Introduction

This is an interpretative analysis of the coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic made by Mexican digital media journalists during the first months of the contingency. The analytical object was built around a collaborative initiative convened by the Pie de Página news website of the Red de Periodistas de a Pie. The study is elaborated from the individuals’ point of view, in other words, through a respectful approach to the social world preinterpreted by the participants and subsequently interpreted by the researchers (^{Giddens, 2006}; ^{Thompson, 1998}).

For this purpose, a comprehensive-qualitative approach was used, whose foundations recognize that “one of the characteristics of social research is that the ‘objects’ we study are actually ‘subjects’ who for themselves produce accounts of the world” (^{Hammersley & Atkinson, 1994, p. 141}). To theoretically order the work, we used as a basis the categories of the sociology of journalism (^{Hernández, 2018}), emphasizing the practices that define collaborative journalism (^{Martínez & Ramos, 2020}), in the context of the health emergency.

On March 31, 2020, through a presidential decree published in the Diario Oficial de la Federación (Official Journal of the Federation in English), the Jornada Nacional de Sana Distancia (National Day of Physical Distancing in English) was established in Mexico as a federal government measure to contain the spread of the SARS-Cov2 virus. The immediate suspension of all activities in the country was ordered, except for those considered “essential”, among which was the information media² (^{Secretaría de Salud, 2020}). This paper explores collaborative journalism (^{Calvo, 2013}; ^{Ford, Gonzales, & Quade, 2020}; ^{Martínez & Ramos, 2020}) which has antecedents in experiences such as:

As a strategy to approach the phenomenon, the initiative #TómateloEnSerioMX (TakeItSeriouslyMX in English), convened by the Red de Periodistas de a Pie, was seized upon (^{Red de Periodistas de a Pie, 2021b}). This Network is a recognized organization in the field of independent journalism in Mexico. In addition to leading the formation of networks of journalists in most of the states of the country, it has formed the Alianza de Medios para la Libertad de Expresión (Media Alliance for Freedom of Expression in English) (^{Ramos & Mendoza, 2021}; ^{Red de Periodistas de a Pie, 2021ª}), a synergic effort -that is, coordinated, cooperative, and participatory- for the practice of journalism with high-quality parameters and civic commitment.

The #TómateloEnSerioMX initiative brought together 48 digital media from different regions of the country, which aimed to generate and disseminate coordinated messages related to the outbreak of COVID-19 in Mexico, as well as to verify information (^{Red de Periodistas de a Pie, 2020}). Table 1 shows the isto f the media incorporated into the initiative.

This initiative, by representing a space of confluence for a group of well-identified journalistic media, makes it possible to approach this object of study analytically. The objective of the initiative, published on the Pie de Página website, shows its willingness to participate in a motu proprio communication strategy in favor of the population:

Generate and promote coordinated and verified messages on the measures of social isolation, physical distancing, care, and health protection implemented by the Mexican government in the face of the increase of contagions in our country, inform on time the mechanisms of care for vulnerable groups at this juncture (elderly, women, migrants, populations with comorbidities), provide digital security tips to our users, to avoid falling into traps or cybercrime in this emergency, share best practices of health security for our teams, reporters, and journalists covering the emergency associated with COVID-19. (^{Red de Periodistas de a Pie, 2020, p. 1})

It should be noted that the digital media sector is not the dominant one in terms of journalistic supply. There are no figures that allow establishing it with certainty; a recent estimate considers that they constitute 4.8% of the total media with informative content in Mexico (^{Márquez-Ramírez & Hughes, 2017}). However, in qualitative terms, this sector has achieved great recognition in public presence, obtaining regional, national, and international awards for work and trajectories, in addition to obtaining resources from various agencies to develop journalistic projects with a democratic approach (^{De León-Vázquez, 2018b}; ^{Harlow & Salaverría, 2016}; ^{Ramos & Mendoza, 2021}).

