General characteristics of modern Spanish national newspapers: a brief overview of electronic publications

Kuz'mich Stanislav Valer'evich Postgraduate, Department of Journalism and Literature, Federal State Budgetary Educational Institution of Higher Education "Voronezh State University" 127018, Russia, Moskovskaya oblast', g. Moscow, ul. 3-I proezd mar'inoi roshchi, dom 40, stroenie 1, korpus 11 ya.air2@mail.ru Other publications by this author

Introduction

Digitalization of mass media (hereinafter referred to as mass media) is a global and natural process, which, in relation to the topic of our research, can be considered as the creation of digital online versions of leading newspapers and magazines. At the same time, the process of digitalization does not imply the disappearance of print media, but rather, on the contrary, digital versions of publications complement the content and allow expanding the readership of traditional newspapers and magazines. Without touching on all the advantages of the digital version, which are covered in sufficient detail in the scientific literature ^{[1, 4, 7]}, attention should be paid to a new criterion for assessing the quality of online media - "digital comfort".

This concept was introduced into scientific circulation relatively recently and is actively used in the works of V. Mitchell ^[19] and M. Planck ^[20]. "Digital comfort" means "the possibility of using the properties of a digital product necessary for successful communication in a digital environment" ^{[20, p. 90]}, as well as "the degree of convenience of using a digital product for the user" ^{[19, p. 64]}.

Thus, "digital comfort" is a qualitative criterion that still needs to be clarified, but can already be measured using modern methods of qualitative and quantitative analysis. Also, when evaluating this criterion, it is necessary to take into account the overall level of digitalization in Spain. According to the international analytical agency "UNCTAD", the digitalization of Spanish society is still far from the first positions: in 2021, the country ranked 11th among all European countries ^[13].

At the same time, the digitalization of the media as an independent industry is estimated at an average level in terms of the number of subscribers to the main electronic publications (newspapers "ABC", "El Pais", "El Mundo", "La Vanguardia") compared to the leading German publications ("Die Welt", "S?ddeutsche Zeitung", "Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung") and France ("Le Figaro", "Le Manifeste", "Le Monde") ^{[18, pp. 62-63]}.

According to Spanish researchers, such a "digital gap" in the volume of the readership is explained by the fact that "Spanish society can be called a little reader compared to other European countries; at the same time, Spaniards demonstrate a higher degree of political apathy than the French and Germans, which leads to a weak interest of Spanish society in the press in general and in digital its versions in particular" ^{[18, p. 64]}.

It should be noted that in modern historiography, the general theoretical aspects of the digitalization of the media are mainly considered.  In particular, the works of I.A. Aseeva ^[1], T.V. Vasilyeva ^[2], Ch.Z. Bahadivand, S.Y. Rastegari ^[3], D.V. Simonenko ^[9] and T.B. Yakovleva ^[10] analyzed the consequences of digitalization of the media for society in the XXI century. The problems of digital media management were considered by such researchers as V.V. Boguslavskaya ^[4], V.P. Kirilenko, E.Y. Kolobova ^{[5, 6]}, V.F. Oleshko ^[7] and O.I. Popova ^[8].

Foreign authors mainly focus their attention on specific problems of digitalization of the media, for example, on the formation of conditions for "digital comfort" ^{[11, 13, 14, 15]}. In particular, these problems have been investigated in the works of such scientists as S. Gillern, B. Gleason, A. Hutchison ^[16], C. Khalid, C. Rani ^[17], X. Lopez-Garcia, X. Canavillas, M. Negreira-Rey, X. Vasquez-Herrero ^[18], V. Mitchell ^[19], M. Planck ^[20]. Nevertheless, despite the rather extensive historiography of the topic under study, no empirical works on the problem of digitalization of leading newspapers in Spain have been published so far.

The hypothesis of the study is that the assessment of the "digital comfort" of the leading Spanish newspapers will increase readers' interest in the content offered by the publications in digital versions.

