WhatsApping terror: how media applied instant messaging to cover Barcelona terrorist attack

Audiences love live communication (Deuze, 2011), the possibility of reaching news in real time. Previous research focus on the reporting of natural disasters or emergency news like terrorist attacks show that the concept “news now” (Sheller, 2014) is an audience imperative in those contexts. Bauman’s (2000) liquid society is the objective public of this kind of content, characterized by mobility and the individualization of media consumption. Our paper analyzes how media adapted their publishing strategies to reach this public through mobile instant messaging during Barcelona terrorist attack coverage in August 2017. This type of social news and information flow is characterized by unpredictability, classlessness, and a lack of hierarchy (Rampazzo & Peret, 2017). In order to reach this main goal we applied mixed methods, based on quantitative and qualitative techniques. Firstly, we designed a directory of Spanish media applying Whatsapp and Telegram to connect with audiences. Then we analyzed the content distributed by all national, regional and local media through these platforms from 17th to 21th August 2017. The first informative alert appeared 25 minutes after the van was driven into pedestrians in Las Ramblas. According to our results, 214 headlines in WhatsApp and Telegram were directly connected with the terrorist attack, but not all of them offered the appropriate tone and/or respectful emoticons. Most of the media made a great effort increasing the regularity of their messages during those days, but only the national media focused their MIM (Mobile Instant Messaging) strategy on the attack. Finally we classified the reaction into three types of content: last minute alerts, contextualizing news and solidarity content.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Cross-Media Alliances to Stop Disinformation: A Real Solution?

Social networks have surpassed their intermediary role and become gatekeepers of online content and traffic. This transformation has favored the spread of information disorders. The situation is especially alarming in Spain, where 57% of Spaniards have at some moment believed false news. Since 2016, First Draft has promoted several collaborative verification projects that brought together newsrooms to fact-check false, misleading and confusing claims circulating online during presidential elections in several countries. The main objective of this article is to study the collaboration forged between newsrooms in Spain in order to debunk disinformation contents in 2019 under the name of Comprobado (Verified) and the impact of this initiative. Applying a methodological approach based on non-participant observation, interviews, content analysis of reports, scientific articles, books and media archives, we examine the internal uses of this platform, how journalists verified public discourse, the strategies and internal agreements implemented, and the degree of participation of the 16 media involved. Results show that only half of the initiatives begun were transformed into published reports, and the media impact achieved was limited. Finally, we note that the principal reasons for the frustration of the project were its improvised implementation, due to the date of the election being brought forward, and the scant culture of collaboration in the sector. In Spain at least, cross-media alliances are still an exception

Estudio cualitativo y longitudinal sobre el uso periodístico de Telegram

Telegram se ha convertido en el competidor más directo de WhatsApp en Europa, aunque sus 400 millones de usuarios aún están lejos de los 2.000 millones de la aplicación de Facebook (abril de 2020). La app, creada en 2014 por Pavel Durov, se ha tratado de diferenciar de su rival mediante la mejora de seguridad (Ortega, 2019), el sistema de canales y los supergrupos que permiten la reunión de 200.000 usuarios. Las aplicaciones de mensajería instantánea han superado en usuarios globales a las redes sociales tradicionales (Barot y Oren, 2015). En el caso de Telegram, los eventos relacionados con el Tsunami Democràtic, donde el canal del movimiento político se situó entre uno de los más multitudinarios del mundo, con 380.000 seguidores (La Vanguardia, 2019); el nacimiento del canal de Telegram del ministerio de Sanidad en plena crisis del COVID-19 (Ramírez, 2020), y la migración masiva a la app en España tras surgir el bulo de que WhatsApp censuraba contenidos (Sierra, 2020), han situado a la aplicación de mensajería instantánea de origen ruso en una opción a tener en cuenta dentro del mundo de la comunicación.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

