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Digital native news media are becoming a blooming phenomenon, expanding globally. Up until now, however, the scholar community has paid little attention to online-born media, compared to the high interest devoted to the legacy media brands. Drawing upon the extant literature on this emerging topic, this editorial summarizes the empirical and theoretical contributions of the thematic issue entitled "Digital Native News Media: Trends and Challenges." The author highlights that the studies selected for this thematic issue not only explore the innovative characteristics and opportunities of digital native media in thirty countries, but also provide a cautionary tale about their structural problems and limitations.

Introducción: La desinformación se ha convertido en un problema clave para las sociedades democráticas contemporáneas. Para contrarrestar esta amenaza, las autoridades públicas de numerosos países han puesto en marcha diversas iniciativas legales, tecnológicas y educativas. Este artículo aporta una revisión bibliográfica y de textos legales, que evidencia la importancia creciente otorgada por la Unión Europea a la alfabetización mediática. Metodología: Mediante revisión documental, se examinan informes y textos legales europeos y de países de la UE, con el fin de evaluar el grado de relevancia que se asigna a la alfabetización mediática para luchar contra la desinformación. Resultados: El análisis comprueba una presencia recurrente de la alfabetización mediática como una de las medidas necesarias para combatir la desinformación en el territorio europeo. Discusión y conclusiones: Más allá de simples soluciones tecnológicas y legales para combatir la desinformación, se comprueba que la Unión Europea apuesta por co-responsabilizar a la ciudadanía, mediante políticas de promoción de la alfabetización mediática. Se consolida, en definitiva, un modelo de lucha contra la desinformación basado en un conjunto de soluciones multinivel.

This experimental study analyzes the effect of media literacy on the ability of Spanish seniors over 50 years of age to identify fake news. The experiment measures the improvement achieved by older adults in the detection of political disinformation thanks to a digital competence course offered through WhatsApp. The study comprises a total sample of 1,029 individuals, subdivided into a control group (n = 531) and an experimental group (n = 498), from which a qualified experimental subsample (n = 87) was extracted. Results reveal that participants' political beliefs, ranging from left to right positions, influence their ability to detect misinformation. A progressive political position is associated with higher accuracy in identifying right-biased news headlines and lower accuracy for left-biased headlines. A conservative position is associated with higher accuracy when the news headline has a progressive bias, but lower accuracy when the headline is right-wing. Users are more critical when the headline has a bias against theirs, while they are more likely to believe news that confirms their own beliefs. The study adds evidence on the relevance of cognitive biases in disinformation and supports the convenience of designing specific media literacy actions aimed at older adults.

Journalism is at a radical point of change that requires organizations to come up with new ideas and formats for news reporting. Additionally, the notable surge of data, sensors and technological advances in the mobile segment has brought immeasurable benefits to many fields of journalistic practice (data journalism in particular). Given the relative novelty and complexity of implementing artificial intelligence (AI) in journalism, few areas have managed to deploy tailored AI solutions in the media industry. In this study, through a mixed-method approach that combines both participant observations and interviews, we explain the hurdles and obstacles to deploying computer vision news projects, a subset of AI, in a leading Latin American news organization, the Argentine newspaper La Nación. Our results highlight four broad difficulties in implementing computer vision projects that involve satellite imagery: a lack of high-resolution imagery, the unavailability of technological infrastructure, the absence of qualified personnel to develop such codes, and a lengthy and costly implementation process that requires significant investment. This article concludes with a discussion of the centrality of AI solutions in the hands of big tech corporations.

Digital-native news organizations have grown steadily in Spain since the mid-1990s and they have become established as a major force in the media market. Paradoxically, their biggest expansion coincided with the Great Recession (2008-2014). In fact, their numbers increased most during 2012-2013, when traditional media were cutting staff in response to the economic crisis, and unemployment rates in the media sector as a whole hit their peak. However, these digital-native news startups have yet to prove their sustainability and stability. This study uses our own database of 3,862 native and non-native digital news outlets in Spain and the Reuters Institute Digital News Report to analyze a number of characteristics of these media, such as the percentage that have gone inactive, the relative popularity of legacy brands vs. digital natives, multi-platform synergies, content subject matter, geographical location, ownership, and funding sources. Based on these quantitative parameters, this study reviews the structural strengths and weaknesses of digital-native media in the Spanish news market. Taking into account these findings, we conclude that the surge in digital-native news media observed in Spain during the Great Recession followed the pattern of creative destruction described by several economists.

23 páginas ; Audiences play a fundamental role in disseminating and evaluating news content, and one of the big questions facing news organizations is what elements make content viral in the digital environment. This comparative study of the United States, Brazil and Argentina explores what values and topics present in news shared online predict audience interaction on social media. Findings shed light on what news values and topics trigger more audience responses on Facebook and Twitter. At the same time, a comparison between popular content produced by traditional media versus online-native media reveals that the former lean more toward government-related news and conflict/controversy news values than online native media. Brazilian stories prompted more social media interactivity than content from the United States or Argentina. Through content analysis, this study contributes to improving our understanding of audiences' news values preferences on social networks. It also helps us to recognize the role of users' online activities (sharing, commenting and liking) in the social construction of news and meaning inside the networked sphere. Finally, it opens an old media debate about whether providing and sharing too much media content with conflict, controversy and oddity could potentially hinder understanding and agreement in society. Articles were collected via media tracking and the data collection company NewsWhip.

