Thu, 02 Feb 2023 10:40:44 +0100

Drawing upon the misinformation stories debunked by the three accredited fact-checking platforms in Spain, a content analysis of all the hoaxes (N = 292) bound to the Covid-19 pandemic is performed, over the first month of the state of alarm decreed by the Spanish Government (March 14th, 2020 – April 13th, 2020). The study shows that the hoaxes about the coronavirus were disseminated mainly on social networks and, among them, especially in closed ones, such as the WhatsApp mobile messaging application. It also detects the most frequent formal and content peculiarities of misinformation. The results reveal that the pandemic, in addition to generating a large number of hoaxes on health and science, also led to the dissemination of many political fake news. The formats, sources and territories of origin of the hoaxes are also explored. Beyond the empirical results, this study makes theoretical contributions in the framework of the emerging studies on information disorders. Specifically, it provides a definition of hoax, as well as a typology in which four main types are identified: joke, exaggeration, decontextualization and deception. Based on these four types, a ‘hoax severity diagram’ is proposed.

Fake images of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus in the communication of information at the beginning of the first Covid-19 pandemic

Scipedia content — Thu, 02 Feb 2023 10:40:25 +0100

The first real images of SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes Covid-19, were obtained between January 24 and March 5, 2020 using various electron microscopy techniques. However, since March 2020, it has been most common to see drawn, designed, or interpreted images in three dimensions, sometimes even representing different or directly invented viruses. This analysis studies a sample of images supposedly of SARS-CoV-2 that appeared at the beginning of this pandemic on the internet. Fake images or imaginary illustrations of the Covid-19 coronavirus predominate in all sources of information examined, except for those documented in encyclopedias or scientific articles. Rather than real images, the media have used more fake images of the coronavirus, often from repositories or paid stocks, usually freely available. When presenting SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus content, the use of fake, unrealistic, esthetically retouched illustrations is more common than actual or scientific photographs of the virus. The reference image used in the media and other information sources of the coronavirus that causes Covid-19 is a retouched three-dimensional, color design image for illustration rather than an actual image. The original, real images of the coronavirus did not have the expected informative presence in an emergency situation. The use of unrealistic images of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus seems to be a manifestation of a low-intensity infodemic. However, information professionals must use rigorous images to support their information, also in the case of the Covid-19.

Global trends in coronavirus research at the time of Covid-19: A general bibliometric approach and content analysis using SciMAT

Scipedia content — Thu, 02 Feb 2023 10:40:06 +0100

Covid-19 represents the greatest challenge facing mankind today. In December 2019, several cases of pneumonia of unknown etiology were reported from China. This coronavirus infection subsequently identified as Covid-19 aroused worldwide concern. As a result, the scientific community has focused attention on Covid-19, as revealed by recent research reported in literature based on a holistic approach. In this regard, this study conducts a bibliometric analysis of coronavirus research in the literature with an emphasis on Covid-19 disease, using as a reference the publications in the Web of Science Core Collection from 1970 to 2020. This research analyzes 12,571 publications from 1970 to (April 18) 2020 by applying advanced bibliometric techniques in SciMAT bibliometric analysis software. The current research therefore provides a complete conceptual analysis of the main coronavirus types and strains in the literature by quantifying the main bibliometric performance indicators, identifying the main authors, organizations, countries, sources, and research areas, and evaluating the development of this field. Furthermore, a science map is constructed to understand the corresponding intellectual structure and main research lines (themes). SciMAT thereby offers a complete approach to the field and evaluates the main performance indicators related to coronavirus, with a focus on Covid-19. Finally, this research serves as a framework to strengthen existing research lines and develop new ones, establishing synergistic relationships that were not visible without the maps generated herein.

Covid-19: metric analysis of videos and communication channels on YouTube

Scipedia content — Thu, 02 Feb 2023 10:39:46 +0100

The objective of this work is to determine the volume of videos on Covid-19 published and disseminated through YouTube, and directly or indirectly related to the Spanish national territory, to characterize the impact of those videos (in terms of views, likes and comments received), and finally to categorize the channels through which the videos have been broadcast. For this, 39,531 videos published between January 1 and April 30, 2020 have been analysed. The results show that the number of videos on Covid-19 grew since the establishment of the state of alarm in Spain, and they have been slightly decreasing over time, including certain upswings linked to political decisions. The videos achieve on average high volumes of views, likes/dislikes and comments, and have been published mainly by the media. The videos related both to Blogs and Entertainment are very numerous but with less impact. The videos belonging to the categories of Education and Science and Technology are less numerous, but had a high impact, especially in view counts. In addition, it is concluded that YouTube search filters are not accurate enough to be used in informetric studies without a high data cleansing workload. Likewise, the existence of channels applying defective positioning techniques makes it difficult to carry out this type of study.

