arXiv subjects

Ainara Larrondo-Ureta

Publications and source records attributed to Ainara Larrondo-Ureta.

11 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Without journalists, there is no journalism: the social dimension of generative artificial intelligence in the media

The implementation of artificial intelligence techniques and tools in the media will systematically and continuously alter their work and that of their professionals during the coming decades. To this end, this article carries out a systematic review of the research conducted on the implementation of AI in the media over the last two decades, particularly empirical research, to identify the main social and epistemological challenges posed by its adoption. For the media, increased dependence on technological platforms and the defense of their editorial independence will be the main challenges. Journalists, in turn, are torn between the perceived threat to their jobs and the loss of their symbolic capital as intermediaries between reality and audiences, and a liberation from routine tasks that subsequently allows them to produce higher quality content. Meanwhile, audiences do not seem to perceive a great difference in the quality and credibility of automated texts, although the ease with which texts are read still favors human authorship. In short, beyond technocentric or deterministic approaches, the use of AI in a specifically human field such as journalism requires a social approach in which the appropriation of innovations by audiences and the impact it has on them is one of the keys to its development. Therefore, the study of AI in the media should focus on analyzing how it can affect individuals and journalists, how it can be used for the proper purposes of the profession and social good, and how to close the gaps that its use can cause.

cs.CY↗

arXiv2026

Twitter and disability activism: leadership and relevant topics in the online conversation

The dissemination and viralization of information on social media has been widely studied from various perspectives, including that of digital activism. On the other hand, disability-related activism has conquered the online environment, thus obtaining a reach that goes beyond the offline space and generating dialogue in the digital sphere. This article analyses the conversation generated on Twitter, taking as a sample all the tweets with the #disability hashtag before and after the International Day of Persons with Disabilities. More than 18,000 tweets, containing almost as many mentions, were analysed and interpreted as the weighted edges of a graph created using Gephi software and applying the Force Atlas 2 brute force algorithm. The focus was placed on the conversational communities generated around that hashtag, their main themes and the prominent participants in them. In conclusion, although the network of mentions is very dispersed, Twitter is the setting for assertions that receive certain institutional and political support in the Latin American environment, for organisations related to the cause (such as the ONCE Foundation) and, above all, the clear predominance of female activists.

cs.SI↗

arXiv2026

Shaping the notion of #wellbeing in the therapy culture context: an analysis through Instagram narratives

The aim of this paper is to (1) identify textual and visual themes and sub-themes associated with the #wellbeing hashtag on Instagram, (2) assess their varying levels of engagement and (3) investigate gender bias present in the analysed visual narratives. This study employs a range of big data analysis techniques to investigate various dimensions of wellbeing on Instagram. Initially, a sample of 9,844 posts was processed using data mining and text analysis methods to identify and categorise significant hashtags, which facilitated the classification of posts into thematic clusters through hierarchical clustering. Engagement was then assessed using non-parametric statistical tests. Additionally, computer vision models were used to analyse and classify visual narratives, grouping images into communities based on visual similarities. Finally, gender representation in the images was examined using object detection models. The study reveals that the discourse around #wellbeing on Instagram is predominantly feminised and focuses primarily on mental, psychological and spiritual aspects. Therapeutic and positive psychology narratives are the most prevalent and engaging, while physical activity and nutrition play a relatively secondary role. Two major macro-narratives emerge: firstly, mental health and emotional wellbeing, often featuring hashtags related to therapy, self-discovery, spirituality and motivational quotes; secondly, though less prominently, themes and visual narratives concerning physical activity and healthy habits, emphasising exercise and nutrition.

cs.SI↗

arXiv2026

Mediatised Participation: Citizen Journalism and the Decline in User-Generated Content in Online News Media

The second generation of web tools shook the journalist profession approximately two decades ago with the proactive incorporation of audiences into the media. Citizen journalism and user-generated content arose as an object of interest due to the democratising value of participation attributed to them, with empowered citizens who could emulate the professional and institutional practises of journalists. However, difficulties soon came to the surface, and audience participation in news media began to be limited. Within this context, this article conducts a critical review of studies on audience participation in news media based on a systematic literature review. The results indicate that, in general, audiences showed low interest in the creation of informative content and that their participation has grown increasingly problematic. In addition, journalists are reticent as they defend their professional role above all else, while company strategies have prioritised making participation profitable. For this reason, the idea of citizen journalism that offers user-created content through the media appears to be a thing of the past, with many characteristics that could define it as a failed innovation. Therefore, the text concludes that audience participation in the media could be defined as mediatised participation.

cs.CY↗

arXiv2026

Feminist voices, partisan networks: gender and political communication by MEPs on social media

This article analyses whether gender shapes Members of the European Parliament's communication on X/Twitter and whether equality-related and LGBTQ+ issues influence patterns of visibility, tone and interaction. Drawing on automated content, sentiment and network analysis of 122,972 tweets posted in 2022 by 620 MEPs, the study finds that women tweeted more frequently and were more visible in promotional content, while men favoured opinion-driven and news-focused messages. Equality and LGBTQ+ topics appeared more often in women's tweets (8.6%) than in men's (4.0%), and women's posts showed a more positive tone. However, interaction patterns were only marginally shaped by gender; instead, networks largely reflected political-group affiliation and national delegation. Overall, the findings suggest that although female MEPs engage more with equality-related issues, their digital communication remains embedded in established political structures, indicating gradual discursive change rather than substantive structural transformation.

cs.SI↗

arXiv2026

Journalists, media and influencers: An analysis of the conversation in the digital public sphere during the Qatar 2022 World Cup

