The media participates in the creation and reinforcement of mental models, through which people interpret social realities, especially those that are distant and unknown. News making involves the use of certain frames that highlight some aspects of the information and downplay or silence other elements. In this context, the objective of this article is to analyse how China is portrayed on the Spanish news, and identify the organising ideas and value judgments that are used in the frames used in this process. Based on the application of the content analysis technique, the results show that the portrayal of China, its institutions and citizens, on television is carried out through four main frames: “Capacity, potential, development;” “Gloom, shadow and darkness;” “Dangerous environment” and “Exotic organisation.” From the Western perspective, Chinese economic growth is accepted, but at the same time China is presented as a problematic country in which natural disasters, accidents, and criminal acts abound, highlighting its systemic political deficiencies and systemic deficiencies. This mostly negative image of China does not correspond with its current and historical relationship with Spain, nor with the relevant position that this emerging power has reached on a global scale.
Evaluating and fostering transparency in local administrations. The methods used to evaluate the transparency of local administrations present notable differences that are influenced by national legislation and administrative characteristics. Consequently, it is difficult to formulate a valid international procedure to obtain a global picture. We have conducted a comparative analysis of the procedure developed by Transparency and Integrity in Portugal with that designed by the Laboratory of Journalism and Communication for Plural Citizenry in Spain. The results reveal that the approaches, maintained in various disciplines, exhibit notable but complementary differences. In the conclusions we propose new elements to design a method based on a syntax of transparency and order of fundamental elements. keywords: transparency; evaluation method, public communication, local administrations.Avaliação e proteção da transparência em administrações locais. Os métodos utilizados para avaliar a transparência nas administrações locais apresentam notórias diferenças que são influenciadas por fatores como a legislação nacional e as características administrativas. Por conseguinte, é difícil estabelecer um procedimento internacional que se mostre válido para a obtenção de uma imagem global. Conduzimos uma análise comparativa dos procedimentos desenvolvidos pela Transparência e Integridade em Portugal, com aqueles desenvolvidos em Espanha pelo Laboratório de Jornalismo e Comunicação para a Cidadania Plural. Os resultados revelam que as abordagens de diversas matérias, exibem diferenças simultaneamente notáveis e complementares. Nas conclusões, propomos a introdução de novos elementos com o intuito de desenvolver um método baseado numa sintaxe da transparência e na ordem de elementos fundamentais. palavras-chave: transparência; método de avaliação; comunicação pública; administrações locais.
This study uses a qualitative approach to examine what political and technical leaders of municipalities understand transparency and public information to mean, and what role they believe the different subjects involved (government, opposition, and the public) should have. The websites of 605 Spanish councils with more than 100,000 inhabitants were analysed and three focus groups were held with political and technical leaders from a selection of sample councils. The results show that the technical and political leaders of the councils do not have a clear awareness of their function of management accountability or of the need to apply journalistic criteria to the information they publish, defending with nuances the use of propaganda criteria to focus on the actions of the local government, its information, the lack of space dedicated to public debate and the opposition’s actions. In relation to accountability and citizen participation, they have a negative view of citizens, who they describe as being disengaged. However, they emphasize that internally it is essential to continue improving in terms of the culture of transparency and the public information they provide citizens.
Transparency and public accountability are two essential aspects of public administrations because they help to prevent possible cases of corruption and encourage citizen participation. In this sense, transparency is a communicative, not merely administrative or legal, process between public institutions and citizens. The main objective of this study is to identify predictive factors of transparency in government healthcare centers in Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, and Spain in 2021. To do this, we analyzed the websites of 64 public administrations from these countries. Content analysis was applied to assess the presence of 24 indicators on each website. The results for the studied cases reveal an association between the level of transparency and three factors: healthcare systems, internet access, and administration levels. We also identified a predictive factor that should be considered in future studies on the transparency of healthcare websites: the likelihood of decreased transparency was reduced by 91% for public healthcare systems (Ecuador and Spain) as opposed to mixed public –private healthcare systems (Chile and Colombia). We thereby conclude that the involvement of the State, at least in matters related to the healthcare field, favors greater access to information by the community, at the same time as providing greater social responsibility because of substantial communication of the activities carried out by these centers, as well as how and by whom.
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