Facultad de Humanidades y CC de la Comunicación

La imagen como soporte visual de la mentira, en paralelo a su reconocida capacidad para constituirse como evidencia de lo real, ha tenido desde sus inicios una gran repercusión social. Este artículo pretende analizar el fenómeno de las “fake news” en el ejercicio del fotoperiodismo y, en concreto, en la fotografía en el ámbito de los medios de comunicación; muy especialmente en el contexto de las agencias de noticias. El objetivo del trabajo tiene dos vertientes: por un lado, establecer como aproximación las herramientas y recursos –teniendo en consideración su evolución- que se han empleado para construir imágenes falsas desde el mismo momento de la invención de la fotografía y, en segundo término, señalar una posible tipología de manipulación de la imagen según las características establecidas, como denominador común, de las situaciones más destacadas por los estudios de referencia en la investigación realizada en este ámbito. Criterios que serán aplicados al estudio de un caso concreto, el de la manipulación de la imagen en la española Agencia EFE. Trabajo que evidencia la escasa manipulación fotográfica (“fake news” fotográficas) en la institución estudiada, permite concluir la existencia de calidad en la información fotoperiodística de agencia y constata la repercusión social de los casos de manipulación analizados.

Social media has impacted the way content is both produced and consumed at a mass scale. Influencers have gained, in this new scenario, a notable ascendence over their large audiences; and, though there have been several attempts at analyzing their role, many have lacked systematicity (Riedl et al., 2021). This research aims to shed light on two main research goals: determining whether political influencers disinform; and, if so, detecting possible patterns in the disinforming content that reaches their audiences. In order to do so, the most relevant political influencers were identified, and, subsequently, the contents produced by them were analyzed using the taxonomy on disinformation proposed by Kapantai et al. (2020). Findings show that influencers play a key role in disseminating disinformation on Instagram, since the vast majority of the accounts analyzed (92%) do generate this type of content, which have a large impact on young audiences.

Research on the relationship between seniors and social networks has focused mainly on the difficulties experienced by this group in accessing the internet. However, it has not examined other aspects such as participation by older adults in socio-political discourse. Although articles have been written on specific topics related to this issue, such studies are not enough. This research aims to analyse the perception of people over 60 years of age regarding the use of social networks as a channel for staying informed and participating in socio-political discourse that takes place on social media. To achieve this objective, four focus groups were conducted in July of 2022. In assessing the results, the transcripts were examined using qualitative-inductive content analysis and reinforced with topic analysis to identify shared perceptions. The co-occurrence evaluation reveals a strong relationship between negative perceptions and concepts such as tension and fake news. Positive perceptions are associated with the ease of interaction with other users and the potential for obtaining information. Differences have also been observed among social networks such as Facebook and WhatsApp, which appear to be the networks of choice for sharing information and opinions on socio-political issues.