Covid-19 communication management in Spain: Exploring the effect of information-seeking behavior and message reception in public’s evaluation

Scipedia content — Thu, 02 Feb 2023 10:39:28 +0100

The World Health Organization (2011) has emphasized communication as one of the biggest challenges and places risk communication among the essential competencies required to tackle a pandemic. In light of the Covid-19 crisis, the aim of this paper is to assess how information forms and sources influence the public’s information-seeking behaviors, and the perception of government’s crisis response strategies during the pandemic. An online survey was conducted between March 14 and April 14, 2020, the first four weeks after the declaration of the State of Alarm in Spain. The online questionnaire included questions regarding information-seeking behavior, trust in different sources and channels, perception of government communication management, message retention, and demographic questions. Findings show a synchronous use of multiple media and platforms in line with channel complementarity theory. Three of the four most used information channels are considered mainstream news media. However, the second source of information is WhatsApp. People who relied more on the mainstream news media for Covid-19 information are generally most likely to express positive opinions of the government’s communication strategy. Findings also show that people less able to make correct attributions of governmental information were the most critical of the government’s crisis response. Finally, trust in public authorities’ decreases as the crisis evolves as a general matter. It is specially truth for the WHO, but there is also a striking exemption for local governments. Implications for theory and empirical research and recommendations and new issues to address are identified and discussed.

Discipline and punish: the role of the military, police and civil guards in communicating the Covid-19 crisis in Spain

Scipedia content — Thu, 02 Feb 2023 10:39:13 +0100

This article analyzes the role of the Spanish Army and Security Forces as actors and as a discursive resource in the Spanish Government’s communication during the Covid-19 crisis and covers two complementary questions. On one hand, the presence of the military, police and civil guards in the media and in the daily press conferences of the Spanish Government’s Coronavirus Crisis Committee and, on the other, tweets by the main political protagonists of the crisis in Spain: the leaders of the five largest national parties (PSOE, PP, Vox, Unidas Podemos and Ciudadanos) and the presidents of four autonomous communities (Catalonia, Madrid, the Valencian Community and the Basque Country) who also played a particularly important role in managing the crisis. The timeframe covered is from March 15 (start of the state of emergency) to April 25 (final day in which the military and security forces participated in the daily press conferences of the Coronavirus Crisis Committee). The methodology applied involves a qualitative analysis of the appearances by military and security forces in the media and in the press conferences of the aforementioned Committee, which allows us to outline a complex narrative of the events. A content analysis of the Twitter accounts is also performed to show the presence of these groups and the warlike language in their messages. The objectives are to balance the Government’s communication strategy in relation to the presence of the military, the Civil Guard and the National Police: internally (at press conferences) and externally (in the media and, in particular, in speeches by political leaders).

Impact of Covid-19 on the media system. Communicative and democratic consequences of news consumption during the outbreak

Scipedia content — Thu, 02 Feb 2023 10:39:00 +0100

Covid-19 is a phenomenon of enormous magnitude and relevance. Its impact has affected various social domains, including the media and journalism. Since the beginning of this health crisis, news has become a valuable resource for citizens. Studying the dynamics of information consumption is highly relevant both for its ability to transform the media system and for its incidence in democracy. The objective of this research is to analyse the influence of the new coronavirus on news consumption, the credibility given by citizens to the media as well as their ability to detect fake news. To answer these questions, we have conducted an exploratory and initial analysis based on the secondary data from the online surveys of the Pew Research Center’s American Trends Panel in the United States, comparing data before and after the outbreak. The results confirm the impact of Covid-19 on the media system. The findings suggest the emergence of important developments such as the resurgence of the role of legacy media, especially on television, and the reconnection with news by citizens who usually remain far from the information. Therefore, the existing inequalities regarding news consumption among citizens have been reduced, in part. This generates potential benefits for democracy in terms of equality and accessibility concerning public affairs.

News consumption and media coverage during the confinement by Covid-19: information overload, ideological bias and sensationalism

Scipedia content — Thu, 02 Feb 2023 10:38:41 +0100

The Covid-19 pandemic has confined millions of citizens in their homes. The situation of isolation has many consequences at multiple levels: social, psychological, economic, educational..., and also communicative. Based on a survey to 1,122 people during the most severe confinement phase, this article aims to analyze how information consumption has been modified during this period of time, and how citizens assess media coverage of Covid-19. The results show citizenship get more news and more frequently than before the health crisis. All in all, citizens maintain a critical attitude towards media coverage of the outbreak, which is, according to the results, conditioned by the media ideology, and reported in a sensationalist way, generating unnecessary social alarm.

