Artículos

Las redes sociales se han convertido en herramientas clave para la divulgación de las investigaciones y el acceso a la ciencia de las investigadoras y profesoras no universitarias. Sin embargo, existe una brecha digital y de género entre los hombres y las mujeres de este colectivo. El objetivo de esta investigación cuantitativa con perspectiva de género es comprender cómo las investigadoras y profesoras perciben y usan las redes sociales para transmitir el conocimiento que generan. Para ello, se administró una encuesta validada a 486 personas investigadoras y 463 profesorado no universitario (256 y 277 mujeres respectivamente). Los resultados muestran que no existe una percepción positiva de la utilidad de las redes sociales para la diseminación, divulgación y acceso al conocimiento científico debido a que prevalecen los formatos tradicionales, son empleadas en mayor medida para la diseminación que para la divulgación y no se hace un uso intensivo ni extendido de las mismas. Este hecho favorece la invisibilidad y trayectoria académico-profesional de las investigadoras y la pérdida de acceso al conocimiento por parte de las profesoras no universitarias. Por tanto, se recomienda aumentar la formación de ambos grupos, así como promover una transformación cultural y organizativa de las instituciones educativas para garantizar que las mujeres usen las redes sociales de manera más intensa y continua para la divulgación y acceso a la ciencia.

This study examines the characteristics and behaviours of accounts that propagate hate speech through their responses to articles posted on five leading digital news media in Spain on Platform X (previously Twitter). Using non-experimental quantitative research, we analysed 1345 hate-expressing messages from 173,449 user comments on content shared in five leading digital news media during January 2021. Network analysis, the Homophilic Exposure Index (HEI), regression analysis and the k-means algorithm were used to identify features that characterize accounts that disseminate low-intensity hate expressions in a coordinated manner, undermining the moderation efforts of digital news media. As a result, digital news media must develop strategies to reduce the presence of this type of expression and confront accounts that operate covertly in a coordinated manner, using Astroturfing to manipulate debates around the content published on X.

The growth of social media has been suggested as a potential tool for teacher training and development. This study aims to identify patterns of SM use in the ongoing education of non-university teachers in Spain from a gender perspective. The research was based on a survey conducted between November 2021 and January 2022 involving 462 male and female non-university teachers. The data presented in this work reveals differences between teachers based on gender and associated patterns. It also highlights variables contributing to a better understanding of SM use and responsible use among female and male teachers. This study emphasizes teachers' role in implementing strategies to increase SM use among the studied population in Spain. This role requires promoting the dissemination and access to scientific knowledge from educational centres, training institutions, and university academic institutions. Actions should focus on providing relevant scientific content in appropriate and attractive formats to increase the use of SM as a continuous training resource

Purpose

This study aimed to examine how educational researchers in Spain promoted the dissemination of scientific knowledge on Twitter/X as a platform and to contrast their approach with science influencers in the same country.

Methods

Accounts on the Twitter/X service belonging to 210 Spanish researchers were analyzed, and their 2016–2020 tweets were compared to those of 38 Twitter/X influencers. Text mining techniques, sentiment and emotion analysis, network analysis, and the Kardashian index (K-index) were used in the study.

Results

The results indicated a low academic presence of researchers (4.4%) on Twitter/X. The researchers shared 185,020 posts (38.7% original content and 61.3% retweets). A network analysis revealed low interconnectivity among researchers, with distinct clusters based on their interests or affiliations. The top influencers had strong connections with the news media. The researchers focused minimally on academic topics, while the influencers emphasized the dissemination of scientific findings. The impact of the researchers’ posts was minimal, with low K-index values, whereas the influencers had greater reach because of their follower base.

Conclusion

When using Twitter/X, the researchers had a minimal impact on the dissemination of scientific information because they published few original posts and relied instead on retweets unrelated to their academic or research activities. Consequently, the researchers did not use Twitter/X as a tool for scientific communication, which limited the potential for forming new connections beyond their existing social and academic networks. Promoting informal learning that encompasses diverse knowledge and learning levels is crucial to fostering greater engagement and collaboration.

Non-university teaching staff must use social media platforms (SMP) to update themselves on educational matters. This study aims to analyze how these teachers in Spanish non-university education, differentiating between men and women, value and use SMPs to update themselves in educational matters. A total of 463 Spanish teachers participated in this survey-type study. The results show that the perception of usefulness, responsible use, and the role of educational institutions and agents remains medium or low. At the descriptive level, differences between men and women are detected in the perceptions of the teachers surveyed, with female teachers having a more favourable perception of the usefulness, use, and role of social media assumed by the institutions in which they work professionally compared to male teachers. It is concluded that there are three profiles of non-university teachers according to the variables analyzed that do not show differences according to the sex of the teachers. The implications of this study help to propose actions that help improve the scenario by 1) increasing the training channels, 2) increasing the levels of educational innovation through SMP, 3) increasing the effectiveness of teaching–learning strategies, and 4) promoting of skills that contribute to greater use and perception of these scenarios for the training of teachers and students.

This work focuses on understanding how researchers in Spain perceive the importance of social media in scientific communication and dissemination and deepening their understanding of the influential underlying factors. From the initial identification of 5,314 researchers affiliated with higher education institutions in Spain, who published in journals indexed in Scopus and Web of Sciences from 2016 to 2020, 487 were surveyed, and 20 were interviewed. The results show how despite the potential of non-academic social media for the social dissemination of scientific knowledge, use remains low among the researchers surveyed in this study. Also, data allow us to recognize how the time of use of social media and the perception of the training needed influence the perception of the usefulness of social media by Spanish researchers on education. Use that does not seem to be oriented toward dialogue and citizen participation. Higher education institutions should improve the communication and scientific dissemination led by researchers through training and the design of dissemination policies that guarantee an active and general use of them (not only academics but also generalists like Facebook or Youtube) to transfer scientific knowledge to society better.

This study seeks to understand better the role played by minority political groups in Spain in promoting disinformation on Twitter. The study applies statistical analysis and topic modelling to posts (tweets and retweets) published in Spanish on Twitter (n = 20,481 tweets) and to content identified as disinformation (n = 2,730) by two independent fact-checking projects in Spain from August 2019 to March 2020. The data reveal that the political communication strategy focuses primarily on the confrontation between the majority of political groups at the national level and on legitimizing the political projects of these groups to their potential voters through specific issues. The data also reveal a co-occurrence between messages published by political actors and content identified as disinformation by fact-checkers, which depends on the tweets’ political profile, virality, and sentimental load. For this reason, the digital presence of these actors creates favourable conditions for the viral dissemination of disinformation, mainly when their content focuses on mobilizing potential voters through emotional messages. It could be helpful for fact-checkers to identify and understand the role of these actors in promoting this content.

La rápida expansión de la educación superior en países como Colombia abre la posibilidad de acceder a la universidad a una heterogeneidad de estudiantes que ven en la educación una oportunidad para mejorar. Sin embargo, las altas cifras de abandono suponen un freno en el alcance de estos objetivos, sobre todo para aquellas poblaciones con mayores desventajas acumulativas como la etnia, el sexo, el nivel socioeconómico, residir en zonas rurales, entre otros aspectos. El objetivo de este estudio es determinar cuáles son los factores que inducen al abandono en estos grupos vulnerables. A partir de un estudio mixto, en el que se han combinado datos cuantitativos y cualitativos obtenidos de una encuesta cumplimentada por 343 estudiantes y entrevistas a 19 estudiantes, empleando la regresión logística multinomial como modelo estadístico y el análisis sistemático y cuantitativo del contenido de las entrevistas realizadas, se pudo establecer cómo, entre otras variables, la calidad de los contenidos, la infraestructura tecnológica o las dificultades con la plataforma, junto a otros más cercanos al ámbito económico, son factores que condicionan la decisión de permanencia para estos estudiantes. Estos factores pueden ser indicadores útiles para que las instituciones de educación superior desplieguen estrategias orientadas a ofrecer una respuesta educativa equitativa y de calidad que atienda especialmente a los estudiantes más vulnerables y contribuya a mejorar las tasas de permanencia y finalización de los estudios.

