TRADITIONAL MEDIA AND SOCIAL NETWORKS ON THE INTERNET: AN ANALYSIS OF THE POSTS SHARED ON FACEBOOK BY ARGENTINIANS NEWSPAPERS CLARIN AND LA NACIÓN (2010-2015)

Abstract

This article presents part of the results of a study about the posts published by the Argentinean newspapers Clarín and La Nación in their official Facebook accounts, during the period 2010-2015. Through the examination of two corpus —one comprised by a finite collection of ad hoc selected materials, and another one including the total universe of the post—, this investigation entails the testing of a complementary way of approaching to the study of discursive configuration in the publications  of newspapers in their fan pages, articulating  a process of data mining that is just in its initial stage. Methodological strategy combines the artisanal work inherent to socio-semiotic analysis —traditionally applied to smaller discourse packages— with digital tools and computational methods that allow the collection, pre-processing, processing, and visualization of massive amounts of data and metadata which  are initially unstructured, and can be both textual and non-textual.

Specifically, an inquiry into the type of disseminated content and the publication frequency of the mentioned fan pages are considered , taking into account the most common post types, the publication behavior according to different time zones, the geographical location of the information, the journalistic genres used, the issues of reference, the temporality of the events presented in the news, among other things, as well as the interactions of the publications. All these findings seek to advance in the examination of the discursive configuration that media uses in the connective platform at the global level with the greatest impact, at present, in the web traffic of information.