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The aim of this paper is to examine the visual disinformation produced in the context of the Russian-Ukrainian war, analyze its international scope, study the reaction of fact-checking journalism and compare the disinformation strategies adopted by both contenders. A descriptive and inferential statistical quantitative research of the fake visual content verified by fact-checkers between January and April 2022 was conducted. The results confirm the dominance of the strategy based on false context, the relevance of Facebook and Twitter in the distribution of fake news, and the production of an increased number of fake images during the two weeks following the invasion. The most frequent narratives are those consisting of false decisions and military attacks that seek to impute atrocities and war crimes to the opposing side. Pro-Russian visual disinformation makes greater use of fabricated content. If the concentration of messages on a few platforms is the logic that characterizes the Ukrainian disinformation, Russia utilizes a more expansive strategy by using a greater variety of media to spread their narratives. Stories about fake attacks are more usual in Ukrainian visual disinformation. Fake news stories about the international community's reaction to the Russian attack are more prevalent in pro-Kremlin disinformation. It is also observed that as the conflict progresses, fake content from the Ukrainian side is less frequent, while Russian disinformation increases in proportion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

About to celebrate its first two decades of life, podcasting is one of the fastest-growing mediums in recent years. This medium, promoted from the amateur sphere as a result of the arrival of Web 2.0, has become an increasingly professional practice thanks to the work of major production companies and platforms such as Spotify. In this context of increasing professionalization, this paper aims to investigate the origins of podcasting in Spain in order to analyze the decisive role that the first community of Spanish amateur podcasters played in its development. An ethnographic research study, focused on the first seven years of the medium in this country (2004–2010), was carried out. The study was based on interviews with the pioneers, a review of source documents, and participant observation. The difficulties and the main milestones related to the medium's origin are analyzed. Likewise, the parallels between the beginning of this practice and the role assumed by radio amateurs at the beginning of radio in Spain a century ago are discussed. This parallel trajectory linking the origin of both media (radio and podcast) can be useful to envision a perspective on the possible developments of podcasting in the coming years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Disinformation is one of the great challenges threatening the health of the public space and democratic systems, which must be based on truth to facilitate decision-making by citizens. For this reason, the fight against fake news has attracted attention from professionals and researchers during the last five years. In the journalistic field, numerous fact-checking outlets have been established. They use the media at their disposal and, above all, social networks to make verified content visible. TikTok, an emerging social video platform (very popular among the youth population), is the latest tool to be explored by fact-checkers to make the truth public. In this context, this paper aims to (1) determine the characteristics of fact-checkers' videos that drive their engagement on TikTok and (2) identify the factors that predict the number of likes, comments, views, times shared, and engagement rate of such content. All the videos published on this platform by the Spanish fact-checkers Maldito bulo and Newtral (n = 320) during the first 26 months of activity of both outlets were analyzed. Bivariate correlational studies, multiple linear regression, and binary logistic regression tests were applied. The type of content (verification versus explanation) has a greater impact on engagement than the topics of the videos. Verifications multiply the probability of a content getting an above-average number of likes, by 2.42. If the video is hosted by a woman, it doubles its chances of getting an above-average number of shares. Our results provide other valuable data that can help fact-checkers make their content more easily spreadable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2004, José Antonio Gelado introduced podcasting into Spain after an intense period of experimentation based on the work carried out by the pioneers of the medium in the USA. In the Spanish context, podcasting is an example of a digital medium essentially promoted by a community of independent and non-professional creators, without any prior connection to the communication field. Numerous and relevant voices have defended that the emergence of new media such as podcasts is building a new media ecosystem characterized by the decentralization and democratization of agenda-setting. For this reason, this research focuses on the real possibilities for citizen participation in this medium. The fieldwork was based on a mixed-methods research design integrating an analysis of the most relevant podcast rankings in Spain, a total of 22 in-depth interviews with users and podcasters, analysis of the spaces for participation in the medium, and non-participatory observation practiced on the Spanish podcastphere. In contrast to the certainly celebratory claims that defend that the Internet, and more specifically digital platforms, give a voice to those who do not have the opportunity to participate in traditional mass media, our results determine that in most cases such participation is not sufficient for ordinary citizens to be empowered in a real manner, due to the multiple barriers that both media and digital platforms continue to represent. Finally, we propose a preliminary theory of media interaction taking into consideration seven key concepts: neobroadcasting, technology, ecosystem, grammar, cartography, interoperability, and evolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Covid-19 has triggered not only a pandemic that endangers our social, economic, and health systems but also an infodemic resulting from the prolific spread of fake news, hoaxes, and misleading content. From a statistical-descriptive perspective and using content analysis, this research analyzes the information disorders, media language, and narratives that carry the disinformation generated about Covid-19 at an international level. The analysis focuses on determining its frequency of occurrence, based on the time it takes to be verified and establishing the relationship between the spread of the virus and the prevalence of disinformation on different continents. A sample of 582 fake news items included in the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) database on the novel coronavirus was analyzed. This information was divided into a general sample made up of 511 pieces of disinformation and a specific one on fake news spread through WhatsApp (n=71). The results partially confirm recent studies that reported a greater prevalence of information that reconfigures legitimate content and takes longer to be verified than fully fabricated content. Disinformation in textual form predominates over the production of images and audios. Video content required longer verification times in comparison with the other media formats. Disinformation about Covid-19 includes narratives