Youth impact on the public sphere in Press and Twitter: The dissolution of the Spanish Youth Council

Abstract

This paper aims to contribute to the study of the difficulties that young people face in accessing the public sphere as political actors. It looks at the Press coverage and the Twitter activity surrounding the restructuring process and the subsequent dissolution of the Spanish Youth Council (Consejo de la Juventud de España - CJE). A content analysis was carried out on the news published in 22 newspapers between 2012 and 2014, as well as on the use of Twitter within the framework of the “Salvemos el CJE” campaign during the same period of time. The main objective of the analysis has been to see the prominence of this issue on both the media and citizens’ agendas. In most newspapers, the measures taken by the government vis-á-vis the CJE were treated as punctual news of peripheral importance. The online campaign, mainly orchestrated by youth grassroots movements, raised the controversy on the biased nature and the political consequences of this plan. The core of the campaign addressed the representation of young people in public institutions. The results of the study suggest that the increased potential for visibility offered by social media is not always maximized and does not necessarily alter the prominence of an issue in the public sphere. Este artículo pretende contribuir al estudio de las dificultades que encuentran los jóvenes a la hora de acceder a la esfera pública como actores políticos. Concretamente, se centra la atención en la cobertura en prensa y la repercusión en Twitter de la información relativa al proceso de disolución del Consejo de la Juventud de España (CJE). El texto da cuenta del análisis de contenido realizado sobre las noticias aparecidas en 22 periódicos españoles entre los años 2012 y 2014, así como del análisis del posicionamiento en Twitter de la campaña «Salvemos el CJE» durante el mismo período de tiempo. El principal objetivo es ver cómo la cuestión de la disolución del CJE es planteada desde la agenda mediática y desde la agenda ciudadana. En la mayoría de periódicos analizados, las medidas tomadas por el gobierno respecto al CJE son tratadas como un hecho noticioso puntual y de baja repercusión. La campaña online ofrece un discurso gestado desde los movimientos juveniles de base y plantea abiertamente la controversia acerca del sesgo y las consecuencias políticas de esta medida. La campaña gira entorno a la representación de la juventud en las instituciones públicas. Los resultados del estudio muestran cómo las crecientes oportunidades de visibilización que ofrecen las redes sociales no siempre comportan un mejor posicionamiento de un tema en la esfera pública.

Prensa cultural en España. Los usos del Patrimonio Cultural

“…El Digital News Report España 2021constató que apenas el 24% de los españoles se fiaba de las noticias publicadas en las redes sociales (Amoedo-Casais et al, 2021). La injerencia del periodismo en Twitter ha sido abordada por numerosas investigaciones (Arce-García et al, 2020;Arrabal-Sánchez & De-Aguilera-Moyano, 2016;Benaissa-Pedriza, 2018;Clua et al, 2018;Hermida, 2010Hermida, , 2013Marta-Lazo & Garcia-Idiakez, 2014;Larsson & Hallvard, 2015;Lewis & Molyneux, 2018). Las más actuales versan sobre la transmisión y la percepción de las noticias (Barnidge et al, 2020;Bentivegna & Marchetti, 2018;Hedman, 2020;Hine, 2020;Houston et al, 2020;Marenet, 2013;Oeldorf-Hirsch et al, 2020;Santos-Silva, 2019;Zhang & Ho, 2020), aunque otros trabajos puntualizan en las interacciones de los periodistas con otros actores (López-Rabadán & Mellado, 2019;McGregor & Molyneux, 2018;Mills et al, 2020), así como en las nuevas formas de aproximación al campo de estudio (Hermida & Mellado, 2020;Hernández-Fuentes & Monnier, 2020;.…”

Falling on Deaf Ears? An Analysis of Youth Political Claims in the European Mainstream Press

“…There have been several works on the ways in which social media and the Internet have changed and are changing traditional journalism as well as on the extent to which journalists rely on social media in their sourcing and information-gathering practices. While a number of studies claim that social media and digital technologies more generally are changing the way in which news are sourced and produced as well as power relations in terms of who gets to say what (Broersma & Graham, 2012; Chao-Chen, 2013; Hermida, 2013; Newman, 2011), others suggest that the use and prominence of social media and digital technologies in the mainstream press remain very limited and that they are mostly used as a “backup” for traditional sources (Clua, Ferran-Ferrer, & Terren, 2018; Knight, 2012; Lariscy, Avery, & Sweetser, 2009; Machill & Beiler, 2009; Tylor, 2015; Van Leuven, Heinrich, & Deprez, 2015). The analysis carried out in this article seems to support these past studies, suggesting that the growing prevalence of social media communication is not reflected in the productive routines of the mainstream newspapers analyzed here, nor does it seem to contribute to political equality in terms of media representation.…”

The Gender Perspective in Wikipedia: A Content and Participation Challenge

“…Information and communication technologies seem to have opened up a scenario in which pluralism and new forms of expression are more possible than ever before, giving rise to an interconnected public sphere [1][2][3][4][5]. Wikipedia is part of the current public sphere and has the unique potential to facilitate a more equitable production of knowledge [6] through commons-based peer production and the provision of virtual spaces for discussion.…”