Professional Public Relations (PR) trends and challenges

Scipedia content — Thu, 02 Feb 2023 10:38:23 +0100

There are several studies and reports that identify the challenges that Public Relations must assume in the coming years, but how will the professional field face them? Are the organizations and institutions prepared to assume the new needs that constant adaptation demands? What are the priorities that they must establish so that the profession is renewed? The profession, in order to face the challenges that the future holds in the changing society in which we live, must commit itself to training. Thanks to training, public relations professionals will be able to achieve a high degree of specialization in the discipline. Strategic vision, Public Relations (PR) assessment, commitment to quality and professional ethics, transparency, as well as inclusion and equality must be the benchmarks of the sector.

Professional Public Relations (PR) trends and challenges

Scipedia content — Thu, 02 Feb 2023 10:38:07 +0100

Radio: the medium that best copes in crises. Listening habits, consumption, and perception of radio listeners during the lockdown by the Covid-19

Scipedia content — Thu, 02 Feb 2023 10:37:44 +0100

Why are new journals created? An international analysis of Information and Documentation titles (2013-2018)

Scipedia content — Thu, 02 Feb 2023 10:37:30 +0100

The creation or title changes of scientific journals in the information and documentation (ID) area in the period 2013-2018 are analyzed. Based on the total of 62 such journals identified through ISSN Portal and Ulrichsweb, the following are described: characteristic aspects such as country, language, type of publisher, and access model; presence in bibliographic databases, citations, or journal directories; survival and volume of articles published; annual number of citations to articles according to Google Scholar; thematic scope declared by the editors; and finally, the justification given by the editors for the change of title or the creation of a new journal. Among the main conclusions regarding newly created titles, the leading role of academic publishers in expanding national university systems and open-access titles stands out. In general, new publications generate few articles per year, have little presence in databases, and receive few citations. Title changes were found only in journals published by commercial publishers. In both cases, journals with a general thematic scope predominate and a significant number of journals did not justify their creation or change of title.

Communication and coronavirus crisis in Spain. First lessons

Scipedia content — Thu, 02 Feb 2023 10:37:15 +0100

Coronavirus crisis has caused a complicated situation at a sanitary, economic and social levels, that requires of a fundamental work in communication area so that the society comprise and collaborate with the adopted measures. Through the review and synthesis of the scientific and reference literature, the present paper contrasts lessons learnt in previous public health crisis against the communication implemented from the institutional voices and from the press coverage during the first stages of the Covid-19 outbreak in Spain. This paper detects that the absence of an early announcement (or overtaking of the negative stage) and the control messages in a context of uncertainty caused a brusque transition to the following stage of the crisis, coincident with an explosion of the number of contagions, what generated fear. The spokesperson formula applied is against all recommendations of crisis communication. Regarding the journalistic coverage, examples of alarmism and sensationalism news arised. The numeric data have been the resource more valuable and the computer graphics the multimedia content more developed. Since the pandemic is still on course, it is recommended the learning and the adjustment of the communication and information to the citizens in the following stages of this crisis or in future crisis taking into account the group of first lessons presented here.

Tourist information sources at different stages of the travel experience

Scipedia content — Thu, 02 Feb 2023 10:37:00 +0100

Tourist destination managers must design effective communication strategies as part of their promotional tasks. In order to do so, destinations need to know what sources of information tourists actually use during the stages of a trip. Previous studies have partially addressed this issue but only used a limited list of sources analysed or only focused on three stages (pre-, during and post-). Our study considers a fourth stage –destination choice–, and also 27 sources of information were included in the questionnaires sent to our sample of analysis composed of 1,621 tourists from the four main countries visiting Spain: France, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom. The results confirm the prevalence of Internet search engines for destination choice and trip preparation phases, but also point out to the importance of recommendations from friends and family in the destination choice stage, of maps and plans during the trip, and of Facebook in the post-trip stage. It is also shown that, among the official channels of the destinations, only the website stands out as one of the most consulted sources.

Corporate communication, public relations and reputational risk management in the days of Covid-19

Scipedia content — Thu, 02 Feb 2023 10:36:44 +0100

The Covid-19 crisis has put to the test many social structures processes. Corporate communication and public relations are examples of these processes that face an unprecedented situation, difficult to foresee and from which lessons will have to be drawn for the future. In this article, a mixture of research and essay, we intend, based on theory, and on the experience and some studies carried out by communication professionals as well, to reflect on how the pandemic crisis of the Covid-19 affects and will condition the practice of corporate communication in general and two of its areas of specialization, internal communication and corporate social responsibility (CSR). We emphasize the importance of organizations in assuming that reputation is a risk and that this risk must be managed with public relations tactics and tools, because the pandemic crisis of the so-called coronavirus has revealed the importance for organizations and brands of managing trustworthy relationships with their publics.