20 páginas ; The well-known phrase 'if it bleeds, it leads' describes the sensational approach that has penetrated the history of news. Sensationalism is a term without complete consensus among scholars, and its meaning and implications have not been considered in a digital environment. This study analyzes 400 articles from online-native news organizations across the Americas, evaluating the sensational treatment of news categories and news values, and their associated social media interaction numbers on Facebook and Twitter. Findings suggest that 'hard' news topics like government affairs and science/technology were treated sensationally just as often as traditionally sensationalized categories like crime or lifestyle and society. In addition, audiences are not necessarily more likely to respond to sensational treatments. This study also finds that online-native news organizations use sensationalism differently, and there is significant variation in publications from the United States, Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico.

20 páginas ; The well-known phrase 'if it bleeds, it leads' describes the sensational approach that has penetrated the history of news. Sensationalism is a term without complete consensus among scholars, and its meaning and implications have not been considered in a digital environment. This study analyzes 400 articles from online-native news organizations across the Americas, evaluating the sensational treatment of news categories and news values, and their associated social media interaction numbers on Facebook and Twitter. Findings suggest that 'hard' news topics like government affairs and science/technology were treated sensationally just as often as traditionally sensationalized categories like crime or lifestyle and society. In addition, audiences are not necessarily more likely to respond to sensational treatments. This study also finds that online-native news organizations use sensationalism differently, and there is significant variation in publications from the United States, Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico.

23 páginas ; Audiences play a fundamental role in disseminating and evaluating news content, and one of the big questions facing news organizations is what elements make content viral in the digital environment. This comparative study of the United States, Brazil and Argentina explores what values and topics present in news shared online predict audience interaction on social media. Findings shed light on what news values and topics trigger more audience responses on Facebook and Twitter. At the same time, a comparison between popular content produced by traditional media versus online-native media reveals that the former lean more toward government-related news and conflict/controversy news values than online native media. Brazilian stories prompted more social media interactivity than content from the United States or Argentina. Through content analysis, this study contributes to improving our understanding of audiences' news values preferences on social networks. It also helps us to recognize the role of users' online activities (sharing, commenting and liking) in the social construction of news and meaning inside the networked sphere. Finally, it opens an old media debate about whether providing and sharing too much media content with conflict, controversy and oddity could potentially hinder understanding and agreement in society. Articles were collected via media tracking and the data collection company NewsWhip.

23 páginas ; Audiences play a fundamental role in disseminating and evaluating news content, and one of the big questions facing news organizations is what elements make content viral in the digital environment. This comparative study of the United States, Brazil and Argentina explores what values and topics present in news shared online predict audience interaction on social media. Findings shed light on what news values and topics trigger more audience responses on Facebook and Twitter. At the same time, a comparison between popular content produced by traditional media versus online-native media reveals that the former lean more toward government-related news and conflict/controversy news values than online native media. Brazilian stories prompted more social media interactivity than content from the United States or Argentina. Through content analysis, this study contributes to improving our understanding of audiences' news values preferences on social networks. It also helps us to recognize the role of users' online activities (sharing, commenting and liking) in the social construction of news and meaning inside the networked sphere. Finally, it opens an old media debate about whether providing and sharing too much media content with conflict, controversy and oddity could potentially hinder understanding and agreement in society. Articles were collected via media tracking and the data collection company NewsWhip.

Drawing upon the misinformation stories debunked by the three accredited fact-checking platforms in Spain, a content analysis of all the hoaxes (N = 292) bound to the Covid-19 pandemic is performed, over the first month of the state of alarm decreed by the Spanish Government (March 14th, 2020 – April 13th, 2020). The study shows that the hoaxes about the coronavirus were disseminated mainly on social networks and, among them, especially in closed ones, such as the WhatsApp mobile messaging application. It also detects the most frequent formal and content peculiarities of misinformation. The results reveal that the pandemic, in addition to generating a large number of hoaxes on health and science, also led to the dissemination of many political fake news. The formats, sources and territories of origin of the hoaxes are also explored. Beyond the empirical results, this study makes theoretical contributions in the framework of the emerging studies on information disorders. Specifically, it provides a definition of hoax, as well as a typology in which four main types are identified: joke, exaggeration, decontextualization and deception. Based on these four types, a 'hoax severity diagram' is proposed.

Abstract
This article assesses online newspapers in Europe from a media evolutionary perspective, ten years after the introduction of the World Wide Web. Comparing print and online front pages of 51 newspapers in 14 countries in 2003, we argue that online newspapers complement print newspapers in modest ways. Online, publishers put more emphasis on service information, offer additional news items, that nonetheless report on similar topics in similar ways, and add personal interactivity, content selectivity and real-time news to the print news offering.
One subset of online newspapers charges for services, and offers more content and personal interactivity. Another, partly overlapping subset offers more original news; in a short and anonymous format. Overall, however, online newspapers in Europe make up a heterogeneous group, suggesting that online newspapers still have to find their definite form and role in the European news market.