El futuro de Telegram y WhatsApp como herramientas de uso periodístico

Con más de 1.600 millones de usuarios en julio de 2019 WhatsApp se erige como la principal herramienta de comunicación inmediata móvil, según un estudio de Statista y Hootsuite. Investigaciones previas confirman que las aplicaciones de mensajería instantánea tienen en la actualidad más usuarios globales que las redes sociales tradicionales (Barot y Oren, 2015). Asimismo, el Digital News Report 2019 del Instituto Reuters establece que es la aplicación más utilizada para leer, encontrar, compartir o comentar noticias, logrando un 47% para tal fin. Este uso cada vez más generalizado las convierten en herramientas esenciales en las rutinas de las redacciones (Andueza y Pérez, 2014).Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Radiography of the journalistic uses of WhatsApp: Audience consumption and media strategies

WhatsApp has become one of the main platform for news consumption (Batra, 2016). According to the Digital News Report (Reuters Institute, 2017), its penetration in Spain for this usage is 32%. This study also aims that 56% of users access news through mobile phones. This reality produces a new media ecosystem that evolves and mutates in the digital era (García, Carvajal and Arias, 2018). These data represent an unprecedented paradigm shift (Lee and Man Chan, 2015). In this context, it is necessary to understand users behaviour patterns and verify how the media adapt their strategies to these practices. Previous research focus on WhatsApp and journalism suggest new professional routines (Bradshaw, 2015), analyze coverages (Reid, 2014) or highlight its potential (Silva, Lopez, and Westlund, 2015). However, at a time when instant messaging applications have more global users than traditional social networks (Barot and Oren, 2015), it is imperative to discover new approaches to determine the shortcomings and strengths of "whatsapping news". To reach these goals, we applied a mixed methodology. Our research collects data from 5,021 WhatsApp users of 18 Spanish news sites. Preliminary results confirm that 481 of the respondents share news through the application almost every day. This quantitative study is complemented with a content analysis of 123 Spanish media. During one week, all messages sent by these media were analyzed. Only 10 newspapers of that directory have a sender role through WhatsApp, generating great expectations on audience participation.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tec

Aproximación metodológica al impacto de WhatsApp y Telegram en las redacciones

The immediacy that Internet requires of mass media has led many newsrooms to adapt their strategies to new digital formats (Andueza and Pérez, 2014). The rise of messaging platforms such as WhatsApp or Telegram has led the newsrooms to begin using them as distribution channels to keep their readers informed (Batra, 2016). The multimedia possibilities they host, allowing not only text and links to be sent, but also images, videos and audios, have led to the exponential growth of their implementation. Most media opted only for the broadcast, while a minority opted for a use focused only on receiving messages. The studies carried out so far contemplate a diversity of strategies by the media that seek to turn messaging platforms into a new information channel (Negreira, Lopez and Lozano, 2017). The main objective of this research aims to compile and examine the methodological approaches applied to the study of the immediate Communications from an international approach, and to propose a specific tool that allows analyzing these messages peculiarities.La inmediatez que exige Internet a los medios de comunicación ha provocado que muchas redacciones tengan que adaptar sus estrategias a nuevos formatos digitales (Andueza y Pérez, 2014). El auge de plataformas de mensajería como WhatsApp o Telegram ha propiciado que las redacciones comiencen a utilizarlas como canales de distribución para mantener informados a sus lectores (Batra, 2016). Las posibilidades multimedia que albergan, permitiendo enviar no solo texto y enlaces, sino también imágenes, vídeos y audios, ha propiciado el crecimiento exponencial de su implantación. La mayoría de medios se decantan solo por la emisión, mientras que una minoría opta por un uso centrado solo en la recepción de mensajes. Los estudios realizados hasta el momento contemplan una diversidad de estrategias por parte de los medios que buscan convertir las plataformas de mensajería en un nuevo canal de información (Negreira, López y Lozano, 2017). El objetivo principal de esta investigación consiste en recopilar y examinar los enfoques metodológicos aplicados hasta la fecha al estudio de la comunicación inmediata desde una perspectiva internacional, y proponer una herramienta propia que permita analizar dicha actividad, y especialmente las particularidades de los mensajes publicados

Application of full-reference video quality metrics in IPTV

Executing an accurate full-reference metric such as VQM can take minutes in an average computer for just one user. Therefore, it can be unfeasible to analyze all the videos received by users in an IPTV network for example consisting of 10.000 users using a single computer running the VQM metric. One solution can be to use a lightweight no-reference metrics in addition to the full-reference metric mentioned. Lightweight no-reference metrics can be used for discarding potential situations to evaluate because they are accurate enough for that task, and then the full-reference metric VQM can be used when more accuracy is needed. The work in this paper is focused on determining the maximum number of situations/users that can be analyzed simultaneously using the VQM metric in a computer with good performance. The full-reference metric is applied on the transmitter using a method specified in the recommendation ITU BT.1789. The best performance achieved was 112.8 seconds per process

WhatsApp and Telegram applied to journalism practice: A constant challenge for media.

