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Artificial intelligence (AI) is intervening in the media industry and revolutionizing the concept of news anchoring and reporting through AI characters. Discover Pakistan, a Pakistani mainstream TV channel, launched the first AI talk show, as claimed by the CEO of the channel, Mr. Qaisar. It showcased one AI clone of Mr. Qaisar himself with three other AI characters of different nationalities. This research intends to discourse on the semiotics of representation of nationality, religious connotations, gender implications, and political evaluation of AI characters portrayed in the program. The study incorporated representation theory to highlight the value and the meaning of reality through the optics of AI and its implications in the future of the media industry. Results denoted that there are generalized judgments about religious association, political disinformation, virtual nationalism, and the prevalent idea of surrendering before AI. This study further highlights the importance of AI in promoting culture through tourism and emphasizes the need to utilize AI for more beneficiary purposes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Participation in public problems involves diverse strategies, including the challenging and transformation of hegemonic affective configurations. By exposing and disrupting the established emotional norms, actors gain affective agency, enabling resistance against the prevailing status quo and facilitating active engagement in democratic deliberation. To explore this idea, we present a sociocultural analysis of the Empty Spain Revolt (Revuelta de la España Vaciada) as a compelling case study. Employing semiotic-enunciational discourse analysis, we focus on the affective-emotional dimension, utilizing the movement’s Manifesto and photographs of banners from the March 31, 2019, demonstration in Madrid as our primary sources. Our research reveals the emergence of affective agency through three gestures: 1) Indignation as a Catalyst: Indignation serves as a driving emotion, stemming from frustration due to perceived neglect. This emotion fosters the assignment of responsibility to political parties and fuels demands for immediate action. 2) Pride and Urban-Rural Dynamics: The appeal to urban subject emphasizes the interdependence between urban and rural areas, advocating for justice, equality, and rural dignity. 3) From Resignation to Obstinance: The transition from a resigned figure to an obstinate figure shifts the enunciative agency. The resolute voices of the obstinate subject sustain a collective identity and enable a politically active subject. Our analysis underscores the pivotal role of affects and emotions in shaping public problems and in the articulation of actor. The process of dismantling existing affective configurations and presenting alternative ones not only influences encyclopedias and imaginaries but also impacts collective agency and power structures. This study offers insights into the intricate relationship among affect, discourse, and sociopolitical change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the biggest global challenges is the international movement of people. For this reason, the 2030 Agenda recognises the importance of migration for development within its Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and their respective targets. The objective of our analysis is to investigate the new situation introduced by the 2030 Agenda in relation to migration processes in the media, in this case based on eight leading Spanish newspapers between 2014 and 2021. This study uses the quantitative content analysis methodology and the framing approach. As frames, it uses the five themes proposed by the 2030 Agenda: People, Prosperity, Planet, Peace, and Partnerships. It is interesting to note that seven years after the 2030 Agenda was launched, the SDGs are not often cited by the Spanish press to analyse and discuss the migration phenomenon from a sustainability perspective. Moreover, it is observed that discourses on migration in terms of sustainability present a clear political approach that emphasises the framework of international partnerships and agreements in economic terms, a fact that can contribute to a change in audiences’ perception of the migration phenomenon. On the other hand, it should be noted that the frames chosen by newspapers to talk about the migration phenomenon coincide with each other, although slight differences can be observed in the themes and use of sources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years we have witnessed a resurgence of populism, which has relied on the virality of social networks to deepen its roots in society and spread its ideas. This paper analyses the populist strategies used by all parties to viralise their messages in the online environment, regardless of ideology. The present research has also examined the possible existence of complementary strategies used by the parties' organisational profiles and those of their leaders. To this end, a content analysis has been carried out regarding the publications made on Twitter during the 2019 election campaign. The posts have been delimited to those made by the parties and candidates that attained the highest percentage of representation in the Congress of Deputies, which include the PSOE, PP, Vox, and Unidas Podemos. The findings show that all the parties under study resorted to this type of strategy. The parties closest to centre of the political spectrum, both right and left, used mostly a populist strategy aimed predominantly at attacking their adversaries, while Vox and Unidas Podemos articulated their discourse beyond this argument, with Vox appealing to the emotions of the nation and Podemos positioning itself as the peoples' advocate. Furthermore, a complementary strategy used by both the parties and their leaders has been identified, which fosters the expansion of these kinds of populist ideas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 2022 presidential election in Brazil involved two radically different candidates but with broad similarities