Impact of Covid-19 on the media system. Communicative and democratic consequences of news consumption during the outbreak

Scipedia content — Thu, 02 Feb 2023 10:36:31 +0100

Covid-19 tweeting in English: Gender differences

Scipedia content — Thu, 02 Feb 2023 10:36:18 +0100

At the start of 2020, Covid-19 became the most urgent threat to global public health. Uniquely in recent times, governments have imposed partly voluntary, partly compulsory restrictions on the population to slow the spread of the virus. In this context, public attitudes and behaviors are vitally important for reducing the death rate. Analyzing tweets about the disease may therefore give insights into public reactions that may help guide public information campaigns. This article analyses 3,038,026 English tweets about Covid-19 from March 10 to 23, 2020. It focuses on one relevant aspect of public reaction: gender differences. The results show that females are more likely to tweet about the virus in the context of family, social distancing and healthcare, whereas males are more likely to tweet about sports cancellations, the global spread of the virus, and political reactions. Thus, women seem to be taking a disproportionate share of the responsibility for directly keeping the population safe. The detailed results may be useful to inform public information announcements and to help understand the spread of the virus. For example, failure to impose a sporting bans whilst encouraging social distancing may send mixed messages to males.

Fake images of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus in the communication of information at the beginning of the first Covid-19 pandemic

Scipedia content — Thu, 02 Feb 2023 10:36:05 +0100

Perspectives on the information and digital competence of Social Sciences students and faculty before and during lockdown due to Covid-19

Scipedia content — Thu, 02 Feb 2023 10:35:47 +0100

We analyze the perceptions of Social Sciences faculty about their own information and digital competence and that of their students, as well as the changes that have occurred as a consequence of the virtualization of learning caused by the coronavirus pandemic (Covid-19). The methodology used is qualitative, being based on the application of two techniques: discussion groups carried out with experienced faculty from three Spanish universities, and interviews carried out with the same sample after the suspension of face-to-face teaching. The results show that the faculty members participating in this study have a critical vision of the information and digital competence of the student body, indicating that they lack capacity for evaluation, critical use, and communication of information despite their mastery of technological tools and extensive use of mobile devices. In addition, they doubt their own ability to train students in this competence, and attribute the difficulty in achieving and promoting such learning to various factors of the university culture: a lack of coordination among teaching staff, who are sometimes in situations of job insecurity, or the way in which the European Higher Education Area has been applied in universities. Faculty recognize the basic and transversal nature of this competence and advocate its incorporation into the real work methodology of all subjects, not in a segregated way. Finally, the effort made towards the “virtual” development of teaching as a consequence of the Covid-19 pandemic has been a shock for faculty, who declare a positive attitude towards reviewing their own digital-informative practices to adapt their teaching, but believe that this has hardly resulted in any improvement in the information and digital competence of their students so far.

Fake news and coronavirus: Detecting key players and trends through analysis of Twitter conversations

Scipedia content — Thu, 02 Feb 2023 10:35:32 +0100

The global health crisis arising from the expansion of Covid-19 has led the WHO to coin the term infodemics to define a situation of fear and insecurity in which the dissemination of false information has become widespread. These hoaxes take advantage of this type of emotion to spread faster than the coronavirus itself, generating fear and distrust in the population. The spread of these lies, part of which circulates on social networks, is dangerous because it affects health and can make the contagion worse and cause people to die. This research aims to analyse and visualise the network created around the false news circulating on Twitter about the coronavirus pandemic using the technique of social network analysis. NodeXL Pro software has been used. Several measures of network centrality have been used to generate the network of connections between users, to represent their interaction patterns and to identify the key actors within the network. In addition, a semantic network has also been created to discover the differences in the way groups of people talk about the topic. The results show that the situation in the USA dominates the conversation, despite the fact that at that time there were hardly any cases, and Europe had become the global epicentre of the Covid-19. Despite reports of inaction by journalists and critics of the Trump government, there are several weeks in which disinformation distracts from taking more effective action and actually preventing contagion. Moreover, among the actors with the most prominent positions in the network, there is little presence of scientists and institutions that help to disprove the hoaxes and explain the hygiene measures.

News on Covid-19 and 2019-nCoV in Spanish media: The role of digital media in times of confinement

Scipedia content — Thu, 02 Feb 2023 10:35:10 +0100

This paper analyses the news on Covid-19 and 2019-nCov in the Spanish media. This is done by using news retrieved from My news database. The analysis includes the total amount of news in Spanish media by type of media; the evolution of the publication in digital media considering various periods of time, and the volume of news in the most used Spanish digital media. The results show that digital media are the most used among other types to publish on the topic, with a significant increase since the beginning of the alarm state. In this sense, some arguments on the function and utility of this type of media during the confinement are exposed. Also, the essential role of digital media covering the population’s information needs is discussed. The digital media with the largest number publications are abc.es, 20minutos.es, and elconfidencial.com. The value of this work is that it can serve as starting point for others in order to carry out content analysis on the subject considering different channels and digital media.

