Cultural Press in Spain. The uses of Cultural Heritage
Prensa cultural en España. Los usos del Patrimonio Cultural
doxa.comunicación |
nº 35, pp. 281-309
| 281
July-December of 2022
ISSN: 1696-019X / e-ISSN: 2386-3978
How to cite this article:
Longhi-Heredia, S. A. Morillas-Alcázar, J. M. and Hernando-Gómez, A. (2022). Cultural Press in Spain. e uses of Cultural Heritage.
Doxa
Comunicación
, 35, pp. 281-309.
https://doi.org/10.31921/doxacom.n35a1631
Sebastian Alberto Longhi-Heredia.
Doctoral candidate in the Interuniversity Program in Communication (Universities
of Seville, Málaga, Huelva and Cádiz). He holds a Master’s degree in Historical and Natural Heritage (UHU) and in
Cultural Media (Paris 8 University, France). He also holds a degree in Social Communication (UNC, Argentina). He is a
member of the “Heritage and Visual Arts in Europe and America” Research Group (HUM068). He investigates heritage
issues related to communication.
University of Huelva, Spain
[email protected]
ORCID: 0000-0001-8438-562X
José María Morillas-Alcázar.
Chair of History of Art at the University of Huelva with over 30 years of research experience.
He is PI of the “Heritage and Visual Arts LAB” Research Group (HUM068) and coordinator of the Heritage line of research
in the Ocial Interuniversity Doctoral Program in Historical and Cultural Heritage of the universities of Huelva, Córdoba,
Jaén and Extremadura. He is a member of the Management Committee and coordinator of the Network of Experts of the
International Campus of Excellence in Cultural and Natural Heritage of the ten public universities of Andalusia.
University of Huelva, Spain
[email protected]
ORCID: 0000-0002-2717-7696
Ángel Hernando-Gómez.
Doctor in Psychology from the University of Huelva, and Full Professor of said university.
Associate Editor of Comunicar magazine. Member of the “AGORA” Research Group. Research lines: prevention of
violence in couple relationships, promotion of positive adolescent development and edu-communication. In these
lines, he has directed many research projects, doctoral theses and intervention programs.
University of Huelva, Spain
[email protected]
ORCID: 0000-0002-6414-5415
Abstract:
Digital newspapers act in an interconnected and fragmented context,
producing and disseminating social representations in the virtual
community. Its virtual action space (the website) has evolved with
the rise of social networks. Journalists in this scenario have generated
Resumen:
Los periódicos digitales actúan en un contexto interconectado y frag
-
mentado produciendo y difundiendo representaciones sociales que
interactúan en la comunidad. Su espacio de acción virtual (la página
web) se ha visto supeditada a la injerencia de las redes sociales. Los
Received: 12/03/2022 - Accepted: 31/05/2022 - Early access: 14/06/2022 - Published: 01/07/2022
Recibido: 12/03/2022 - Aceptado: 31/05/2022 - En edición: 14/06/2022 - Publicado: 01/07/2022
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Cultural Press in Spain. The uses of Cultural Heritage
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1. Introduction
e media must be understood as producers of social meanings that recreate instituting social imaginaries (Castoriadis, 2007).
According to Rodríguez-Pastoriza (2006), when “a cultural historical commemoration of interest is celebrated [there is] the
need to transfer elements of essential information to the readers so that their special importance can be valued” (p. 141). In
this context, such representations are determined by the very politics of the media agendas, which mostly move away from
cultural and heritage issues. (Barei, 1999; Compte-Pujol, 2016; González-Sánchez, 2011; Sánchez-Castillo, 2005; Longhi-Heredia
&
Quezada-Tello, 2021). is reduced treatment of the news is approached in a trivial, monotonous and brief way, presenting
heritage information supercially and disseminating a concept of cultural and natural heritage associated with the international
character given by the numerous conventions, charters and legislation of international organizations (Longhi-Heredia et al.,
2022). e media agenda characterized by McCombs and Shaw is subject to the importance and emphasis given to the topics
selected by the media (McCombs, 1996), representing certain notions of heritage to the detriment of others.
In this sense, the construction of representations is a living category that builds, crystallizes and (re)transmits social meanings
through imaginaries and collective representations. ey are reected in the discourses of each era in a wide variety of formats,
subjecting culture, and even heritage, to paradigms of action with the theories of communication and the logic of the mass media.
