tal competencies (Díaz Barriga, 2008). Along these lines, this research aims to discover whether university undergraduate degrees in Spain adapt their curricula as well as methodology to the needs of the market regarding the different labour profiles of community management.

2. Definition of the research issue

The problem to be addressed in this research begins by first defining both theoretically and empirically the competencies and knowledge demanded by organizations in Spain for professional profiles specialized in the management of market-ing communication through social media channels. Secondly, with regard to undergraduate studies, we intend to analyse the extent to which Spanish universities are capable of satisfying the demand for professionals by offering educational programs that respond to the needs of organizations and that adapt to the learning characteristics of the generations of students who currently access this type of study: digital natives in the context of the European Higher Education Area.

On the theoretical side, there are numerous publications that analyse the competencies, roles, tasks and skills of the dif-ferent professional profiles that specialize in communication through social networks. However, we find a gap in terms of the specific definition of these jobs by working professionals from Spanish organizations that include these roles in their organizational chart. In this regard, existing investigations are based solely on the profile of the community manager in very specific regions, such as the Comunidad Foral de Navarra (Chartered Autonomous Region of Navarra) and País Vasco (Basque Country), both in Spain (Elorriaga, 2013), as well as in Guatemala (Tobar, 2015). In this way, it has been necessary to study the current professional requirements of companies in Spain when employing this type of communication profes-sional, as this will determine the specific education required.

Within the empirical area, there is a large amount of research that has studied the influence of social networks on market-ing communication. This interest is demonstrated by the existence of a vast amount of literature that covers many aspects of the topic, such as the background and consequences of this type of communication, uses of social media, persuasion, etc. These numerous perspectives still leave a gap when it comes to researching the academic education that these pro-fessionals require. However, we consider that at the present time, in order to satisfy the labour market demand for this type of work, many institutions offer courses in communication in social networks in highly diverse formats: masters and postgraduate degrees, monographic courses of varying academic loads, seminars, certificates, etc. In this heterogeneous ecosystem, we find a lack of published studies to mark the boundaries of the specific core content that any education in social network management should include in its curriculum. Furthermore, current Spanish universities are in a pro-cess of change resulting from their integration into the European Higher Education Area. In undergraduate studies, this transformation has led to the redefinition of programs and curricula for their adaptation to Europe standards (Ministry of Education, Culture and Sports, 2003). With this change, new undergraduate university degrees have emerged as a result of two factors: one, the harmonization of traditional education to the European university framework, and two, the response of higher education to the demands of the labour market that has arisen in recent years. Even though there are numerous publications that analyse this transformation of the Spanish university, we find a gap in the research related to its adapta-tion to the specific area of Communication degrees that have content for education in social network management.