Retweeting Covid-19 disability issues: Risks, support and outrage

Scipedia content — Thu, 02 Feb 2023 10:34:57 +0100

The Covid-19 pandemic has greatly uneven impacts on sectors of society. People with disabilities are particularly vulnerable to it and so it is important to understand both the disability perspective and the role of social media. This information may help to reduce the risk from the disease. In response, this article uses thematic analysis to investigate 59 disability-related tweets from March 10 to April 4, 2020 that were retweeted at least 500 times, with a quarter of a million retweets altogether. This approach generates quick insights into widely resonating disability-related issues. The results suggest the value of Twitter for disseminating information about the risk, offers or requests for support, the ability of many people with disabilities to adjust to the changes well, and information about individuals with the disease. In addition, there was outrage at suggestions that the disease was less serious because young people without disabilities were relatively low risk, and that people with disabilities might be denied equal access to medical treatment. As one tweet pointed out, people in less vulnerable categories should not be told on Twitter or elsewhere that the disease is less relevant to them because their actions can impact others through social spreading.

Daily growth rate of scientific production on Covid-19. Analysis in databases and open access repositories

Scipedia content — Thu, 02 Feb 2023 10:34:43 +0100

The scientific community is facing one of its greatest challenges in solving a global health problem: the Covid-19 pandemic. This situation has generated an unprecedented volume of publications. What is the volume of scientific publications on Covid-19? The general objective of this research work is to obtain a global vision of the daily growth of scientific production on Covid-19 in various databases (Dimensions, Web of Science Core Collection, Scopus, PubMed, and eight repositories). In relation to the results obtained, Dimensions indexes a total of 9,435 publications (69% with peer review and 2,677 preprints) well above Scopus (1,568) and WoS (718). This is a classic bibliometric phenomenon of exponential growth (R2 = 0.92). The daily global growth rate is 500 publications and the production doubles every 15 days. In the case of PubMed the weekly growth is around 1,000 publications. Of the eight repositories studied, PubMed Central, medRxiv and SSRN are the leaders, but despite their contribution, journals continue to be the core of scientific communication. Finally, it has been established that three of every four publications on the Covid-19 are available in open access. The information explosion which places us, information professionals, at the centre of the information pandemic demands a serious and coordinated response.

Television program ratings and informed audiences

Scipedia content — Thu, 02 Feb 2023 10:34:30 +0100

This paper is positioned at the intersection between the concepts of informed audiences, media literacy, and television content ratings. It begins with a definition of the first two concepts, followed by a consideration of ratings as a mechanism at the service of both. An analysis is offered of the most notable international initiatives (Australia, USA, UK, and The Netherlands), as well as the Spanish case and its associated actions. Rating procedures are necessary mechanisms to facilitate well-informed viewing decisions by TV audiences, especially in the case of children’s programming. This article proposes recommendations in relation to the implementation of the European audiovisual media services directive, including the use of a wide range of pictograms to identify types of content.

Journalists at the border: An analysis of their work when covering news on immigration

Scipedia content — Thu, 02 Feb 2023 10:34:16 +0100

This study analyses the media coverage of immigration in Melilla, the land frontier between Spain and Morocco andone of the access points where immigrants enter the European Union, and the role that journalists and other agents play in spreading news on immigration. By means of a field study we analyse the type of news professionals and media that are present near the border, the logics followed by institutional press offices when providing information, and the particular conditions in which journalism is practiced in a space of juridical exceptionality. Amongst the results obtained we underscore: the predominance of a media market that, while apparently diverse, is highly dependent on institutional advertising; the relevance of figures like activists or freelance journalists in providing differentiated news on immigration; and the difficulties in working that journalists face due to arbitrariness and obscurantism when accessing images and data.

News sections, journalists and information sources in the journalistic coverage of crises and emergencies in Spain

Scipedia content — Thu, 02 Feb 2023 10:34:01 +0100

Media social responsibility is rarely more evident than in the news coverage of a crisis, disaster or emergency. This research analyses the use of and trust in information sources through a nationwide survey of 30 editors-in-chief of Spain’s most relevant newspapers, radio, television and online media outlets (N=30). With a very high response rate (76.66%), the findings confirm that the use of unofficial sources (victims and those affected) are prioritized over official government sources. It is significant that the inferential analysis reveals that the editors give the same credibility as a source of information to the government as it does to the victims in the current context of misinformation, fake news and hoaxes. It is concluded that newsmaking should be built on the balanced use of official and unofficial sources. The results also confirm that the entire newsroom participates in this coverage and no journalistic specialization is detected amongst reporters.