New cultural representations and cultural identity stereotypes are subsequently created. Faced with this panorama, the objectives
of the current investigation are: 1) to understand the dissemination of Cultural Heritage in the most inuential digital newspapers
in Spain during three periods in 2020, and 2) to survey the degree of engagement and interaction of the audience following the
ocial accounts of said newspapers on Twitter and Instagram in one of the three time periods.
a new capacity for interaction, allowing the audience to create a
communicative dialectic. e article analyzes the actions of the
cultural press in matters of cultural heritage, focusing on the three
most inuential digital newspapers in Spain during the months of
June, September, and November 2020. Further analysis on one of these
time periods (September) compares the degree of engagement and
interaction on Instagram and Twitter across the digital newspapers. A
study using a mixed-methods research design was carried out anchored
in the analysis of the textual and visual content of publications posted
on the web, together with the use of descriptive statistics involving
the indicators for the two social networks. e results showed that
UNESCO heritage typologies were present in the culture section of the
media agenda, as well as geographic and thematic indicators related
to heritage. World Heritage was the most newsworthy while Intangible
Heritage the least. e levels of engagement and interaction showed
interest and involvement in heritage-related posts.
Keywords:
Cultural journalism; cultural heritage; social networks; social
representations; culture section.
periodistas en este escenario han generado una nueva capacidad de
interacción permitiendo a la audiencia crear una dialéctica comunica
-
tiva. El artículo analiza el accionar de la prensa cultural referente al
patrimonio cultural en los tres periódicos digitales más inuentes en
España durante tres períodos de tiempo (junio, septiembre y noviembre
de 2020). Un análisis más detallado sobre uno de estos periodos (sep
-
tiembre) compara el grado de compromiso e interacción en Instagram
y Twitter. La investigación mixta, anclada en el análisis de contenido
textual y visual de las piezas periodísticas, unida al uso de la estadística
descriptiva de las redes sociales ayudó a advertir cómo las tipologías
patrimoniales de la UNESCO estuvieron presentes en la sección cultura,
así como los criterios geográcos y temáticos relacionados con el patri
-
monio. El Patrimonio de la Humanidad resultó ser el más noticiable
mientras que el Inmaterial el menos. Los niveles de compromiso e in
-
teracción demostraron interés e implicación de la audiencia en los post
referentes al patrimonio.
Palabras Claves:
Periodismo cultural; patrimonio cultural; redes sociales;
representaciones sociales; sección cultura.
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e present study is founded on theories of communication and studies of cultural journalism from Cultural Heritage in a
scenario marked by the interference of the coronavirus pandemic in Spain.
1.1. Heritage, cultural journalism and Culture
Journalism has been associated in epistemological studies and communication sciences with the construction of imaginaries
or social representations (Berger et al., 1968; Castoriadis, 2007; Leyton-Rivas, 2007) that are reproduced and disseminated on a
massive scale in society. e cultural press didn’t escape such a reality. It is essential to understand what is meant by Cultural
Heritage, cultural journalism and Culture to continue with the study.
e term Cultural Heritage implies a large number of meanings despite the fragmentation of the eld of study and numerous
adjectives associated with its scope. Beginning with a strong focus on monuments, today it is part of a broader universe, dened
as a social construction and “representative of cultural diversity and, therefore, participatory” (Durán-Salado & Carrera-Díaz,
2017:299). Its more democratic connotation and its accessibility were based on institutions such as UNESCO, the International
Council of Museums (ICOM) and the International Centre for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property
(ICCROM). UNESCO imposed itself as the institution of reference in this sector, rendering the monumentalist and mercantilist
conception of 1972 obsolete and associating heritage with cultural and natural elements of exceptional value. As indicated by
Carrasco-Campos & Saperas-Lapiedra (2012), a new cultural archetype arose, materializing as the heritage boom (Ballart, 1997).
e arrival of mass culture and audiovisual media, as well as the importance of immateriality, formed the new notion of Cultural
Heritage that leans towards a labeled conception, with “digital strategies created to standardize communication criteria” in the
eld of marketing (Castillo-Abdul & Longhi-Heredia, 2022). Notions such as Cultural Heritage, World Heritage, Natural Heritage
and Immaterial Heritage are popularized in line with advances in international law.
