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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]

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]