USA

This article examines how the expropriation of oil company YPF by the Argentine government in April 2012 was framed by Spanish digital newspapers, and whether the treatment of this issue was transferred from the media to the audience. Using the theoretical approach of framing, we analyzed the news coverage of this event to find out whether the event was reported from a strategic game frame or an issue frame. Additionally, the comments posted by the news readers were analyzed to ascertain whether there was a relationship between the frames used by the media and the latent opinion frames in the discourse of these news readers. The results show a higher presence of the issue frame in the coverage of the expropriation of YPF, whereas no significant relationship was found between the media frames and the latent frames in the readers’ opinions. Conversely, a significant relationship between these two types of frames (strategic game and issue frames) was found both inside the news content and in the readers’ comments.

USA

Zero-rating, a popular practice in which certain services or applications are exempted from data charges, has motivated a debate within the broader topic of net neutrality. Advocates claim that it can be a driver of broadband adoption in less favored regions and population segments, and opponents argue that it entails socially undesirable outcomes. A growing body of literature supports these diverging positions, but empirical evidence and critical assessments are scarce. Therefore, this paper presents a regression model to provide empirical proof of the effect of zero-rating on the demanded quantity of mobile broadband. Results demonstrate that consumers are better off with zero-rating in terms of estimated consumer surplus. Because this evidence addresses only one side of an issue that should be analyzed in a multisided market framework, further theoretical implications are discussed. A key conclusion is that zero-rating can be associated with socially desirable outcomes, and, even though zero-rating also entails the potential for adverse consequences, the results advise caution regarding regulatory tools that might be too stringent.

USA

The presence of Latino TV in the United States has been increasing during the first decades of the millennium. Many alliances and new players are emerging in this market. This article contributes to the discussion of the Latino media by addressing the dynamics and complexity of this changing U.S. media subsystem; in fact, I propose a characterization of the Latino media as a subsystem of the U.S. communication system. The research (a) analyzes the main ownership links and networks between the major U.S. media players with their Latino TV counterparts; (b) draws a map of the Latino TV subsystem with a concentric analysis and establishes the production and consumption particularities of the subsystem; (c) identifies the interaction of Latino TV companies with their partners in Latin America; and (d) establishes that the core of Latino national broadcasting networks can be divided into two levels according to their audiovisual industrial strategies and financial support.

USA

From 1990 to 2010, Mexican newspapers’ ownership structure changed because globalization, digitization, and financial crises. This process coincided with the technological convergence of newsrooms. Thus, this case study employs the concept of spatialization to investigate how digital technology was used to concentrate resources and thus, to concentrate Guadalajara’s (Mexico) newspapers industry. Drawing on semistructured interviews with media workers, this article suggests that the use of digital technology allowed 1) smaller newsrooms with fewer workers, 2) the creation of new advertisement markets, 3) the development of virtual newsrooms structured by journalists working in real time in different cities, and 4) the transformation of a distribution system that in the past was mainly supported by hawkers. This research couples the concepts of spatialization and value chains, and it explains that media create, modify, and eliminate social spaces to improve the control of time and space in their production. An outcome of these processes (i.e., spatialization) is economic concentration.

USA

Although fact checking websites for political news such as FactCheck.org, Politifact, and ProPublica are common in the United States, they are new in Mexico. Using textual analysis, this study examines the strategies used by Verificado 2018, a crowdsourced political fact checking initiative generated during the largest election in Mexican history by news organizations, universities, and tech companies. Verificado 2018 emphasized legitimacy, collaboration, and critical humor to promote an d engage users in fact checking and viralizing reliable information.