The article consists of five parts: the first corresponds to this introduction; the second includes the background and theoretical formulations of the study; the third part presents the qualitative methodological strategy based on semi-structured interviews; the fourth part shows the results and, finally, the fifth part presents the conclusions, which offer a comprehensive reflection based on the data.

Background and Theoretical Approaches. Risk Communication and Collaborative Journalism

There is a varied set of works on the study of journalism in the context of health crises. ^{Hallin et al. (2020)} compared the coverage of the AH1N1 influenza epidemic in three newspapers in Argentina, the United States of America, and Venezuela, respectively. They found that the media favored the health efforts of the authorities and the panic containment in the discourse on the virus. Meanwhile, ^{Muñiz (2011)} identified the news consumption patterns for information on the spread of the AH1N1 virus. ^{Thompson’s (2019)} analysis of the media coverage of the Ebola epidemic in Ghana shows the importance of the media in disseminating health information to a multilingual and illiterate population.

There are several studies and analyses carried out from different fields to understand the journalistic problems associated with the outbreak of COVID-19. The first group of works deals with non-academic diagnoses conducted by journalists and civil organizations concerned about the risks reporters assume when covering the pandemic. Such risks are contagion, increased precariousness, employer abuses (^{Morales, 2020}; ^{Red de Periodistas de a Pie, 2021c}; ^{Red de Periodistas de Quintana Roo, 2020}), and violations of freedom of expression (^{Freedom House, 2020}).

The second group deals with academic studies, among which it is possible to identify four major trends. First, there are those aimed at finding out citizen perception of the disease through media consumption (^{Bratu, 2020}; ^{Casero-Ripolles, 2020}; ^{A. Hernández, 2020}; ^{Khairy, 2019}; ^{Lázaro-Rodríguez & Herrera-Viedma, 2020}; ^{Muñiz, 2020}). The second trend corresponds to the works developed to identify the characteristics and effects of false information about COVID-19 (^{Akintande & Olubusoye, 2020}; ^{Elías & Catalan-Matamoros, 2020}; ^{Salaverría et al., 2020}).

The third trend is represented by analyses of the role of journalism, the news agenda, and the responsibility of the news media in the production of stories about the pandemic (^{Kunelius, 2020}; ^{La et al., 2020}; ^{Lewis, 2020}; ^{Navarro, 2021}; ^{Olsen, Pickard, & Westlund, 2020}; ^{Papapicco, 2020}; ^{Sharma et al., 2020}; ^{Wormer, 2020}). The fourth trend refers to studies on the strategies established by governmental communication to deal with the pandemic (^{Cárdenas & Pineda, 2021}; ^{Llano & Águila, 2020}).

As a starting point in our analysis, we proceed from the premise of the proliferation of digital platforms that allow unrestricted access to information for a large number of individuals, who can also interact with the contents that circulate on those platforms (^{Padilla, De León-Vázquez, & Medina, 2019}). This access facility brings with it the problem of misinformation and overinformation, since much of that content is produced without reliable standards and constitutes a problem on different scales, dimensions, and topics, including health.

This study is based on three theoretical axes: a) journalistic activity in the risk communication system, b) the proliferation of false information, and c) collaborative journalism. These axes are articulated because the proliferation of false news represents a problem that public health agencies must address, and it is the responsibility of States to formulate risk communication strategies.

Collaborative journalism, on the other hand, is a coordinated practice of various teams of journalists under a civic orientation. As such, it should participate as an ally to support health promotion strategies. These strategies are part of risk communication actions. Meanwhile, risk communication represents an area of specialization integrated into the discipline of public health. Its objective is oriented to the recovery of evidence and the generation of information that allows the identification of the type of sanitary action needed to face infectious outbreaks, as well as diverse health emergencies:

The current main distinction between risk communication and other forms of communication is that risk communication facilitates an effective outbreak response by addressing challenges in the social environment of the disease outbreak. It does this by replacing one-way communication with a two-way dialogue among the various stakeholders: decision-makers, scientists, technical experts, response teams, communities, health workers, partners, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and individuals; and across the many sectors that are inevitably involved in disease outbreak response⁶ (^{Gamhewage, 2016, p. 89}).

