Catalan Journal of Communication & Cultural Studies - Volume 13, Issue 1, 2021

Politainment is a phenomenon that deals with the political communication of entertainment regarding its production, diffusion and intake in its different formats. It entails consequences regarding the dynamics of communication such as political informative decline, along with the loss of democratic quality giving prominence to a post-truth communication environment and promoting the celebritization of politicians. The academic basis upholds that, in the politainment environment, social networks play an important role acting as instruments that help promote information exchange, both horizontally and vertically, from an active, connected, empowered social audience which evidences participation, contribution, production and collaboration. This research is pioneer in identifying the kind of contents of politainment programmes that promote a greater engagement among the social audience. Therefore, it includes an empirical analysis from a quantitative and qualitative approach of the contents of tweets and comments with the highest level of interaction among prosumers from the profiles of the three most representative politainment programmes in Spain: El Objetivo, El programa de Ana Rosa and El Intermedio. The results achieved from this comparative analysis include significant differences regarding the politainment content promoted by these programmes and also in relation to the level of online engagement. Although the limited interaction from the social audience was a common pattern, the results show that tweets with hashtags, visual elements and the ones using the attribute of responsibility frame achieved a higher engagement level than the rest of them.

The following research studies, from a theoretical perspective, the different forms of symbolic and discursive violence and the transmission of hate speech through new media. The main objective is to understand the consequences of symbolic violence through language and how this affects freedom of expression. Reflective and critical argumentation is highlighted through an exploratory analysis carried out by a literature review, where it is determined that the confrontational narrative used by the media contributes to the dehumanization, demonization and polarization of specific collectives.

This article addresses how advertisements are narrative devices for the construction, imagination and diffusion of the nation’s depictions in the context of globalization. In this analytical sense, we suggest the current traits in advertising: the hyper-symbolization of the brand and the extrapolation of nation branding to product advertising. We study different representations of Catalonia through a sample of the audio-visual commercial advertising on food and drinks on public television in Catalonia between 2009 and 2017. These examples show the main symbolic frameworks of the nation and re-created identity through two types of depictions of Catalan tradition and experiential Catalanness, that which can exemplify the idea of banal nationalism in the sense of Billig and Edensor’s everyday nationalism. The main objective of our proposal is to understand commercial advertisements as forms of national discourse in everyday nationalism and how the private sector uses this.

A review of literature suggests that very few studies have examined how selection, deletion and inclusion of comments in news articles affect audience perception of news credibility, newsworthiness and trustworthiness. Using an experimental methodology, this study seeks to understand how journalistic use of UGCs influences audience perception of news credibility, newsworthiness and trustworthiness. The study also sought to espouse on the two-step flow theory and its relevance to online media; with particular reference to news selection. Four hundred participants from selected Nigerian universities constitute the sample of this study and the findings showed that comments use influenced audience perception of news credibility, newsworthiness and trustworthiness. Also, the findings lent credence to developing research that seeks to prove that the two-step flow story is relevant to online media. The findings of this study showed evidence of the two-step flow of information.

The current interrelation between social media and the audio-visual industry has required traditional broadcasters to extend their programming strategies outside the box. TV fiction is a suitable genre to test new forms of audience loyalty, which is essential in a highly competitive environment. In this article, we present results regarding the actions of the industry through a content analysis of the official Twitter profiles of the most-watched series in Spain and the United Kingdom. We conclude that both market strategies revolve around the linear broadcast. However, Spanish channels are more aggressive in their actions to stimulate social conversation.

The media, including popular media such as music and films, often generate conversations about different spectrums of society. Due to an overabundance of imagery and sounds from the media, including television, film, advertising, social media and the internet, audiences are constantly bombarded with stereotypes and ideologies about other races and identities. As an exponentially growing popular culture industry, Nollywood – the Nigerian movie industry – positions itself as a source of knowledge and popular discourse about issues emanating from the continent and other places. With this growth, Nollywood seems to have been given a spot in the political circle of identity politics, giving it the power to represent the ‘Others’. This study interrogates the theme of identity construction in African films by focusing on the ways in which some select Nollywood films of the early and late 2000s and early 2010s frame and construct foreign races and foreign societies, using critical ideological analysis and the framework of critical race theory. Representations and portrayals of difference in the analysed movies could be serving some ‘revenge’ of sorts, transgressing age-long representations of Black people in Blaxploitation films. The multiplex representations as seen in the analyses serve the primary purpose of such stereotypes: to reproduce and to reaffirm prejudices that over time become naturalized and normalized. The study thematically specifies the significant use of labels, stereotypes and certain orthodoxies that aim to frame and characterize foreign societies in popular Nigerian films and suggests some broader implications of the findings.

Media literacy of schoolchildren is a key political goal worldwide: institutions and citizens consider media literacy training to be essential – among other aspects – to combat falsehoods and generate healthy public opinion in democratic contexts. In Spain, various media literacy projects address this phenomenon one of which is ‘Que no te la cuelen’ (‘Don’t be fooled’, QNTLC). The project, which has been developed by the authors of this viewpoint, is implemented through theoretical–practical workshops aimed at public and private secondary pupils (academic years 2018–19, 2019–20 and 2020–21), based around training in fake news detection strategies and online fact-checking tools for students and teachers. This viewpoint describes and reflects on this initiative, conducted in 36 training sessions with schoolchildren aged 14–16 years attending schools in Madrid, Valencia and Barcelona. The workshops are based on van Dijk’s media literacy model, with a special focus on the ‘informational skills’ dimension. The amount of information available through all kinds of online platforms implies an extra effort in selecting, evaluating and sharing information, and the workshop focuses on this process through seven steps: suspect, read/listen/watch carefully, check the source, look for other reliable sources, check the data/location, be self-conscious of your bias and decide whether to share the information or not. The QNTLC sessions teach and train these skills combining gamification strategies – online quiz, verification challenges, ‘infoxication’ dynamics in the class – as well as through a public deliberation among students. Participants’ engagement and stakeholders’ interest in the programme suggest that this kind of training is important or, at least, attract the attention of these collectives in the Spanish context.

Review of: The White Racial Frame: Centuries of Racial Framing and Counter-Framing, JOE R. FEAGIN (2020), 3rd ed.

New York: Routledge, 302 pp.,

ISBN 978-0-36737-347-4, h/bk, £120

ISBN 978-0-36737-348-1, p/bk, £32.99