Materials and methods

The research materials were the answers to the questionnaire of a mini-survey on Twitter among the Spanish-speaking readers of the newspapers "ABC", "El Mundo", "El Pais", "La Vanguardia". The general population of readers amounted to 1,500 people, of whom a representative sample of 150 respondents was formed by mechanical method (every tenth reader). The questionnaire contained 15 questions on five analysis criteria: the convenience of subscribing to paid content, feedback, discussion forums, comfortable design for reading; the quality of the mobile version of electronic publications.

The research methodology is based on a systematic approach and includes methods of the general scientific group (analysis, synthesis, induction, deduction), as well as a number of special methods: content analysis of scientific literature on the research topic; the method of sociological questioning (mini-survey); the method of statistical analysis. The data collected during the empirical study were processed using Neural Designer, a software tool for advanced, predictive and prescriptive analytics.

The empirical study consisted of three stages: negotiations with potential respondents and the preparation of a questionnaire; conducting a mini-survey among a representative sample; processing the results. With the help of the program, all the obtained qualitative data were translated into a quantitative format. Each of the five analyzed criteria was evaluated on a 10-point scale according to the following principle: 1-3 points – low level; 4-6 points – average level; 7-10 points – high level of "digital comfort". All points were calculated based on the respondents' responses. The study was conducted from January 1 to January 30, 2022.

Research results

The analysis of digital comfort for readers of "ABC", "El Pais", "El Mundo", "La Vanguardia" carried out in the course of empirical work gave the following results (Figure 1).

Figure 1. Readers' assessment of digital comfort criteria of electronic publications "ABC", "El Pais", "El Mundo", "La Vanguardia" (compiled by the author)

As can be seen from the data presented in Figure 1, the ABC newspaper offers its readers the highest level of "digital comfort", in particular, only this newspaper has a differentiated subscription to paid content, as well as a convenient profile for reading in the mobile version. However, the level of feedback from this publication is average, while it does not have an application for mobile devices. Nevertheless, the newspapers "El Pais", "El Mundo" and "La Vanguardia" have high levels of design for reading and mobile versions.

In all analyzed publications, readers noted the average level of the "forum" criterion, emphasizing the need to improve newspaper applications for mobile devices with differentiated individual subscription to paid content. In particular, the mobile applications "El Pais" and "El Mundo" offer their users news content, but "El Pais" has a clear advantage - there is an application not only in Spanish, but also in Russian. Readers appreciated the quality of mobile versions of electronic publications quite highly.  Readers especially noted the following property: the more interesting the content and the more differentiated the subscription to the electronic version of publications, the fewer opportunities the editorial board leaves for discussions of this content: such a situation, for example, is especially characteristic of the policy of electronic publications "ABC" and "El Pais". On the contrary, the newspaper "El Mundo" had a high level of discussion opportunities, but subscription to paid content was poorly differentiated.

For greater clarity of the data obtained during the empirical study, the results were systematized in a summary chart organized according to the principle of average score according to five criteria (Figure 2).

Figure 2. The level of "digital comfort" of electronic publications "ABC", "El Pais", "El Mundo", "La Vanguardia"

(compiled by the author)

As can be seen from the data shown in Figure 2, all analyzed publications have an average level of digital comfort. You can increase this parameter in three ways:

1) improvement of the policy of the editorial offices of "ABC" and "El Pais" in the field of discussion platforms;

2) electronic publications "El Mundo" and "La Vanguardia" need a more thoughtful policy in the field of paid subscription to exclusive content.

Conclusions

As a result of the conducted empirical research, the author of the article came to the following conclusions: the electronic editions of modern Spanish newspapers are characterized by an average level of digital comfort, which is associated with the problem of adequate feedback, the lack of forums and differentiated subscriptions in mobile applications. By improving these parameters, newspapers will be able to reach a new qualitative level of digitalization.