Consequently, specialized health journalism is a practice directly related to the actions of risk communication. Its specificity lies in facilitating the interaction of health experts with the citizens, in terms of information needs.

^{Montes de Oca and Urbina (2015)} indicate that this type of journalism generates plural and complex news messages in which health, individual, and collective processes are reported. It also serves to favor the exchange of knowledge among the different public health actors.

However, it is important to distinguish, along with ^{Navarro (2021)}, that in the context of Latin America, health journalism is a subject of coverage but not a specialized practice. In this region, the consolidation of the journalistic profession has not reached that level of specialization. Journalists who cover health and science in the general media usually do so within a set of coverage assignments that they may be close to or distant from, depending on the current situation and informative agendas. There is no rule that makes it possible to specify this.

On the other hand, the proliferation of false information or fake news has been one of the main debates related to the COVID-19 pandemic news. ^{Rodrigo-Alsina (2019)} posits that fake news is embedded within another more complex problem: post-truth. The author conceptualizes it as an intentional action to force someone to believe in something. This action is supported by technological tools. Among the most common tools are social media, the shaping of algorithms, and the use of bots. Ethical journalism represents one of the best options to prevail over falsified narratives.

This occurs because, according to ^{Rodrigo-Alsina (2019, p. 229)}, “The journalist is credited with professional competencies and a code of ethics” that are conditions of their professionalization, and are required as part of their informative work. This constitutes a substantial difference with other actors who inform, and who do not have this ethical mediation in the production of their messages.

Collaborative journalism is a type of journalism that is particularly convinced of this approach to ethics and civic responsibility. It originates from the experiences of independent journalists who organize themselves into work teams and seek to support each other, using digital tools, influenced by the wiki culture of collaboration and working in a network. They constitute an alternative to the large corporate, industrial, or mainstream press (^{Calvo, 2013}; ^{Celecia, 2019}, ²⁰²⁰; ^{De León-Vázquez, 2018a}; ^{Ford et al., 2020}; ^{Harlow & Salaverría, 2016}; ^{Heft, Alfter, & Barbara, 2019}; ^{Martínez & Ramos, 2020}). Authors ^{Martínez and Ramos (2020, p. 4)} provide the following definition:

We understand collaborative journalism as a formal or informal project in which journalists from a number of information media, and frequently from different geographic areas, unite efforts to gather public-interest information, process and disseminate it jointly, supported on communication technologies and on citizens interested and/or involved in the issues of the informative agenda.

Collaborative journalism is an emerging phenomenon in Latin America. It is generally practiced by independent, low-budget, and civic-oriented digital media; it is presented as an alternative to the large industrial press (^{Celecia, 2020}; ^{Harlow & Salaverría, 2016}). This is relevant because the industrial press is strongly determined by the capitalist business logic of commoditization of journalistic spaces and products (^{Fishman, 1983}; ^{González-Molina, 1990}; ^{McNair, 1998}; ^{Ramonet, 2011}; ^{Voltmer, 2013}).

Academic works on alternative digital media involved in collaborative practices provide evidence that, due to their financing bets -through funders, foundations, and international agencies for democratic development-, their agendas, news values, and production routines privilege journalistic treatments of civic responsibility, not necessarily governed by the mercantile determinations of the industrial press, and in that sense, closer to citizen issues (^{Celecia, 2020}; ^{De León-Vázquez, 2018b}; ^{Martínez & Ramos, 2020}; ^{Salaverría, Sádaba, Breiner, & Warner, 2019}).