Instant messaging applications like WhatsApp and Telegram have become indispensable tools for proximal communication with audiences in today’s mobile society (Schwarz & Rupp, 2016). The attentive gaze directed by the media at audience habits has justified their incorporation (Westlund, 2013) and/or influence in journalistic routines, where they are employed as punctual or complementary solutions for both internal and external communication (Dodds, 2019).Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Size Dependence of the Magnetoelastic Properties of Metallic Glasses for Actuation Applications

We present an exhaustive study of the magnetoelastic properties of 24 strips with different rectangular dimensions, cut from a long ribbon of Metglas((R)) 2826MB3. The strips have a length-to-width ratio R = L/w ranging from 2 to over 20. Significant variations of the apparent saturation Young's modulus and the Delta E effect with strip geometry, changing from 160 GPa and 4% for L = 10 mm, w = 5 mm and R = 2, to 164 GPa and 9.6% for L = 35 mm, w = 1.7 mm and R = 20.6, have been observed. In order to obtain the highest values of the Delta E effect, the magnetomechanical coupling coefficient, k, and the quality factor of the resonance, Q, a value R > 14 is needed. The effective anisotropy field H-k(*), taken as the minimum of the E(H) curve, and its width Delta H, are not as strongly influenced by the R value, and a value of R > 7 is enough to reach the lowest value. From our measurements we infer that the formerly predicted value of R > 5 needed for a good magnetic and magnetoelastic response of the material must be actually regarded as the lowest limit for this parameter. In fact, we show that the demagnetizing factor N, rather than the length-to-width ratio R, is the parameter that governs the magnetoelastic performance of these strips.The authors acknowledge financial support from the Basque Government under ACTIMAT project (KK-2018/00099, Elkartek program) and University Basque Research Groups Funding (IT1245-19)

El impacto de la Covid-19 en la docencia de fotoperiodismo: reflexiones docentes

La irrupción de la pandemia Covid-19 propició el cierre de todas las universidades en España. El estado de alarma cesó toda la actividad en los centros. Los docentes tuvieron que trabajar en un panorama incierto marcado por las clases online (Turrul, 2020). La aparición de un virus que afecta a todo el mundo ha subrayado cuáles son las exigencias de una crisis sanitaria a las instituciones educativas: flexibilidad, soportes, procedimientos y conceptos ajustados a unos intercambios formativos mediados por las nuevas tecnologías (Tejedor, Cervi, Tusa y Parola, 2020). Esta investigación se centra en analizar la asignatura Fotoperiodismo de marzo de 2020 a enero de 2021. La Red de Escuelas Asociadas de la UNESCO recoge los testimonios de cómo se impartieron clases durante el confinamiento y sobre la reanudación de la actividad educativa (UNESCO, 2020), al igual que esta iniciativa, el presente estudio busca conocer las reflexiones y vivencias de los docentes especializados en la imagen. El presente proyecto, de carácter cualitativo y exploratorio, ha recopilado información a través de 10 entrevistas en profundidad estructuradas. Las respuestas permitieron recoger las experiencias, métodos y reflexiones de los docentes responsables de la asignatura Fotoperiodismo en diversas universidades de España. Se acotó la muestra a quienes dieron clase durante el segundo cuatrimestre de 2020 y los que se encargaron de la misma en el primer cuatrimestre de 2021. La elaboración de las preguntas se realizó en orden de relevancia y bajo unas premisas constituidas por las siguientes categorías: nivel, modelo y valoración. Asimismo, para completar el estudio y profundizar en la parte técnica, se realizó un estudio de caso donde se aplica la observación participante de un docente.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech