This article explores audience perceptions of different types of disinformation, and the actions that users take to combat them, in three Spanish-speaking countries: Argentina, Chile, and Spain. Quantitative data from the Digital News Report (2018 and 2019), based on a survey of more than 2000 digital users from each country was used for the analysis. Results show remarkable similarities among the three countries, and how digital users identically ranked the types of problematic information that concerned them most. Survey participants were most concerned by stories where facts are spun or twisted to push a particular agenda, followed by, those that are completely made up for political or commercial reasons, and finally, they were least concerned by poor journalism (factual mistakes, dumbed-down stories, misleading headlines/clickbait). A general index of “Concern about disinformation” was constructed using several sociodemographic variables that might influence the perception. It showed that the phenomenon is higher among women, older users, those particularly interested in political news, and among left-wingers. Several measures are employed by users to avoid disinformation, such as checking a number of different sources to see whether a news story is reported in the same way, relying on the reputation of the news company, and/or deciding not to share a news story due to doubts regarding its accuracy. This article concludes that the perceived relevance of different types of problematic information, and preventive actions, are not homogeneous among different population segments.

Hoy en día el consumo informativo ha dejado de ser una actividad independiente para formar parte de la conexión continua al espacio digital. Así, en las redes sociales a menudo las noticias no son buscadas deliberadamente, sino que el usuario se encuentra con ellas de manera fortuita y entre otros contenidos sociales y de entretenimiento. El fenómeno de la exposición incidental es una tendencia emergente en el consumo digital, con implicaciones para la comprensión ciudadana de los asuntos públicos y la participación política. Este trabajo ofrece un análisis comparativo de la exposición incidental a noticias de los usuarios digitales de cuatro países de habla hispana, a lo largo de tres plataformas: Facebook, Youtube y Twitter. Se han empleado muestras de Argentina (n=2.003), Chile (n=2.005), España (n=2.006) y México (n=2.003), encuestados en el Digital News Report 2017. Los resultados muestran que a) España es el país con mayor índice de exposición incidental entre los usuarios que utilizan las redes sociales para informarse; b) es una tendencia más frecuente en Facebook y Youtube que en Twitter; y c) la edad, la orientación ideológica y el grado de interés en las noticias influyen en la incidencia de este fenómeno.

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This article compares the patterns of political information between general voters and the most interested audiences (journalists, academics, consultants and political leaders), focusing on the case studies of three critical elections held in 2015: the last general elections from Argentina, Spain, and Venezuela. The method used compared primary data for specialized audiences (also called "political geeks") with secondary data for normal voters, taken from three different external sources. The research found that the habits and sources of political information of specialized audiences during the electoral campaign differ from those of the general voting public. Specialized publics rely more on social networks as source of political information than general voters, however the gap is bigger on Twitter and narrower for Facebook. Voters in general use Facebook and WhatsApp more than specialized audiences do. In addition, there is a shift of the center of gravity of the campaigns towards the digital world, both in the specialized publics and in the normal electoral population, but digital migration seems to be more accelerated among specialized audiences than among ordinary voters. It was also observed that political information tends to lead to media convergence and a consolidated or "hybrid" communication system. This research also suggests that despite the rapid acceptance of the digital in the information world, it is possible that little journalism, research, or campaigning is being done where the massive audiences really are .

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