in their populist discourse and communication strategies. The electoral campaign and the results polarized the country between the supporters of the outgoing president, Jair Bolsonaro, and the incoming one, Lula da Silva. This article analyzes the two television debates that took place in the second round of the presidential election in October. The interventions of the candidates have been studied using the methodology of critical discourse analysis applied by Hawkins (2010). The goal is to discover the degree of populism present in the candidates' discourse in the two debates studied. The results show evidence of the highly populist nature of the discourse of the two leaders in both television events. This characteristic, as well as other important aspects of the campaigns and the narrow margin of Lula's eventual victory, may explain the level of polarization evident in the country. It may also be the reason behind the rejection of the election results by the followers of Bolsonaro and their protest against the change in president. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The goal of the following text is to analyze the changes in television advertising in the banking and automobile sectors, according to the social context. The hypothesis is that communication is significantly influenced by the situational context, causing differences between the advertising of the two sectors. A multimodal discourse analysis is used, comparing twenty commercials from the banking and automobile sectors in 2019 and 2020, the period during which the lockdown due to COVID-19 took place. Based on a qualitative and quantitative analysis tables were developed with which to analyze general data such as the value proposition or target audience of the advert, or other special data like the text (verb tenses, rhetorical figures...), the image and the sound used. The fact that context is decisive in communication is made evident, and since this is different in every sector, the communication strategy is clearly different as well. However, the points that the two sectors have in common are remarkable: these range from talking about brands and products, to speaking for and about people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes and compares the following of Twitter users during the two electoral debates of the general elections in Spain in April and November 2019. Through the collection of the official hashtags #ElDebateDecisivo (970,706 tweets) and #DebateElectoral (821,521) respectively from 9 am on the day of the debate until 2 am the following day, we analyzed the polarity and basic emotions of the messages posted on the social network using algorithms with R software. A network theory study was also carried out to determine each account's affiliation to each group. The results show a polarization in the network, with well-defined groups with hardly any relationship with other groups of different ideologies. It is also observed that the entry of a new player, Vox, into the second debate completely alters the rest of the centerright parties, which end up seeing it from a much more negative perspective. This entry does not involve major changes among the left-wing parties, but it does mean an increase in fear. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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

Hence, this paper critiques the digital-media tool, blogs, using a rhetoric-textual analysis method and critical discourse analysis method for the fictional text, Americanah. How does blog become the Mallya, D. & Susanti, R. Theorizing race, marginalization, and language in the digital media ISSN 2386-7876 - © 2021 Communication & Society, 34(2), 403-415 406 virtual and liberated voice of the marginalized free from the constraints of the Dominant ideology? ISSN 2386-7876 - © 2021 Communication & Society, 34(2), 403-415 403 Theorizing race, marginalization, and language in the digital media Abstract Digitization of the communication medium has transformed the mute, marginalized "audience" into a heterogeneous and credible content "producer". [Extracted from the article]

This work is based on the mediatisation of society theory, which establishes more attached importance and the presence of the mass media as mediators in various social processes, as well as on Production Studies, that analyse creative skills to draw an audience, to apply these theories to the media representation of the COVID-19 pandemic. The objective is to analyse how the generalist media have represented male/female scientists, who have become social benchmarks during the first COVID-19 wave in Spain. Our initial hypothesis considers that the purpose of the mediatisation of scientific discourse was to contribute answers to, and to keep society calm, in an uncertainty context. By content and discourse analyses with a sample formed by 172 pieces of work published between 25 January and 5 July 2020 in four Spanish digital newspapers, we observed how these specialists not only became the usual sources of journalistic information but were also the main leading figures in them. The mass media pay attention to their statements, but also to their aesthetics and communication style, which are singular compared to conventional power to date. Science enters the national section with its own image and explanatory intentionality. Nonetheless, constant overexposure and its link with governments making controversial decisions influence the image held by the public opinion of scientists with time, which dissociates them from its knowledge and identifies them with political power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses the narrative techniques of major far-right political parties in contemporary Europe, based on their promotional videos on YouTube. It argues that the construction of their discourse is based mainly on cinematic references that connect with both the post-modern epic and the propaganda machinery of the Third Reich. Their visual motifs are thus positioned on two intertextual axes: post-classical cinema and Nazi propaganda. To support this hypothesis, a qualitative methodology of discourse