Catalan Journal of Communication & Cultural Studies - Communication and Dissent: Competing Voices in a Post-Truth World, Oct 2022

On 17 and 18 May 2021 almost 8000 migrants arrived in Ceuta, crossing over from the Moroccan side of the border. The humanitarian emergency was evident, but the Spanish extreme right defined the situation as something quite different. This article analyses Vox’s activity on Twitter during the two weeks following the arrival of the migrants, with the aim of identifying the logics of racism in its discourse. The methodology used is content analysis, focusing on topics frequency and discursive strategies used. A total of 762 publications from the official Vox account are analysed. The results indicate that the party constructs the aforementioned crisis as a warlike situation of threat, by way of populist discursive strategies. The logics of racist discourse are specifically xenophobic and cultural. Vox demands anti-immigrant institutional racism that does not respect human rights. This article concludes with some reflections on the worrying normalization of racist discourse today.

The COVID-19 pandemic caused by the new SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus represents the greatest crisis the world has faced in recent decades. Especially during the first waves, Spain was one of the European countries most affected by the pandemic. Although several studies have been carried out on the media coverage of the crisis, they have largely focused on the news genre. This study examines newspaper editorials’ approach to the issue, helping to analyse the perspective offered in opinion genres. To this end, the editorials of four Spanish newspapers were analysed from January 2020 to August 2021 (N = 243). The results reflect a strong politicization of the pandemic, both echoing and reinforcing political tension, and leaving more technical or scientific issues on a secondary plane.

The use of mobile instant messaging services is increasing among citizens. Applications like WhatsApp, with more than 2 billion users around the world, have changed the way we communicate. The objective of this research is to know how citizens make use of the WhatsApp service launched by the town hall of their municipality of residence. To do so, an online survey was carried out on 1202 citizens residing in Spain. The sample has been stratified considering the size of the municipality of residence of the respondents. The results show that the City Council’s WhatsApp service has greater penetration in smaller municipalities (up to 10,000 inhabitants). Therefore, these citizens would show more serious concern for local politics than the rest. Regarding its use, it stands out how residents in small municipalities use it more for informational purposes, while residents in medium municipalities (from 10,001 to 100,000 inhabitants) and large municipalities (more than 100,001 inhabitants) participate more and use it more frequently to register for the services offered by the City Council, as well as to raise doubts about the management run by the municipal corporation.

As has occurred with all political activism, contentious counter-hegemonic activism has found a new space for political action on the internet. The massive expansion of digital space in recent years has increased the socializing importance of the field of communications, especially among young people. However, it is not known to what extent the use of internet-based tools has spread in the contemporary protest repertoires of young Basque activists. Based on qualitative research carried out with young pro-independence nationalist activists in the Basque Country in the period following the end of ETA’s armed activity, the main objective of this article is to analyse the scope and limits of digital activism from the point of view of these new political subjects. The principal finding is that activists construct hybrid communication systems, in which physical and virtual spaces are combined, and where their inheritance of a community-based counter-hegemonic political activism and experimentation with new forms have come together.

The purpose of this article is to analyse the perceptions, social discourses and practices regarding the verification processes of the information consumed in the context of the information disorder that societies are experiencing. To do this, we created seven discussion groups structured around the variables age, position in the social structure and political ideology. We found that (1) there is a shared perception about how disinformation compromises one of the basic pillars of democracy; (2) this perception contradicts the few practices used to verify the information consumed; (3) macro-structural changes that generate a climate of less polarization, more critical education and regulation of information practices are put forward as solutions to disinformation and the circulation of false information.

This article raises questions on the political and legal side of lies and truths: (1) is there a human right to (know) the truth? (2) Is there a human right to (disseminate) lies? They are important issues today as the governments in too many parts of the world aim to suppress political voices by ostracizing and outlawing disinformation in communications and the media. So far this happens in the context of countering COVID-19 conspiracies and anti-vax movements, but generally designed to tackle any socially important information. On the other hand, the world indeed stands bewildered at the current outbursts of false news and the governments search for ways and means to diminish their social harm. The article provides a viewpoint for what the international law says on lies and truths in global affairs.