General-television programming in Europe (UE5): Public versus commercial channels

Scipedia content — Thu, 02 Feb 2023 10:33:45 +0100

Technological convergence has affected the media context of generalist television, modifying access and the consumption of content. The design of the scheduling of the general-interest linear television is a key element in understanding the policies that the operators follow when offering genres and formats, and in observing the similarities and differences between public and private ownership. This article analyses the television schedules of 25 generalist channels, public and commercial, operating in Germany, Spain, France, Italy and the United Kingdom. Some of the findings of this investigation show a) little diversity of genres, b) that the editorial policy of public broadcasters clearly differentiates them from private ones by prioritizing informational offerings, national fiction, and documentary info-shows, and c) strategic differences of genres by ownership in each country.

Television, audiences and electoral debates: Towards multiscreen viewing

Scipedia content — Thu, 02 Feb 2023 10:33:29 +0100

In the current media ecosystem, one of the main pillars of political party communication campaigns is focused on the appearance of political leaders on television. The presence and exposure of political candidates in this medium, across different informative formats, from entertainment to infotainment, draws the attention of a considerable section of citizens beyond the electoral campaign. The electoral debates are one of the most hegemonic television formats relating to politics, that brings together a large number of spectators. The interest of the Spanish audience in this type of format, without a historical tradition in Spain, has been remarkable to watch during the last twenty-six years of broadcasting. The evolution of the audience for these programs confirms a high level of interest by Spanish spectators and has reached historically high ratings for the networks broadcasting them, which is one of the quantitative indicators unanimously accepted as a standard in the study on audiences. However, the incorporation of new screens and channels into the electoral debates has widened the mainstream viewing scenario. The current multiscreen television experience and audience participation across platforms, such as social networks, represent a challenge for the communication strategies of political parties and television networks, as well as for measurement of this new audience, which is significantly more active, while also generating more content.

Globalization and power: The consolidation of international communication as a discipline. Review article

Scipedia content — Thu, 02 Feb 2023 10:33:15 +0100

A tour of the theoretical development and the main research lines of international communication is presented. To do this, the appearance of communication in the configuration of power in four aspects (hard, soft, sharp and strategic narrative) is analyzed. The critical perspective and the Anglo-Saxon mastery on the subject are examined, with evidence from France, Germany, or Latin America. Five axes of future research are anticipated, such as the strengthening of the theoretical and methodological bases with interdisciplinary methods; the nature and characteristics of the international journalists (correspondents versus false news); the management of populist communication in the face of a political globalization with leaders that hinder the conventional journalistic ethos; the analysis of the structures; and global information systems in a multipolar scenario and less “CNN effect” than expected, and the constant innovation dynamics of propaganda.

The use of YouTube by the Spanish press: A model to be defined

Scipedia content — Thu, 02 Feb 2023 10:33:02 +0100

The instability in the newspaper business model since the emergence of the Internet disrupted the value chain and has led newspapers to turn to videos as an additional source of revenue. YouTube has become the content distribution channel of choice for most newspapers, which benefit from the ability to generate greater traffic in exchange for a blind contract imposed by YouTube’s algorithm. Advertising income from this source is still scarce and depends on engagement, previous user experience, video quality, video reputation and numerous other factors. Based on an analysis of 864 videos over three randomly selected weeks, conclusions are reached, and the consequences of the management of the YouTube channels of six Spanish newspapers are discussed.

Globalization and power: The consolidation of international communication as a discipline. Review article

Scipedia content — Thu, 02 Feb 2023 10:32:49 +0100

Altmetrics data providers: A meta-analysis review of the coverage of metrics and publication

Scipedia content — Thu, 02 Feb 2023 10:32:36 +0100

The aim of this paper is to review the current and most relevant literature on the use of altmetric providers since 2012. This review is supported by a meta-analysis of the coverage and metric counts obtained by more than 100 publications that have used these bibliographic platforms for altmetric studies. The article is the most comprehensive analysis of altmetric data providers (Lagotto, Altmetric.com, ImpactStory, Mendeley, PlumX, Crossref Event Data) and explores the coverage of publications, social media and events from a longitudinal view. Disciplinary differences were also analysed. The results show that most of the studies are based on Altmetric.com data. This provider is the service that captures most mentions from social media sites, blogs and news outlets. PlumX has better coverage, counting more Mendeley readers, but capturing fewer events. CED has a special coverage of mentions from Wikipedia, while Lagotto and ImpactStory are becoming disused products because of their limited reach.