Public digital conversation around major sporting events takes place within a hybrid system in which journalists and the media compete with new intermediaries, including influencers, to gain greater visibility and engage with audiences. This study analyses the Qatar 2022 World Cup as a case of high informational intensity and public opinion monitoring. To that end, social network analysis was applied to X/Twitter using the hashtag #Qatar2022, analysing 1,343 high-engagement accounts, including those of journalists, media and influencers, alongside a random sample of 5,000 users. The findings indicate that journalists are under-represented in the user population as a whole, but significantly over-represented among the highest-engagement accounts, and they maintain stable visibility. The media, by contrast, attract a lower average level of attention and tend to achieve only sporadic peaks of impact. Accordingly, journalistic authority on social media is observed less as dominance in terms of participation volume and more as the capacity to occupy reference positions when public attention is being shaped during the event.

cs.SI↗

arXiv2025

Feminism, gender identity and polarization in TikTok and Twitter

The potential of social media to create open, collaborative and participatory spaces allows young women to engage and empower themselves in political and social activism. In this context, the objective of this research is to analyze the polarization in the debate at the intersection between the defense of feminism and transsexuality, preferably among the young population, symbolized in the use of the term 'TERF'. To do this, the existing communities on this subject on Twitter and TikTok have been analyzed with Social Network Analysis techniques, in addition to the presence of young people in them. The results indicate that the debates between both networks are not very cohesive, with a highly modularized structure that suggests isolation of each community. For this reason, it may be considered that the debate on sexual identity has resulted in a strong polarization of feminist activism in social media. Likewise, the positions of transinclusive feminism are very much in the majority among young people; this reinforces the idea of an ideological debate that can also be understood from a generational perspective. Finally, differential use between both social networks has been identified, where TikTok is a less partisan and more dialogue-based network than Twitter, which leads to discussions and participation in a more neutral tone.

cs.SI↗

arXiv2025

Artificial Intelligence Training in Media: Addressing Technical and Ethical Challenges for Journalists and Media Professionals

The rise of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is presenting both technical and ethical challenges for media organisations, creating an urgent need for professional training. This study explores how media professionals in the Basque Country are equipping themselves to face these challenges. Using a mixed-method approach, it combines a survey of 504 active professionals with in-depth interviews with six innovation leaders from major regional media outlets. The findings reveal that only 14.1% of professionals have undergone AI training, mostly through self-learning. Larger, internationally focused companies are more proactive in providing training, while local and traditional media organisations show significant gaps. Technical and managerial roles are leading the way in adopting AI, whereas newsroom staff are notably behind. The study highlights the pressing need to enhance AI training, with a particular focus on ethical and technical aspects, both through in-house programmes and formal education pathways.

cs.CY↗

arXiv2025

Straddling Two Platforms: From Twitter to Mastodon, an Analysis of the Evolution of an Unfinished Social Media Migration

Social media have been fundamental in the daily lives of millions of people, but they have raised concerns about content moderation policies, the management of personal data, and their commercial exploitation. The acquisition of Twitter (now X) by Elon Musk in 2022 generated concerns among Twitter users regarding changes in the platform's direction, prompting a migration campaign by some user groups to the federated network Mastodon. This study reviews the onboarding of users to this decentralised platform between 2016 and 2022 and analyses the migration of 19,000 users who identified themselves as supporters of the platform switch. The results show that the migration campaign was a reactive response to Elon Musk's acquisition of Twitter and was led by a group of highly active academics, scientists, and journalists. However, a complete transition was not realised, as users preferred to straddle their presence on both platforms. Mastodon's decentralisation made it difficult to exactly replicate Twitter's communities, resulting in a partial loss of these users' social capital and greater fragmentation of these user communities, which highlights the intrinsic differences between both platforms.

cs.SI↗

arXiv2025

Shooting the Messenger? Harassment and Hate Speech Directed at Journalists on Social Media

Journalists have incorporated social networks into their work as a standard tool, enhancing their ability to produce and disseminate information and making it easier for them to connect more directly with their audiences. However, this greater presence in the digital public sphere has also increased their exposure to harassment and hate speech, particularly in the case of women journalists. This study analyzes the presence of harassment and hate speech in responses (n = 60,684) to messages that 200 journalists and media outlets posted on X (formerly Twitter) accounts during the days immediately preceding and following the July 23 (23-J) general elections held in Spain in 2023. The results indicate that the most common forms of harassment were insults and political hate, which were more frequently aimed at personal accounts than institutional ones, highlighting the significant role of political polarization-particularly during election periods-in shaping the hostility that journalists face. Moreover, although, generally speaking, the total number of harassing messages was similar for men and women, it was found that a greater number of sexist messages were aimed at women journalists, and an ideological dimension was identified in the hate speech that extremists or right-wing populists directed at them. This study corroborates that this is a minor but systemic issue, particularly from a political and gender perspective. To counteract this, the media must develop proactive policies and protective actions extending even to the individual level, where this issue usually applies.

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arXiv2022

BasqueParl: A Bilingual Corpus of Basque Parliamentary Transcriptions

Parliamentary transcripts provide a valuable resource to understand the reality and know about the most important facts that occur over time in our societies. Furthermore, the political debates captured in these transcripts facilitate research on political discourse from a computational social science perspective. In this paper we release the first version of a newly compiled corpus from Basque parliamentary transcripts. The corpus is characterized by heavy Basque-Spanish code-switching, and represents an interesting resource to study political discourse in contrasting languages such as Basque and Spanish. We enrich the corpus with metadata related to relevant attributes of the speakers and speeches (language, gender, party...) and process the text to obtain named entities and lemmas. The obtained metadata is then used to perform a detailed corpus analysis which provides interesting insights about the language use of the Basque political representatives across time, parties and gender.

cs.CL↗