20 | nº 27, pp. 19-42 | doxa.comunicación
July-December of 2018
Political information and incidental exposure in social media: the cases of Argentina, Chile, Spain, and Mexico
ISSN: 1696-019X / e-ISSN: 2386-3978
Abstract:
Information consumption is not an independent activity anymore. Instead, it forms part of a continuous connection to the digital space. Thus, users do no often deliberately search for news on social networks. Instead, it is found accidentally amongst other social or entertainment contents. The phenomenon of incidental exposure is an emerging trend in digital consumption, having ramifications for political participation and citizens’ understanding of public affairs. This work provides a comparative analysis of digital users’ incidental exposure to news in four Spanish-speaking countries, on three platforms: Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter. Samples from Argentina (n = 2,003), Chile (n = 2,005), Spain (n = 2,006) and Mexico (n = 2,003), have been used from those surveyed in the Digital News Report 2017. The results show that a) Spain is the country with the highest incidental exposure rate among users who use social networks to be informed; b) it is more frequent when using Facebook and YouTube than on Twitter; and c) age, ideological orientation and the degree of interest in news influence this phenomenon.
Keywords:
Political communication; News; Incidental exposure; Social media; Facebook.
Received: 31/08/2018 - Accepted: 02/11/2018
Resumen:
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 man-era 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 ciudada-na de los asuntos públicos y la participación política. Este trabajo of-rece 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 mues-tras de Argentina (n=2.003), Chile (n=2.005), España (n=2.006) y Méx-ico (n=2.003), encuestados en el Digital News Report 2017. Los resulta-dos muestran que a) España es el país con mayor índice de exposición incidental entre los usuarios que utilizan las redes sociales para infor-marse; 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.
Palabras clave:
Comunicación política; Noticias; Exposición incidental; Redes sociales; Facebook.
Recibido: 31/08/2018 - Aceptado: 02/11/2018
1. Introduction
Post-truth, fake news, and disinformation have become the major global players in the latest political processes, due to a complex interaction between technological infrastructure, communicative practices, and social behaviour.
The process, quality, flow and consumption of available information is fundamental in any political process. Few citi-zens are directly involved in governments’ and parliaments’ decision-making or are in direct contact with political repre-sentatives as political experience is usually mediated. While direct communication between politicians and citizens has increased, as well as the possibilities of following it live and even participating in specific political processes thanks to technological development, for most citizens, the media represents the main (and sometimes the only) source of political information.
The higher relevance of the media in relation to other political actors is related to the phenomenon of mediatisation. In other words, the long-term structural changes involving the media, culture, and society, due to the media’s growing presence and importance (Couldry and Hepp, 2017; Harvard, 2017). According to authors like Krotz (2007), this dynamic occurs together with three other meta-processes that characterise contemporary societies: globalisation, individualis-ation, and industrialisation. Thus, the media contribute to dissociating social relationships from immediate contexts and relinking them in broader contexts. Other authors narrow the focus by understanding media as an independent social