Altmetrics and societal impact measurements: Match or mismatch? A literature review

Scipedia content — Thu, 02 Feb 2023 10:32:23 +0100

Can alternative metrics (altmetrics) data be used to measure societal impact? We wrote this literature overview of empirical studies in order to find an answer to this question. The overview includes two parts. The first part, “societal impact measurements”, explains possible methods and problems in measuring the societal impact of research, case studies for societal impact measurement, societal impact considerations at funding organizations, and the societal problems that should be solved by science. The second part of the review, “altmetrics”, addresses a major question in research evaluation, which is whether altmetrics are proper indicators for measuring the societal impact of research. In the second part we explain the data sources used for altmetrics studies and the importance of field-normalized indicators for impact measurements. This review indicates that it should be relevant for impact measurements to be oriented towards pressing societal problems. Case studies in which societal impact of certain pieces of research is explained seem to provide a legitimate method for measuring societal impact. In the use of altmetrics, field-specific differences should be considered by applying field normalization (in cross-field comparisons). Altmetrics data such as social media counts might mainly reflect the public interest and discussion of scholarly works rather than their societal impact. Altmetrics (Twitter data) might be especially fruitfully employed for research evaluation purposes, if they are used in the context of network approaches. Conclusions based on altmetrics data in research evaluation should be drawn with caution.

A copyright overview

Scipedia content — Thu, 02 Feb 2023 10:32:11 +0100

Review of the main concepts about copyright. Among the topics discussed are: ownership, joint ownership, assignments, licenses, permissions, infringements, exceptions, unpublished works, orphan works, artificial intelligence generated work rights, patents, trade marks, performers rights, moral rights, Sci-Hub, risk management and calculation, etc.

A synthetic approach to the classification of music. Review article

Scipedia content — Thu, 02 Feb 2023 10:31:59 +0100

This paper first reviews the advantages and disadvantages associated with both pre-coordination and post-coordination in classification. It then argues that we can have the advantages of both if we couple a post-coordinated (synthetic) approach to classification with a user interface that privileges the word order in search queries. Several other advantages of such an approach to classification and search are reviewed. It better captures the nature of a work (or object), addresses important issues with respect to social diversity, and facilitates user queries. It produces subject strings that resemble sentence fragments; this serves to clarify the meaning of terms within the subject string, and makes subject strings more comprehensible since humans typically think in sentences. These various benefits are then illustrated in the classification of works of music. It is shown that many important characteristics of works of music are best handled by such a system. These are generally poorly addressed, or not addressed at all, by existing approaches to the classification of music.

Software tools for conducting bibliometric analysis in science: An up-to-date review

Scipedia content — Thu, 02 Feb 2023 10:31:44 +0100

Bibliometrics has become an essential tool for assessing and analyzing the output of scientists, cooperation between universities, the effect of state-owned science funding on national research and development performance and educational efficiency, among other applications. Therefore, professionals and scientists need a range of theoretical and practical tools to measure experimental data. This review aims to provide an up-to-date review of the various tools available for conducting bibliometric and scientometric analyses, including the sources of data acquisition, performance analysis and visualization tools. The included tools were divided into three categories: general bibliometric and performance analysis, science mapping analysis, and libraries; a description of all of them is provided. A comparative analysis of the database sources support, pre-processing capabilities, analysis and visualization options were also provided in order to facilitate its understanding. Although there are numerous bibliometric databases to obtain data for bibliometric and scientometric analysis, they have been developed for a different purpose. The number of exportable records is between 500 and 50,000 and the coverage of the different science fields is unequal in each database. Concerning the analyzed tools, Bibliometrix contains the more extensive set of techniques and suitable for practitioners through Biblioshiny. VOSviewer has a fantastic visualization and is capable of loading and exporting information from many sources. SciMAT is the tool with a powerful pre-processing and export capability. In views of the variability of features, the users need to decide the desired analysis output and chose the option that better fits into their aims.

Social media in Ibero-America. Review article

Scipedia content — Thu, 02 Feb 2023 10:31:26 +0100

This paper presents an analysis of the existing literature on social networks in Ibero-America, with the objective of organizing the main topics covered, highlighting findings, and proposing future research paths. The four thematic areas that stand out are political communication and electronic government; journalism and traditional media; social groups (including adolescents and young people, those marginalized, women, entrepreneurs and influencers, students, and older adults) and areas of use (including commerce, tourism, education, health, professional communication); and political and civic participation. In addition, we review the literature from the perspective of the platforms (Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, YouTube, and Snapchat) and from the geographical regions and countries that make up Ibero-America, to observe similarities and differences. We conclude with the mention and analysis of the two most outstanding patterns of the studies examined: 1) a tendency to expect from the networks a transformative potential that is not necessarily proven, especially in the case of political communication and journalism; 2) transformative capacity of networks in the areas of tourism, education and health, in which traditional media have not been characterized by having a prominent role. Finally, we propose some paths for future studies, among them the pursuit of comparative works, the incorporation of relational perspectives in the treatment of networks, the addition of mixed, experimental and computational methodologies, and the consideration, from the research design standpoint, of the acceleration of technological change and the need to generate questions and conceptualizations capable of surviving the passage of time.

