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This work analyzes the inequality of urban spaces in Madrid, with reference to the smart city model, estimating the digital uses of the population by districts. This estimation is necessary given that public data on digital uses at an infra-municipal level is unavailable. The results confirm that areas with lower per capita income and education levels are also those having lower levels of digital access and use, as required by the smart city applications. Thus, digital inequality overlaps with other classic criteria of urban segregation. This may lead to an increased vulnerability of these disadvantaged areas in this city model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Public health disinformation is a significant problem as demonstrated by the recent scientific literature on the COVID-19 pandemic. However, further studies that analyse the presence of the disinformation mitigation strategies in public health initiatives within specific contexts and which contains a multidimensional approach (gender, social and environmental) are required. Evidence shows that disinformation, information overload, misinformation or fake news on health issues are also influenced by these issues. Objective: The inclusion of the health disinformation dimension within national public implemented by the governments of Argentina and Spain before, during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. Additionally, this paper incorporated a gender-based approach and social and environmental determinants in order to identify the limitations of these initiatives and offer certain recommendations. We conducted a descriptive, qualitative and quantitative study, as well as content analysis. We focused on documents from the websites of the national health ministries of Argentina and Spain, and digital repositories of regulations at the national level. Various strategies for systematic searches on government websites were designed and implemented. This included manual searches on Google. The first step involved a general analysis of all documents found by the searches, followed by a qualitative analysis of the documents that were related to health issues. Based on this work, a comprehensive and flexible framework of (pre-established and emerging) dimensions and categories of health disinformation and infodemics was generated. Results. The work was based on a total of 202 documents (both downloadable information and information included in websites); 117 for Argentina and 85 for Spain. Of the total, 60.9% were published during the COVID-19 pandemic. In the second stage of the analysis, 55 texts were selected for Argentina and 47 for Spain. In both countries, the central communications approach used was disinformation and/or infodemics (although definitions such as fake news were also used). They were mainly linked to the COVID-19 pandemic, but other emerging health problems were also detected to a lesser degree. However, disinformation (or a related concept) was prominently present in only 17 documents in Argentina and 3 documents in Spain. In terms of document type, working materials were foremost in Argentina (44.4%) and Spain (37.6%), with little presence of policy, regulatory and evaluation documents (only 5). Gender binary language was predominantly used in these texts. Vulnerable groups and social determinants were poorly included. Environmental determinants were mentioned in conjunction with health disinformation in only one paper on the use of plastics and its impact on human health in Argentina, and in another paper from the Global Summit on Climate and Health in Spain. Conclusions: Based on the document analysis, the inclusion of health disinformation within public actions in both countries before, during and after the COVID-19 pandemic, was detected. However, different limitations were observed: it was clear that the problem was strongly linked to the health emergency and did not extend much beyond that. Health disinformation was secondary and did not play a key role in public policy nor did it have greater institutional importance. Limitations were also detected in terms of gender perspectives, vulnerable groups and social and environmental determinants linked to health disinformation, displaying a reductionist approach. Based on these results, this paper makes certain policy recommendations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Agent Based Social Simulation (ABSS) is a clear alternative for advancing in the sociological knowledge from a new methodological perspective which has incorporates vocation power. Its application acquires special meaning when there is a big amount of data (quantitative, qualitative, longitudinal or transversal observations) and we want (and need) to arrive further than the constrains of each source and methodology. This will be useful in our attempt to improve the understanding, explanation and (when possible) prediction of the studied phenomena. Furthermore, it offers us the latent possibility of articulating more and better theory and «empiria», one of the failing subjects of Sociology, because it allows us to make experiments for verifying hypothesis, examine assumptions or test the veracity and coherence of the theoretical frameworks. The signers are members of the Group of Software Agents, Engineering and Applications (GRASIA) of the UCM and they are working in the modeling of a social process: the religious transformations of the Spanish society since 1980. The article will show from this experience and from the example of this specific application, the possibilities and expectations, together with the challenges, difficulties and limitations of the agent based simulation in the sociological research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]