Concentration and News Deserts: the Andalusian Information Map

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.54790/rccs.93

Keywords:

proximity information, local journalism, information company, information deserts, new deserts

Abstract

Local journalism fulfills a fundamental function for the articulation of territories, it is the information closest to the reader and most useful and it also has a very relevant public ser­vice function. The arrival of new digital tools has favored the growth of local or hyperlocal media (digital press) in locations unthinkable for a newspaper. The Project “Journalistic information and well-being: analysis of the social function of the Andalusian journalistic company (US 1380696)” has carried out an in-depth investigation into this reality, detec­ting the existence of 252 local digital media in the autonomous community, which first ins­tance denotes the health of the sector in Andalusia. One of the results of this research has been the development of an interactive map with the location of each of these media outlets. This tool gives the exact location of the media, as well as where the greatest concentrations and information deserts occur.

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Author Biographies

Francisco J. Caro-González, University of Seville

He holds a PhD in Business Administration and is a lecturer in the Faculty of Communication at the University of Seville. He has been PI of the projects ‘La información periodística y el bienestar: análisis de la función social de la empresa periodística andaluza’ (US-1380696) and ‘La satisfacción de las necesidades informativas de las mujeres. Analysis of the journalistic company from a gender perspective’ (INVM PR041-07). Her research focuses on the management of journalistic companies, paying special attention to organisational change, entrepreneurship and gender in journalistic and advertising organisations.

Mar Garcia Gordillo, University of Seville

Associate Professor in the Department of Journalism II of the Faculty of Communication at the University of Seville. She is principal investigator of the Communication and Social Sciences research group (SEJ-619) and director of the RTVE-University of Seville Chair of Cultural Content and Creativity in the Audiovisual and Digital sector. She has participated in several national research projects and her lines of research revolve around information and national and international political communication and gender studies and local digital media, on which she has just completed a project on Journalism and Social Welfare in Andalusia (PERYBIAN), of which this article is the result.

Ofa Bezunartea-Valencia, University of the Basque Country

Journalist, Professor of Journalism at the UPV-EHU. She has worked in local journalism for twenty-five years. Professor of Journalism at the University of the Basque Country from 1982 until her retirement in 2010. Guest lecturer at the University of Seville from 2003 to 2010. She obtained her PhD in journalism in 1986 with the thesis ‘Basque journalists in the Transition’. She is the author or co-author of several books: Memorias de la violencia, Noticias e ideología profesional, La Prensa ante el cambio de Siglo, Los límites de la información política, Los medios de comunicación en el País Vasco, La élite de los periodistas en España, 21 Lecciones de reporterismo, La prensa y los eLectores.

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Published

2025-01-08

How to Cite

Caro-González, F. J., Garcia Gordillo, M., & Bezunartea-Valencia, O. (2025). Concentration and News Deserts: the Andalusian Information Map. CENTRA Journal of Social Sciences, 4(1). https://doi.org/10.54790/rccs.93

Issue

Vol. 4 No. 1 (2025): CENTRA Journal of Social Sciences (FIRST ONLINE)

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Artículos

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Copyright (c) 2025 Francisco J. Caro González, Mar Garcia Gordillo, Ofa Bezunartea Valencia

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.