Composite indicators as an innovative methodology for Communication Sciences. Implementation for the assessment of European public service media

Scipedia content — Thu, 02 Feb 2023 10:31:12 +0100

The currently dominant model of scientific production in the field of communications research exhibits an over standardization of mainly empirical research, which is overwhelmingly carried out using quantitative techniques based on simple statistical analysis, in many cases limiting the presented results to an interpretation of the available data. This paper presents an innovative proposal in the field, designed as a new strategy for scientific dissemination and presentation. It puts forward the objective of building three composite indicators that, applied to European public service media, will allow the assessment of the perception of their social value, independence, and management efficiency. Moreover, a study that enables a comparative vision of these three issues in all the countries of the European Union, excluding Malta and Luxemburg, is also proposed. This methodology represents an innovation because it thoroughly explains the process and justifies the validity of the documentary sources used to facilitate their reproduction or questioning. It also reinforces the discussion of the results with the evaluation of the indicators’ robustness before deciding which of them is most appropriate on each occasion for comparing the results using a multicriteria decision analysis technique, the Technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution (Topis) method, proposed by Hwang and Yoon (1981). The results attest that synthetic indicators are an innovative, original, and validatable methodological tool that can contribute to the progress of research in the field of the communications sciences.

Management of scientific communication of research projects in H2020: functions, models, and strategies

Scipedia content — Thu, 02 Feb 2023 10:30:56 +0100

The Horizon 2020 framework program requires research projects to incorporate communication plans that cover all activities for the dissemination, communication, and exploitation of results. These must include strategic and specialized measures that identify the diversity of audiences, incorporate mechanisms for dialog with stakeholders, and establish systems for measuring results. This has changed the way in which the dissemination and scientific popularization of the projects are conceived and planned. This research analyzes the perception of Spanish experts in the design and development of competitive research projects regarding which are the most appropriate models and strategies for scientific communication. Through 22 in-depth interviews conducted with specialists from entities, companies, principal researchers, managers, evaluators, and scientific disseminators involved in H2020 projects, two dimensions of project communication are evaluated: the concept of dissemination, and the planning process. The results show that, although the dissemination activity must be carried out from the very beginning of the proposal, as an integral element of the project, the communication is only partially fulfilled, due to the instrumental nature given to it and the lack of complete planning of the actions that goes beyond the administrative fulfilment of what is requested in the calls. However, some progress can be seen thanks to the increasing professionalization of these activities and the integration of communication experts in all phases of the project.

Website quality: An analysis of scientific production

Scipedia content — Thu, 02 Feb 2023 10:30:41 +0100

A range of different methods and tools have been proposed by both academics and professionals in recent years for evaluating the quality of websites. Some are of general application and can be used to assess any type of website, while others have been adapted to the specialized characteristics of the websites employed in a given sector. This paper undertakes an analysis of existing scientific production in this field, with the aim of identifying its most relevant publications, its principal authors and the specific sectors served by the sites under evaluation. By triangulating review methods, 716 texts, published between 2000 and 2018, were identified in Scopus, Web of Science and other databases and examined. In addition to basic bibliographic information, the number of citations received by each text was recorded using Google Scholar. The area of knowledge in which each author works was also categorized based on his or her specific affiliations. The results point to a growing interest in website quality in a scientific community that has a presence in more than 70 countries. Its authors are drawn from various disciplines, although the highest number of publications is recorded in computer science, business and medical informatics. The most frequently cited texts are in fact seminal books in the associated disciplines of usability, information architecture and user experience. However, as of 2007, the number of texts describing evaluation tools for the websites of specific sectors – most notably, education (33%), health (27%) and commerce (21%) – increased their share. In conclusion, it is evident that website quality is a field of study undergoing constant growth and increasing specialization and one that offers ample opportunities for research.

Evolution of public relations in Spain. Review article

Scipedia content — Thu, 02 Feb 2023 10:30:26 +0100

The first milestones of the history of Public Relations in Spain are listed in order to understand its evolution and current essence and definition. We analyzed the persuasive communication techniques historically used that could already be branded as such (advertising, propaganda, protocol, publicity ...) when the current concept of Public Relations was still lacking. This article presents a conception of Public Relations based on its most persuasive purpose: that of directing Public Opinion. We do not forget the other great current that focuses on the necessary generation of sympathy and understanding between the issuer and the receiving public. Thus, Public Relations are the union of various elements that make up its conceptual and scientific base: Marketing, Prospective, Advertising, Propaganda, Publicity, Sponsorship, Patronage, Corporate Communication, Internal Communication, Public Affairs, Protocol and Lobbying. There are two great influences in the gestation of Public Relations: Advertising (called scientific, educational, social, prestigious...) and Propaganda (commercial, collective...), so we focus on its founding fathers, the teachers and theorists Pedro Prat Gaballí from Advertising, and Francisco García Ruescas from Propaganda. Finally we will review from the fields of associationism, legislation and academics the great moments for the advancement of Spanish Public Relations, since our purpose is also to create a chronology as complete as possible that serves as the basis for future research.