Cultural journalism by its essence is framed within specialized journalism. Tubau, (1982) denes it as the way of knowing and
disseminating the cultural products of a society through the mass media; or of building and de-constructing the symbolic
imaginary, according to Delponti-Macchione & Pestano-Rodríguez (2012). Chacón-Gutiérrez & García-Jiménez (2001) include
within its functions “the criticism and dissemination of the dierent artistic manifestations it covers” (p. 51). However, the actual
journalistic trend indicates a more generalist approach (Rodríguez-Pastoriza, 2006), obeying market inferences (Bello et al., 1994)
and falling into situations Cruz & Rosero (2012) describe as “
unifuentismo
, the omission of subjects and the absence of agenda”
(p. 183).
Cultural journalism’s marked relationship with the concept of culture is connected to an ambiguous notion in the eld
(Rodríguez-Pastoriza, 2006; Rivera, 1995). e rst classications of cultural specialization were subordinated to the notion of
‘Culture’. e major point of debate was associated with the interference of the spectacle or show business (Zambrano-Morales
&
Villalobos-Finol, 2010). Rodríguez-Pastoriza (2006), and Rivera (1995), two classics in the area of study, postulated such a
division by identifying the ideas coming from ‘high culture’ (ne arts, literature, classical music, among others) that were part of
the ‘Culture’ section; while all expressions of ‘popular culture’, associated for example with folklore or artisan crafts, were placed
in other sections, such as ‘Society’ or ‘Entertainment’. Over time, culture was thought of as an economic and social resource: “the
agenda proposed by the newspapers (...) is circumscribed to the notion of the cultural event: creators and producers who oer
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and customers who consume; culture understood as a stage, a place to sit and a ticket for the good life” (Rubiano, 2006:146). e
dialectic described above evolves in the study of Valle (2014), for whom journalism has advanced by becoming multicultural
content.
is article will not focus on the origins of cultural journalism, as numerous works have already done so (Barei, 1999; Jurado-
Martín, 2019; Martínez, 2018; Rivera, 2018; Rodríguez-Pastoriza, 2006, 2021; Villa, 1998, 2000; Zambrano-Morales
&
Villalobos-
Finol, 2010). However, this changing reality will be taken into account, associated with the advance of the Internet, the evolution
of cultural journalism, and the contextual specicity conditioned to the social reality marked by the interference of Covid-19.
Specically, the latter situation implied conditioning factors at the moment of communicating cultural content, such as the
prevalence of activities related to Natural Heritage in open air spaces.
Providing an explanation for this ever-changing reality has remained complicated because the academic literature on cultural
journalism “is neither uniform in its content, nor in its formal aspect, nor in the nature of its audiences” (Villa, 2000:8). e
literature has many denitions of culture and cultural journalists, such as “arts journalists, cultural journalists, critics and
lifestyle journalists” (Hovden & Kristensen, 2018:690). According to Riegert et al. (2018), current international research generates
complications due to its diverse designations and numerous aesthetic forms, disciplines or types of culture that change over
time. Furthermore, the limits of politics, entertainment, celebrity and consumption also inuence the social construction of the
culture section (Kristensen y Riegert, 2017). As explained by Jurado-Martín & Ivars-Nicolás (2019), the Spanish cultural section of
El País
,
El Mundo
and
ABC
continues to oer “a product for a reader who does not use or is not interested in using technological
possibilities. e Culture section is anchored in the past, and runs the risk of sinking with it” (p. 233). e aforementioned point of
debate continues through “an elite culture -accommodated in this section-, and another popular one that abandons the ‘Culture’
section to place itself in the ‘Society’ section” (Jurado-Martín, 2019:162).
However, new works (Jurado-Martin & Peña-Acuña, 2018, 2021) focused on education and new technologies (de-Lara-González,
2019) advocate novel transformations and ways of reaching the public through content that, according to Arteseros-Valenzuela
(2019), conjectures a change in the prole of cultural readers. In this scenario, new transmedia practices stimulate the imagination
to develop strategies that would help to further consolidate this journalistic specialization (Meza-Noriega, 2021).