These experiences can also be understood as professional communities of practice (^{Meltzer & Martik, 2017}). Journalists who participate in collaborative projects assume themselves as a community that shares values, ideals, ways of exercising their profession, and even a critical attitude towards the characteristics of the industrial press. In the case of Mexico, it is also involved in a form of political clientelism known as “officialism” (^{Bohmann, 1994}; ^{Hallin, 2000}), against which journalists who assume this type of civic role position themselves (^{Martínez & Ramos, 2020}).

Methodology

The research has an interpretative-comprehensive orientation, and was conducted under the question: How do journalists conceive their practice in the coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic, within the framework of a collaborative experience in Mexico? For this research, the #TómateloEnSerioMX initiative mentioned paragraphs above was taken as a starting point. A semi-structured interview was used, in which defined and ordered questions were posed in an instrument known as an interview guide. The guide is applied equally to all study subjects (^{Díaz-Bravo, Torruco-García, Martínez-Hernández, & Varela-Ruiz, 2013}). For this case, an interview guide organized into four items was formulated:

The interviews were self-administered through an online form. One of the researchers was remotely assisting the interviewees -at the time, the social confinement remained in place- between April and July 2020. The responses were analyzed through the categories of journalistic production routines and news values from the perspective of sociology of journalism (^{Schudson, 1997}), in articulation with the conditions of the health emergency. The participants were summoned through direct contact using the contact data provided on their websites, and a positive response was obtained from 26 journalists. The participants were distributed among 15 states, as shown in Table 2. The data were anonymized to respect the confidentiality of the journalists.

Findings

The data in Table 2 show different characteristics of the participating journalists. It is observed that the majority are women; a total of 17, compared to 9 men. As this is a qualitative study, it should not be considered that the distribution of this group is representative of the population of digital media journalists in Mexico⁷; therefore, its usefulness is merely descriptive of the traits of the participants.

In relation to their work activity, we found that 17 interviewees were journalists, five were executives, three were editors, and one was a content producer. If we relate both characteristics, we observe that 14 reporters are women, while only three men work as reporters. It also shows that three women and two men hold managerial positions. The editors and the content producer are all men. Although these data are insufficient to evaluate gender conditions, as clarified before, it is convenient to consider that works elaborated with a gender perspective, such as that of ^{Lagunes and Celestino (2015)}, indicate that a higher percentage of women occupy non-managerial positions in the news media.

In terms of age, most of the interviewees are over 30 years old, while more than half of them have been in the field for more than 10 years. In this sense, it is possible to consider that the group presents stability and experience in the practice of journalism, as they consistently inhabit this social world (^{Pereira, 2010}).

The last column of Table 2 offers data on the combination of the practice of journalism with other professional activities. This aspect constitutes a debate in the case of alternative digital media, in view of the discussion of their recognition as journalists when they engage in other professional activities. This ambivalent professional condition usually acquires relevance, particularly, in cases of violence against journalists, when authorities are reluctant to relate aggressions with their informative activity (^{Brambila, 2018}; ^{De la Rosa & Salgado, 2020}; ^{De León-Vázquez & González, 2020}). In this case, it is observed that half are dedicated only to journalism or combine it with teaching, while the other half do have other types of work or professional activities other than journalism.

The data collected for this dimension show that the participants are diversely conformed: they are women and men located in different geographical locations, occupy different job positions, there is a wide distribution regarding their age, as well as the time of experience in the exercise of their profession. These aspects signify different positions and visions within the information production structure concerning the pandemic's coverage.

Conclusion

The evidence presented above shows how participants developed strategies to maintain journalistic coverage during the first months of confinement. In some cases, it meant adapting journalistic production routines to work-at-home. In others, it meant assuming the risk of going out to report in an uncertain context due to the high contagion rate, without the media providing them with adequate sanitary equipment, revealing another face of the precariousness of journalistic work that became visible thanks to the pandemic context.