with a dynamic and changing character as the pandemic expands. Likewise, a parallelism between the geographical evolution of the pandemic and the spread of the infodemic is detected, as well as specific disinformation patterns on WhatsApp, where more audio-based disinformation and a higher percentage of fabricated content is shared, sometimes for criminal purposes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Transmedia podcasting (transpodcast) is an example of a digital medium essentially promoted by a community of independent creators that arises from the technological advancement derived from the arrival of Web 2.0. This medium is considered to offer its users greater possibilities of participation and co-creation by abandoning the traditional communicative models based on unidirectionality. The objective of this work is to determine how audience engagement takes place in this medium, taking into consideration the analysis of its participation spaces. In order to reach this goal, a Mixed Method Research Design was used, integrating two case studies with a total sample of 2,490 units of participation generated by users on the iVoox platform, the blogs of the two selected projects, and messages on Twitter. The research was complemented with an ethnographic investigation through observational methods on the presence of the user's voice in the podcasts of a total of 19 transpodcast projects. Despite the fact that numerous and relevant voices have defended that the new media ecosystem causes the decentralization and democratization of the agenda-setting and empowers ordinary citizens, this study shows a less optimistic and more critical perspective about the possibilities of meaningful citizen participation in online discourse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current media ecosystem offers enormous participatory possibilities to media audiences that, in this way, have the opportunity to engage in the co-creation of media discourse in ways unknown during the 20th century. Following the marketing 2.0 theories, the creation of attractive user experiences is considered as one of the aspects that the media increasingly take into consideration in order to get profitable content. The aim of this research is to detect the factors that influence engagement in podcasting, a digital and interactive medium that, due to its transmedia and mostly amateur nature, develops dynamics of permanent connection between media creators and listeners. By conducting a total of 17 in-depth semi-structured interviews with pioneers of the medium, podcasters and listeners, a total of 13 factors that determine user engagement were identified. These factors are integrated in three groups: medium-centered (technology, asynchrony, topics, genres and formats, and podcast subcommunity's size), user-centered (participatory culture, consumption situation and number of subscriptions, knowledge on the topic and about the podcast subcommunity, their own relevance in the podcastphere, and the perceived relevance about their participation), and podcaster-centered (skills, attitude and tone). These factors maintain relations of interoperability that build a grammar of engagement of the medium. This study provides some clues that can be exploited by commercial media that are opting for podcasting in order to build innovative experiences of interaction with their users with the purpose of increasing their audiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current media ecosystem has generated new forms of manipulation and disinformation, used in political issues of greater complexity, such as the independence referendum held in Catalonia on October 1, 2017. The objective of this research is to analyze the characteristics of the fake news and the most widespread hoaxes about this topic and make a cartography of the generative strategies of the 80 hashtags that became trending topics on Twitter during the crisis. By using documentary analysis, critical discourse analysis and virtual ethnography techniques (non-participant observation), we concluded that, unlike fake news, hoaxes were generated by applying more sophisticated and complicated strategies to detect, especially due to image manipulation and their decontextualized use. Counter-hashtag, subverted discourse and activism were the catalysts for the main trending topics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, several studies have analysed the skills and strategies that young people develop in digital environments and their relationship with cultural franchises within their transmedia universes. This article, clearly theoretical, aims to offer a critical analysis of the commodification of the creative work that young people produce on the web. Digital environments offer few possibilities for democratising public discourse. The online media production of teenagers is usually based on acts of false participation, since their possibilities of influence are very limited. At the same time, their actions in these digital environments are used to sustain a model of cognitive capitalism through processes of alienation and free labour that result in the advent of an information feudalism that transfers the goods of youth culture from the collective intellect into private hands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Podcasting has created an own narrative that provokes a rupture of the traditional radio's language due to the transmedia configuration of its contents and its multiplatform strategies. By analyzing the most relevant Spanish podcasts and through in-depth interviews, this investigation presents a cartography of the diverse platforms and the different contents that podcasters use so as to expand their stories beyond the sound language. Our results demonstrate that podcasting offers its messages in a wide range of platforms, digital and analog, that functionally complement each other. This involves producing materials in different media language. Moreover, podcasting presents a great variety of contents that, instead behaving in an isolated way, conform a logical and coherent grammar. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the 1970s,, the publications of Alvin Toffler and Jean Cloutier were essential for the emergence of two concepts, prosumer and emirec, whose meanings have been mistakenly equated by numerous scholars and researchers. At the same time, the mercantilist theories linked to prosumption have made invisible the models of communication designed by Cloutier. In this article, configured as a review of the state of the art made from an exhaustive documentary analysis, we observe that, while the notion of prosumer represents vertical and hierarchical relations between companies and citizens, Cloutier's emirec evokes a horizontal relationship and an isonomy between professional and amateur media creators. The prosumption presents an alienated subject, who is integrated into the logic of the market under free work dynamics and from the extension of time and productive spaces, while the emirec is defined as a potentially empowered subject that establishes relations between equals. The theory of the prosumer reproduces the hegemonic economic model by seeking solutions from the field of marketing so that the media and entertainment industries must face the challenges they have to face in the digital world. On the contrary, the emirec theory connects with disruptive communicative models that introduce new relationships between media and audiences and the establishment of a logic of affinity between communication participants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]