1.1.1. Culture section and journalism, the crossroads
Although the cultural section is not as important as others, its importance is remarkable within specialized journalism (Barei,
1999). e news is catalogued according to socioeconomic and political roles, taking into account sources and formal and
aesthetic resources (Fontcuberta-Balaguer, 1993; Jaakkola, 2015; Riegert et al., 2018; Kristensen & Roosvall, 2021), as well as the
ways of organizing on the local, national and glocal levels (García-Canclini (2000, 2007). Monjas-Eleta (2013, 2015) conrms this
in the Spanish press. Cultural journalism should be assigned to the Culture and Social sections, “which implies a higher level of
specialization of the editors, and its inclusion in other sections, such as society or regional information” (Monjas-Eleta, 2013:
86). Entertainment (Jurado-Martín & Ivars, 2019), “the public sphere, the politics of recognition and the sociology of cultural
journalism” (Kristensen, & Roosvall, 2021: 177), local coverage (Jaakkola, 2021) and even advertising and commercial dimensions
(Hovden & Kristensen, 2018) are also inserted in the dialectic, where “institutions have become one of the most important sources
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of cultural information” (Rodríguez-Pastoriza, 2006: 95), together with the work of freelancers, press agencies, correspondents
and collaborators without labor ties to the newspaper.
Digital cultural journalism follows identical guidelines, although it is the public (through its ability to select and discriminate) who
has the last word (based on the criteria established in advance by the newspaper). According to Leyton-Rivas (2007), the journalist
is “a mediator, whose point of view is never neutral” (p. 109), and heritage ideals play a role in this decision-making. Cultural
journalism must be understood and readjusted “based on new trends, modern societies and changing readers”
(Zambrano-
Morales
&
Villalobos-Finol, 2010: 73), considering the “current panorama of cultural media on the Internet” (Monjas-Eleta,
2015:7)
. As postulated by Zaid (2006), giving cultural news “requires journalists who live it, who know how to read and write at
that level, with that animation”. e dialectic that opposes cultures must be left aside, bearing in mind that with UNESCO, the
concept has become more conciliatory (Martínez, 2018), giving way to the culturalist paradigm dominated by the logic of cultural
industries (Carrasco-Campos & Saperas-Lapiedra, 2012). Here, high culture as well as popular culture is encompassed (García-
Avilés, 2021) and immateriality is given visibility following the Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage
(UNESCO, 2003). Natural aspects also gain signicance thanks to the agreements and conventions managed by UNESCO.
As Martínez (2018) says, the mission of cultural journalism is “that human beings cultivate their highest spiritual manifestation:
the arts, whatever the eld in which they are manifested, or the cultural manifestations that dene and identify the various
peoples” (p. 68). Historically, as Rivera (1995) pointed out, the majority of the members of cultural journalism were “made up of
intellectuals and artists vocationally or formatively oriented towards that sphere” (p. 112), being people not linked to journalism.
is explains the challenging need for new technologies (Rivera, 1995, p. 114).
Cultural journalism must renew itself (García-Avilés, 2021) and provide “information and entertainment through transmedia”
(San-José-de-la-Rosa & Monjas-Eleta, 2021:85), knowing how to adapt to the interests of the audience (Jurado-Martín et al.,
2021) and to the new digital environment (Abejón-Mendoza, 2021; López-García, 2021) for all types of artistic and cultural
manifestations. It emerges as a possibility of understanding and is congured by a sum of details (not anecdotes) interpreted
according to the constructed point of view” (Gayà-Morlà et al., 2022:286). Rodríguez-Pastoriza (2021) remarked by the way that
the goal of cultural journalists in the digital scenario is to guide and train audiences in cultural issues and not to promote cultural
marketing, since cultural journalism is a “representation of reality in an ecosystem in which paper, screen, classic and viral,
analog and digital, coexist” (Carrión, 2020).
1.2. e Spanish digital press: access to and trust in the media
As recorded by Newman et al. (2020), in the publication of the Digital News Report, the media credibility index in Spain in 2020
was 36%. Less than half of the readers of the online press did not trust the news published, with the best indices for
El
País
(54%),
El Mundo
(52%), and
20 Minutos
(49%); the latter sharing the same values with
La Vanguardia, El Periódico
and
Eldiario.es
.
e report ranked
El País
as the most consulted media in the press (23%) followed by
El Mundo
(18%) and
20 Minutos
(17%). e
Spanish partner of the Digital News Report revealed that in 2021, the condence index was maintained in Spain, with only “36%
of the total number of readers declaring that they trust information in general and 42% trust the news they regularly consume”
(Amoedo-Casais et al., 2021). Concerning the most read online press reported for 2021,
El País
continued with the highest ranking
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(21%), while
20 Minutos
(15%) and
ElDiario.es
(14%) overtook
El Mundo
compared to previous years. e trust index registered
a drop in
20 Minutos
(from 49% in 2020 to 38% in 2021), and with trust among
El Mundo
’s left-wing audiences falling more than
among its right-wing audiences (Kaufmann, 2021).