It was identified that the epidemic has been thematized journalistically, and this major topic is disaggregated for its informative representation into subtopics such as the economy, politics, health, human rights, and violence, among others. Equally, these subtopics show a parallelism with the organization of news into hard-news and soft-news, of the traditional coverage in the journalistic media. If we take into account the process of building the media agenda, or agenda-building (^{McCombs, 2006}), the data suggest that COVID-19 overlaps -journalistically- with the broad processes faced by society, such as economic, political, social, and cultural ones.

Consistently with the practice of collaborative journalism, it is observed that the value associated with the exclusivity of the information loses relevance for the participants, in favor of socializing and sharing data that several media can use to guide the citizens better. But other news-values, such as the importance of the news source, the notoriety of the topic, and the context of reference, remain as basic professional parameters for quality news production recognized by the participants in this study.

At the same time, and given the specificity of the subject matter of the coverage - COVID-19-, the participants’ assessment confirms the incorporation of a relatively new practice in collaborative journalism: the verification of fake news, which coincides with the findings of ^{Galarza-Molina (2020)}. This practice is seen as a new criterion of newsworthiness by providing procedures to elucidate the veracity of news information.

Therefore, these features and their description, presented in the results section, offer an answer to the research question. The collected data allow us to identify, from the point of view of the social actors, how the news coverage of the first months of the pandemic was carried out through the practice of collaborative journalism in Mexico. It is identified that it was a civic effort of service to the citizens but, despite the good intentions, it reproduced structural problems of Mexican journalism, such as risk and precariousness. Nevertheless, it also revealed adaptations in the routines of news production and in the criteria of newsworthiness in the face of the great challenge of the global health crisis caused by the outbreak of COVID-19.

One of the main concerns in the world concerning the COVID-19 pandemic has been to influence the information-over-information-disinformation loop. The dissemination of accurate information supports the risk communication strategies carried out by States, international organizations, and institutions. This requires serious and sufficient information proposals, both in quantity and in quality, that allow for a truthful knowledge of the situation in order to make vital decisions, and that false information is thus made evident.

At the beginning of the pandemic, the director of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom ^{Ghebreyesus (2020)}, pointed out that the fight is equally against the pandemic and the “infodemic”, because “false news spreads faster and more easily than the virus itself, and is just as dangerous”.

In this sense, it is expected that risk communication platforms and health journalism will contribute to addressing this problem. However, a professionalization of health journalism does not exist in Mexico. This represents an obstacle, together with the facility for the dissemination of false, or at least confusing, information. Whether it is produced with a deliberate intention to misinform or simply lacks professional parameters, it represents a challenge for promoting inappropriate health practices or unfounded ideological positions.

At the international level, data verification initiatives such as the International Fact-Checking Network have promoted actions such as #CoronavirusFactsAlliance (^{Örsek, 2021}). In Mexico, the #TómateloEnSerioMX initiative, which has served as the basis for this study, has represented a collaborative effort of digital media, convened by the Pie de Página news website, in which journalistic activity has been exercised under a civic role, with the explicit purpose of contributing to the containment of the pandemic through the development of journalistic products that guide citizens. The civic role of collaborative digital journalism, as opposed to the clientelistic and commercial attitude of traditional corporate media, has already been documented by other authors (^{Harlow & Salaverría, 2016}; ^{Martínez & Ramos, 2020}; ^{Salaverría et al., 2019}), and our results confirm it again.

On the other hand, several news media participating in the #TómateloEnSerioMX initiative, including the one that called for the initiative, are related to journalist collectives or networks. They are independent groups of reporters that have achieved an important presence in the Mexican journalistic space. Several of their members have won awards inside and outside the country for the quality of their journalistic work and are highly committed to issues such as the improvement of the profession, the decrease of violence against reporters, transparency, human rights, the fight against corruption, among other issues (^{De León-Vázquez, 2018a}; ^{Duarte, De León, & Hernández, 2019}; ^{García & Salazar, 2015}; ^{Ramos, 2021}; ^{Relly & González de Bustamante, 2014}). This lends prestige to the initiative.