This study analyses the role of the main Spanish political groups in the polarisation of public opinion and the promotion of the culture of disinformation through Twitter (now Platform X). The study carries out an analysis of issues associated with tweets and retweets in Spanish of the total published (n = 33,506 messages out of a total of 49,288 messages), which are contrasted with 2,730 disinformation publications identified by the two most relevant fact-checking projects in Spain (Maldita.es and Newtral.es). Based on the applied methodology, a political-communicative context is observed on Platform X characterised by a high level of self-promotion and polarisation, facilitated by the communication strategy of specific topics, applied by the actors analysed. The results show how these political actors can play an active and differentiated role in the promotion of disinformation content identified by the Maldita.es and Newtral.es data verification projects. This may contribute to the polarisation of Spanish public opinion on Platform X by delegitimising the opinions of their opponents on issues of interest to the public.

This work presents the key ideas of the 13 works that make up the special issue, “The Role of News Media in Promoting Hate Speech,” exploring the mechanisms by which hate speech spreads in media related environments. The objective of this collection of studies is. The authors of these works, hailing from Spain, the United States, India, Portugal, and Norway, have contributed to establishing an approach to the central issue from diverse perspectives, including a legal perspective and addressing elements associated with journalistic practice and the dissemination of hate speech in current digital communication scenarios and help to exacerbate the polarization and prejudice in the public opinion of our current societies.

El estudio examina mediante una revisión sistemática la literatura científica. La metodología se basó en la aplicación de los principios de la declaración PRISMA. Los resultados indicaron que la mayor producción de estudios fue en 2021, con predominancia de idioma inglés, España como el mayor productor, Reino Unido con el mayor número de revistas y el uso de realidad aumentada como la estrategia más estudiada. La producción científica en educación, y más particularmente en metodologías aplicada a la educación, ha generado una serie de estudios bibliométricos, los cuales han demostrado la evolución de las mismas en lapsos de tiempo diversos.

By examining the messages published by Spanish political groups on Twitter, this paper seeks to identify the level and understanding of the type and use of hate speech within these groups’ discursive strategy. For this purpose, the topics of 60,209 tweets published between 1 September 2019 and 29 February 2020, by 16 political groups, leaders, and spokespersons of the Congress of Deputies in Spain were analysed. The data reveal a low presence of expressions of hate, most of which do not have a sentimental charge. Despite not observing a high rate of use of this type of expression within the rhetorical discursive strategy applied by political groups, some features associated with this type of expression are identified, more aimed at positioning around issues and specific social groups (immigration), and the greater use of messages published by others, retweeted by these actors for this purpose, among other features.

Reseña del libro 'La Edad Dorada de la televisión generalista en España (1990-2010)', de Julio Montero Díaz, María Antonia Paz y Charo LaCalle (eds.), editado por Tirant Lo Blanch. 2022. 1232 páginas.

En 2021, Colombia vivió uno de los períodos de protestas sociales –motivadas inicialmente como respuesta a las reformas planteadas por el gobierno de este país, en materia tributaria, de salud o de pensión– más significativos de su historia republicana reciente. Un escenario de alta conflictividad, en el que las redes sociales tuvieron un rol protagónico, al dar cuenta de lo que acontecía en cada jornada de protestas y como escenario para reivindicar las demandas sociales. En este contexto, este trabajo busca comprender cómo la polarización sentimental observada en Twitter favoreció la estrategia de movilización digital. Para abordar este objetivo, se analizó un total de 1.215.646 mensajes publicados en español, recolectados en Twitter entre el 01/05/2021 y el 03/07/2022, y asociados con los principales hashtags empleados durante el período estudiado (#paronacionalcolombia, #nosestanmatandocolombia, #SOSColombia, #Colombiaalertaroja y #ColombiaSOSDDHH). Los resultados muestran una aparente coordinación entre usuarios localizados en diferentes países, quienes movilizan digitalmente el debate alrededor de estas protestas, mediante la viralización de ejes temáticos centrados, principalmente, en visibilizar el desarrollo de las protestas, la violencia de los cuerpos de seguridad del Estado colombiano, y la violación de los derechos humanos. Estos temas abordados en micro narrativas publicadas en Twitter contienen una carga sentimental diferente, de acuerdo con el país de origen de estos mensajes, que pudieron favorecer la polarización y conflictividad de la opinión pública alrededor de lo acontecido en dicho país.