Campaign coverage would prefer strategic game and personalization topics more than public policy proposals. Instead, electoral debates on television are expected differentiate from the journalistic routine. Through a content analysis, the journalists’ agenda in four Chilean presidential debates is compared with that of the written press in the coverage of the respective campaigns. The results show that journalists in the debates focus on public policies, while the press concentrates on strategies or political issues.
Information disorders on social media can have a significant impact on citizens’ participation in democratic processes. To better understand the spread of false and inaccurate information online, this research analyzed data from Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. The data were collected and verified by professional fact-checkers in Chile between October 2019 and October 2021, a period marked by political and health crises. The study found that false information spreads faster and reaches more users than true information on Twitter and Facebook. Instagram, on the other hand, seemed to be less affected by this phenomenon. False information was also more likely to be shared by users with lower reading comprehension skills. True information, on the other hand, tended to be less verbose and generate less interest among audiences. This research provides valuable insights into the characteristics of misinformation and how it spreads online. By recognizing the patterns of how false information diffuses and how users interact with it, we can identify the circumstances in which false and inaccurate messages are prone to becoming widespread. This knowledge can help us to develop strategies to counter the spread of misinformation and protect the integrity of democratic processes.
El artículo presenta la metodología docente aplicada en un proyecto de fact checking para verificar la campaña presidencial y el debate televisado de las elecciones de 2017 en Chile, en un curso de estudiantes de pregrado de Periodismo. Se explica el diseño y desarrollo de ese proyecto. Se analizan sus resultados periodísticos y de aprendizaje, entre los que está haber sido preseleccionado en un premio de Periodismo de excelencia profesional. Se expone la valoración que hicieron los estudiantes de su aprendizaje al verificar el discurso público de las autoridades, y de su aporte a la democracia en un rol de perro guardián o watchdog.
Within the growing academic interest over electoral debates, the role of the journalists who conduct the debates in determining the tenor of the answers has not been sufficiently studied. We used Chile as an extreme case, given the predominant role that the debate moderators receive here, thanks to the “journalistic panel” format utilized in them, where they take turns to interview the candidates. As a framework to describe these contents, we used Functional Theory of Political Discourse by William Benoit. Our data show that, indeed, the candidates use different combinations of said functions, depending on the different frameworks established by the rules for each debate. Clearly, the candidates tend to defend themselves from the attacks of the journalists, rather than their rivals’; and they use other strategies when the rules allow them more freedom.
Más allá de la importancia indiscutida que han adquirido los debates televisivos en las campañas electorales alrededor del mundo, este trabajo parte del hecho de que no se ha estudiado suficientemente el rol de los periodistas que los conducen y su incidencia en el desarrollo y contenido del debate. Ante la ausencia de un marco que permita comparar la actuación de los periodistas en diferentes países, proponemos un esquema de 30 indicadores, agrupados en torno a cuatro roles que un periodista puede asumir en un debate, de acuerdo a la bibliografía consultada (Adversario, Estratégico, Perro Guardián y Cívico). Aplicado este esquema a una muestra de siete debates presidenciales que utilizan el formato del “panel de periodistas”, los resultados muestran que la variación más sustancial respecto del uso de diferentes opciones de roles para formular preguntas está dada por la posición en las encuestas de los candidatos interrogados.
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