analysis is applied, with special emphasis on the textual analysis of both formal features (staging, framing, and editing) and thematic content (the political messages conveyed). After offering a brief outline of the current state of the dissemination of right-wing extremist messages on YouTube, the article examines a sample of 53 of the most important institutional videos by the 12 far-right parties that have been most successful in their respective national elections. The results confirm that their visual motifs evoke three of the most characteristic fields of signification of the extreme right: the construction of the leader, the idea of nation, and the creation of an external enemy. In all three cases, a series of images is used with the aim of both captivating the audience with historical-military references and appropriating stylistic features from the nationalist iconography of the Heimat, which inspired many of the UFA films of the Nazi era. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The scientific debate regarding populism has been renewed by the rise of extreme right-wing parties in Western Europe. Spain was an exception to the European situation until Vox stormed onto the scene in the Andalusian regional elections in December 2018. By taking into account the definition of populism from Jaager & Walgrave (2007), Mudde (2007), Hawkins (2010), Charaudeau's populist discourse analysis (2009), and the idea of "contamination" by Hernández Carr, 2011 and Van Spanje, 2010, this article presents the results of an analysis regarding the discourse of the tweets published by the candidates of the three right-wing national parties during the electoral campaign in Spain prior to the day of the elections on 28 April 2019. The aim of the study is to reveal whether Abascal's discourse conforms to the parameters of the populist style, and whether there was contamination by Abascal (Vox) of the issues and rhetoric of Pablo Casado (Partido Popular-PP) and Albert Rivera (Ciudadanos-Cs). Firstly, the quantitative analysis shows that Abascal's political discourse on this social network is in line with the discursive strategies of populism; Secondly, the Vox leader behaves differently from the candidates of the PP and Cs. Finally, the influence of Vox's discourse on the other two parties with which he competes on the right-wing ideological spectrum is lower than expected. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The advantages of social media platforms as interactive information sources raise the importance of examining how they are used by political digital opinion leaders to influence public perceptions. Twitter, especially, played a major role in Egypt's January 25 revolution facilitating news dissemination, public discussions and debates. Analyzing the communicative strategies of two Egyptian political influencers -Ammar Ali Hassan and Ezzedine Fishere- ten years after Egypt's political change, and the role they play in public discourse through their Twitter accounts, this research offers an overview of the current role played by Egyptian digital political influencers in influencing public opinion. Focusing on the content and discourse of their tweets for two months, October and November 2019, the digital political influencers were selected based on the number of followers divided by the amount of interactivity on their tweets, such as retweets and favorites. The unit of analysis is the tweet that received the largest amount of interactivity. Results showed that both influencers had a unidirectional opinion strategy. While Hassan's tweets, @ammaralihassan, seemed purposeless, not yielding any clear and valuable content to the reader, Fishere, @FishereEzzedine, was more outspoken and clearer in his communicative strategy, using evidence in defending human rights in Egypt and the Arab World. The analysis indicated more fact-based tweets by Fishere, who seems to play a more significant role in his communication network, despite minimal interaction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the information sources used in a large corpus of news items published in Spanish printed newspapers between 1618 and 1635. The initial aim is to determine how information credibility was constructed in both historical and rhetorical terms. To this end, the rhetorical construction of credibility in the news stories are analysed by focusing on the information sources that these reveal or conceal. And in order to determine whether or not these sources were deliberately concealed, the frequency with which 'on deep background' attribution appears is examined. The methodological approach on which this study is based is Historical News Discourse, which applies the conclusions and methods of critical discourse analysis to newspapers of the past, in addition to contextualising and explaining the results in terms of journalism history and communication approaches (Conboy, Brownlees and Broersma, among others). In this work, we contend that the discourse analysis of the first printed newspapers is essential for gaining further insights into how the journalistic profession consolidated its position in Spain thanks to a new form of auctoritas based on discourse competence. The gazetteer or journalist emerged as a new kind of writer, whose credibility and reputation depended on his ability to access, organise and reveal -according to rhetorical patterns recognisable to readers- the information sources available to him. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We analysed discourse produced in the Spanish press on a number of issues relating to disability (accessibility, education, employment, sport and institutionalisation). The aim was to identify the underlying paradigm: that of rehabilitation or personal autonomy. The analysis was based on 435 units of analysis including news, editorials, opinion articles, reports and letters to the editor, selected from two national newspapers (ABC and El País) published between 1978 and 2012. Discourses generally evolved from reflecting a medical-rehabilitation concept of disability to a more social perspective on disability. It was necessary, however, to examine discourses and practices in different domains separately, as this evolution was not reflected in equal measure in all of them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Right-wing populists are on the rise in Europe in the last decade. Their populism undermines one of the central pillars of democracy, the political discourse. Populism affects the quality of political debates in parliaments. With the emergence of the "Alternative für Deutschland" (AfD) a populist party became relevant nationally for the first time in over sixty years. By applying the concept of Cognitive Complexity as an instrument to measure deliberative quality, we analyze to what extend the discourse quality in the German Bundestag in debates on immigration policies varied over the 18th legislative period. Cognitive Complexity is measured quantitatively by applying a linguistic approach based on the LIWC dictionary. Despite our initial expectations, there are no trends detectable and the rise of the populist AfD does not alter the discourse quality so far. Nonetheless, there exist major differences in discourse quality between the parties, most notably opposition parties have a lower discourse quality in their statements than governing parties. In addition, individual characteristics of the speaker such as gender, age or electoral ty pe do not render any differences. However, there seem to the differences depending on the federal state in which the speaker's electoral district lies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fact-checking has experienced substantial growth in recent years, as a technique aimed to monitor public discourse, at a time when the dissemination of fake news or the loss of media quality and credibility has reached worrying levels. This article analyzes nine projects launched since 2010 in half a dozen Latin American countries, representative of an emerging ecosystem in a region facing problems to achieve genuine media democracy. Front a qualitative and quantitative approach, this research compares the work methodology and the evaluation models presented by the digital platforms, as well as the topics and actors that are subject to examination. The study highlights the aim of these projects, independent of traditional media, to evaluate statements on the most relevant issues of the sociopolitical agenda of their countries and public representatives. The importance of these platforms is reflected in the fact that only two in ten checks from the sample can be considered true, almost half of those identified as false and of those presenting some kind of inaccuracy. The analysis reveals significant differences when carrying out the verifications and presenting the results, with options for improvement in the number of sources, the inclusion of expert voices and audiovisual resources, or the interaction with readers. The Argentinian platform Chequeado appears as a reference model in this context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study examines social representations of the threat created by emerging infectious diseases. A free association experiment was carried out in which the stimulus was a news item where the framing of a discourse (human interest vs. attribution of responsibility) was manipulated. Results showed that the human interest discourse sparked off representations linked to vulnerability, while the responsibility discourse produced representations concerning preventive health care promoted by the authorities. Even so. the effect of the discourse was limited and showed that the new information is anchored in previous interpretive schemes. Implications of mass media on health communication are considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the opening of the Spanish TV market in the 1990s, the development of fiction genres, formats and narratives has evolved notoriously, generating a universe of forms and narrations that has configured the history of Spanish TV. The family comedy, in this context, is postulated as one of the most relevant fiction subgenres of Spanish TV, thanks to its easy assimilation, the identification it generates with the audience, its formats and its dissemination strategy, which has contributed to the success of family comedy on television. This article combines quantitative data with documental reflection and discourse analysis to offer a taxonomy of the standards that have guided the configuration of family comedy in Spanish TV. The study is based on the analysis of 47 cases of family comedy, broadcast from 1990 to 2010 in mainstream TV channels, using three different perspectives: format, viewership and production aspects. The results offer relevant data about the family comedy genre that allow us to establish a specific approach to the configuration of a standard of form, reach and production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the most important features of three recent presidential campaigns in Latin America, aiming at knowing the dominant trend in their major pieces of advertising. A comparison is made among the spots of candidates who won the presidential elections held in 2011 in Argentina (Cristina Fernández de Kirchner), 2012 in Mexico (Enrique Peña Nieto) and 2012 in Venezuela (Hugo Chávez), based on the functional theory of political campaign discourse(Benoit, 2003). Through a content analysis of 30 spots -and within them, 139 recording units- the article explores: 1) the type of discursive strategy prevalent in the spots of these winning campaigns, 2) whether topics related to policy aspects prevail or not over those referring to the candidates' image, and 3) if, in temporal terms, these messages indicate issues from the past or future goals. Two relevant considerations arise from the study. On the one hand, the topic "policy" coexists with the topic "character"; on the other hand, "acclaiming" is more intensely associated with "events of the recent past", while "attacking" is completely linked to "past events" which belong to previous administrations of those presidents who run for another term in office. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]