Introduction

Journalism has changed, as have other professional areas, thanks to the phenomenon of globalization and the advance in technology. Thus, journalism has migrated from traditional channels to virtual platforms, allowing media convergence and giving way to the digital press. This is created, edited, prepared, and disseminated through online systems, and its advantages include constant updating, interactivity, and multimedia tools (^{Marcos Recio, 2005}). Emerging journalistic media are located within this group; platforms that ^{García (2015)} classifies as “Internet native”, i.e., that are born and strengthened through the network. These models respond to the need for innovation and include new methodologies in terms of production and financing, without compromising their independence, since they are not conceived as business projects, but rather as alternative journalistic media to those belonging to large corporations (^{García, 2015}; ^{Marcos Recio, 2005}; ^{Marín, 2016}).

The coverage of news in the media has also changed, especially in a society in which critical thinking is becoming more important. Today there are several channels of citizen connection that test the role of journalism as a key factor in the generation of public opinion and the strengthening of social criticism through collectives. These movements play an important role in the social scenario, which has forced the media sphere to transmit its facts and ideas (^{Almeida & Cordero, 2017}). In this way, activism takes up the alter-globalization struggles and spreads new ways of hyper-connectivity. Their message is conceived and transmitted in European countries and the United States, and becomes stronger in Latin America, due to historical gaps such as inequality, poverty, and social and political exclusion (^{Fuentes-Nieva & Nelli Feroci, 2017}; ^{García & Bailey, 2021}). In this regard, ^{Pleyers (2018)} suggests that the incidence of the press in social movements allows dividing them into four groups: indigenous and peasant movements; movements for democratization; movements for education; and movements for peace and justice.

A review of the existing theory reveals studies of the social movement-journalism binomial from the perspective of various authors. ^{Sampedro Blanco (1997)}, for example, describes activism as the counterpart of political parties and bases its legitimacy on the framework of the informative agenda in the media. An initial investigation of the impact of protests in the media, between 1960 and 1999, highlights how the press went from a radical to a more moderate perspective, mainly due to the level of selection and framing of the media concerning news related to social movements (^{Boyle et al., 2005}). Likewise, ^{Atton (2002)} presents another precedent on the interdependent social movement-journalism relationship, in which he explains that the emergence of the alternative and autonomous press responds to democratic, participatory, and counter-hegemonic needs, highlighting the emergence of the journalist-activist. The latter strengthens their ideological role with traditional and modern communicative strategies, focusing the attention on the actors of the protests as the protagonists of their own testimonies, which define the news agenda in the new media.

On the other hand, ^{McCurdy (2012)} identifies two approaches to the dynamics of social movements and the media: one is aimed at the representative level, in which the negative predisposition of the press to highlight factors such as violence and the sensationalism of protests stands out, and the other takes a relational approach to establish media strategies for the dissemination of the various activisms that are generated and strengthened mainly on the Internet. In this regard, ^{Harlow (2013)} confirms that communication channels of this network contribute to creating spaces for collective action. These organizations emerge on the political scene thanks to a social phenomenon called “fragmentation of communication networks” by ^{Gitlin (2005)}. For his part, ^{Pleyers (2018)} determines that these new forms of activism are generated from collectives that use alternative media and take hold of the voice of independent journalism, which delves into progressive ideals.

With modernity, Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) appear, encouraging a new logic of spatial interconnection and debate that is created and operated virtually, strengthening the development of social activism “from below” (^{Sampedro Blanco & Haro Barba, 2011}). These social movements, in contexts of political conflict and information repression, become media that appropriate ICTs for their discursive practices, which also happens inversely: independent media that develop as platforms for social activism and can self-manage information, unlike large corporations that broadcast news (^{Valderrama, 2008}). These changes concern activists, means of action, and the press. The role of the media is to be the setting for collective expressions that stand out for their diversity, proliferation, horizontality, creativity, and symbolism (^{Flores Morador & Cortés Vásquez, 2016}).

According to the postulates described above, it is necessary to investigate the relationship between journalism and social movements to deepen their social role and democratic functions. In the most recent systematic review related to this topic, ^{Rodríguez-Suárez et al. (2021)} confirm that the sphere of social activism has a growing impact on digital media and their studies employ virtual ethnography as the methodology of choice. The purpose of this research is thus defined as the verification of the trend of the studies on this subject between 2011 and 2021, which presents a first state of the art that helps to understand the coverage that the media provide to social movements in Ibero-America. The analysis of the results will reflect the role played by the news media in their conciliatory function regarding the actions of social movements and their confrontation with powerful leaders.

Considering this, the main objective is to analyze the scientific papers published and disseminated through journals, repositories and academic search engines, to identify trends and establish relationships. Next, the compilation process and the analysis of results are detailed, following the systematic review method of ^{Petticrew and Roberts (2006)}, whose methodology constitutes a guide for research in the field of Social Sciences, which is referenced by other authors. This is the case of Shadish (in ^{Petticrew & Roberts, 2006}), who qualifies this material as a jewel of systematic reviews since it contains not only the methodological process but also historical information, analysis of the procedure, and relevant examples in the field of research. The steps it comprises are search and evaluation; analysis and synthesis; and presentation of results (^{Codina, 2018}).

Methodological design

To meet the initial objective, various resources were used to search for scientific articles that include studies of different realities in the world. The search platforms used during the exploration were Google Scholar, ebsco, Redalyc, SciELO, Dialnet, and RefSeek. The following key terms were used in the exploration process: “journalistic coverage”, “information”, “journalism”, “journalistic information” and “social movements”. After obtaining the first sample in Spanish, Portuguese, and English, which consisted of a total of 127 articles, the thematic bias screening was carried out.

According to ^{Petticrew and Roberts (2006)}, a selection of studies can be screened based on the information obtained from the title and abstracts, as long as they are related to the research topic. Among the inclusion criteria, time with a maximum of ten years old was considered, i. e., between 2011 and 2021, a prolific period for the various fields of study, as it comprises a new stage for activist movements, thanks to protests with their own characteristics and ideas, such as those of the Arab Spring, or the youth revolts in Spain and Chile (^{Fuentes-Nieva & Nelli Feroci, 2017}; ^{Pleyers, 2018}). The research papers found are published in Spanish, English, and Portuguese, as long as the study is carried out in Ibero-America. On the other hand, the selected documents correspond to Ibero-America, since most of the articles correspond to countries such as Spain, Colombia, Peru, and Argentina.

Ten articles from the first sample of studies were considered false positives and were discarded for not having thematic relevance in the research and for not reflecting the connection between journalism and activism, exclusion criteria that were taken into account in the search, as well as time and geographic space factors. Thus, 64 scientific documents were selected and tabulated to show the findings. Figure 1 shows considerable progress in studies on the journalistic coverage of social movements. Although the scientific production has been dispersed, an increase in the last four years has been validated, especially in 2019.

Source: The authors.

Figure 1 Articles used by year of publication 

After validating the studies collected, the following classifications were made to obtain results in each line of research. The first categorization is related to the approach given by the media to each social movement. In this way, the aim is to verify which movements are the most relevant for the press. The articles were also grouped according to dimensions such as the type of media (written, radio, digital, etc.).

As shown in Figure 2, the feminist movement has the largest number of articles out of the total number of texts collected, with 12 documents out of 64 (18%), followed by the environmental movement, with 11 (17%), and the anti-system movements, with 10 studies (16%). At a medium level, there are social movements of popular participation such as LGBTIQ, student, animal, anti-racist, pro-independence, and teachers’ movements. Finally, movements that received little press coverage or that are not related to those described above are grouped under “Others”.

Source: The authors.

Figure 2 Categorization of scientific articles by social movement 

As well as examining the press messages and their social impact, it is also important to highlight the formats through which they are transmitted. After reviewing the articles, a categorization of the dimensions that correspond to the type of informative support was elaborated. Written media were the most analyzed in the research, with 44 articles out of the total (68%), followed by digital media, both Internet native media and those resulting from the so-called media convergence, with 22 articles out of 64 (34%). Television and radio, classified as traditional press, are found in smaller numbers.

Source: The authors.

Figure 3 Categorization of scientific articles by type of media 

To complement the study, and after categorizing the data, the results are obtained and consolidated through synthesis tables that respond to quality criteria (^{Petticrew & Roberts, 2006}). Thus, the findings of the journalistic coverage of various social movements are validated in studies with qualitative, quantitative, and mixed approaches, and in whose methodology various techniques, instruments, and criteria were applied, such as observation sheets, checklists, framing theory, and surveys. Based on this, summaries were prepared including the objectives, units of analysis, results, and conclusions.

The journalistic coverage of social movements in ibero-america

The procedure for conducting systematic reviews by ^{Petticrew and Roberts (2006)} meets a need that arises in the researcher to comprehensively and impartially summarize all the existing information on a phenomenon. The exploratory process has shown that the articles are studies that employ a variety of methodologies, going from observation to experimentation, besides having qualitative, quantitative, and mixed approaches. Thus, it has been decided to describe the main results of those studies that are relevant for drawing conclusions, which are categorized and detailed below.

Conclusions

Based on the report on the preparation of systematic reviews by ^{Petticrew and Roberts (2006)}, this article has elaborated a collection and analysis of studies on the journalistic coverage of social movements in Ibero-America, carried out between 2011 and 2021. There is a trend toward an increasingly stronger insertion of social movements in the various spheres of the news and in journalistic media that emerge through digital platforms, which act as collaborative practices of activism. The news media that are broadcasted on the Internet, especially the so-called Internet native media, consider the issue of citizen protest demonstrations as a relevant topic. While in traditional media companies the focus is related to political issues, in digital media there is incipient activist journalism that is more concerned with racial and ideological minorities.

It was found that since 2011 there has been an increase in publications related to social movements in the region. The discussion of these topics in research articles has been constant in the last ten years and has been promoted in different fields of study due to citizen movements such as the Arab Spring in the Middle East or the 15-M marches, and the Catalan independence process in Spain. In the following years, the phenomenon of feminism emerged in countries such as Argentina, and socio-environmental and student struggles were reinforced in Peru and Chile, respectively. Most of the protests were called and reinforced their discourse through Internet platforms and social networks.

According to the academic articles analyzed, movements associated with ideological currents such as feminism, environmental groups, and the LGBTIQ movement, received greater coverage and acceptance in the Ibero-American news media; although in some studies associated with homosexual marriage, the use of euphemistic terms and the bias of sexual freedom due to religion remain in force. It was determined that the media reinforces stereotypes of women and their domestic characteristics in Mexico, and of the criminalization of peasants and students in Peru and Chile, in which conflict and violence are highlighted.

According to the articles analyzed, especially those related to feminist movements, there are notorious differences between traditional and non-traditional media. Thus, there are two groups: the media that are more concerned with the consequences of the marches and their political and economic repercussions, and the media focused on the organization of the activists. In many research studies, it is perceived that the so-called conventional media have no independence and respond to economic and political interests, so they only focus on the dissemination of facts and do not delve into the analysis of the causes and consequences of social movements. On the other hand, the non-conventional media prefer to delve into the different aspects of social activism, to generate a debate of opinions on the Internet, being on the side of the protester. The need for future reviews from this and other perspectives to explore the communicative phenomena and their implications in the diverse collectives that today attract the attention of the world through their social actions is highlighted.