1.3. Digital press and social networks
e (re)production of heritage discourses on the Internet reveals the power of “enjoyment, criticism, denunciation, collaborative
construction for its knowledge”. (Durán-Salado & Ortiz-Lozano, 2017: 287). e emergence of ‘metamedia’ and the digital
revolution (Campos-Freire et al., 2016) has formed “the architecture of the communication society through which millions of
citizens, organizations and other social actors relate to each other” (p. 449). Current data show that access to information through
social networks have beneted from preferential treatment, becoming highly relevant platforms in the media ecosystem (Bulut &
Do
ğ
an, 2017). Readers choose Facebook (44%), WhatsApp (34%), YouTube (25%), Twitter (20%), Instagram (17%) and Facebook
Messenger (6%) to keep themselves informed (Newman et al., 2020). In 2021, the same situation was registered with Facebook
(39%), WhatsApp (35%) and YouTube (21%). Also, Twitter (19%), Instagram (17%) and Facebook Messenger (5%) retained their
positions as information networks. In contrast, Telegram (8%), TikTok (3%) and LinkedIn (3%) were not used for informative
purposes (Moreno, 2021).
e Digital News Report Spain 2021 found that only 24% of Spaniards trusted the news published on social networks (Amoedo-
Casais et al, 2021).
e inuence of journalism on Twitter has been discussed in numerous research studies (Arce-García et
al., 2020; Arrabal-Sánchez
&
De-Aguilera-Moyano, 2016; Benaissa-Pedriza, 2018; Clua et al., 2018; Hermida, 2010, 2013; Marta-
Lazo
&
Garcia-Idiakez, 2014; Larsson
&
Hallvard, 2015; Lewis
&
Molyneux, 2018). e most current studies deal with the
transmission and perception of news (Barnidge et al., 2020; Bentivegna
&
Marchetti, 2018; Hedman, 2020; Hine, 2020; Houston
et al., 2020; Marenet, 2013; Oeldorf-Hirsch et al., 2020; Santos-Silva, 2019; Zhang
&
Ho, 2020), although other studies focus on
the interactions between journalists and other actors (López-Rabadán
&
Mellado, 2019; McGregor
&
Molyneux, 2018; Mills et
al., 2020), as well as on the new ways of approaching the domain of study (Hermida
&
Mellado, 2020; Hernández-Fuentes
&
Monnier, 2020; Jaraba-Molina et al., 2020; Jaraba-Molina
&
Tejedor, 2020). e focus of interest is centered, as reported in Tong
(2018), on the relegitimization of cultural journalism in the digital era. However, in Spain, according to Jaraba-Molina & Tejedor
(2020), cultural topics are forgotten on Twitter: journalists dedicated few tweets to cultural issues, while cyberjournalists did so to
a greater degree (p. 12). In this vein, “journalists are more interested in content related to society and culture than in other topics
(except those related to politics)” (Tejedor Calvo et al., 2020:15).
Studies based on Instagram, on the other hand, have acquired a higher degree of relevance, specically with works focused
on photojournalism (Benaissa-Pedriza, 2018; Borges-Rey, 2015; Maares
&
Hanusch, 2020); case studies (Mendez et al., 2020;
Vázquez-Herrero et al., 2019) and review studies (Hermida
&
Mellado, 2020; Lewis
&
Molyneux, 2018). In this scenario, the
advantages of the digital press mentioned by Jurado-Martín (2019) in terms of hypertextuality, multimediality, interactivity and
simultaneity, as well as the hybridization of genres and formats, are proposals that are separate “from the cultural contents in
the generic sections of the print media” (p. 162). In Spain, Hine (2020) showed that “through twitter, journalists oer a much
wider thematic scope and a self-promoting cultural information strategy.” For his part Mañas-Viniegra et al. (2019) claims that