• Total number of publications and number of publications that referred to sexuality

• Number of ‘likes’

• Number of comments

• Number of views

• Position of main weight of information: graphic part, textual part, both.

• Content format: infographic, illustration, video, photograph, multiple

– In the case of video: declaration of source, explanation by the journalist, audio-visual editing (with or without a voiceover).

• Subject of the information. The content analysed may focus on the actions of: the holder of a political position, the holder of a judicial position, the holder of religious position, a victim, a sex offender, a journalist, a young person (person aged between 16 and 30 years who cannot be identified by any of the aforementioned roles), other.

• Topic: sexual relations, ‘Only yes means yes law’, both.

• Relevance: topical or timeless issue.

• Frame for dissemination of sexuality: educational, social controversy, political controversy, legal controversy, religious controversy.

• Polarisation: positive (in favour of the regulation of consent), negative (against the regulation of consent), non-existent (neither in favour nor against), neutral (presents aspects in favour and against).

• Type of disinformation: unverifiable claim, misrepresentation of words, not applicable.

• Type of hate speech: dehumanisation (denial of human characteristics), insults (offensive or vulgar expressions), othering (us versus them), promotion of stereotypes/prejudices (schematic, simplified representation of a group of people), not applicable.

3. Results

To answer RQ1, we analysed the overall count of content publications on sexuality. Of the total number of items posted on Instagram and TikTok, no medium achieved interest of over 10% for issues related to sexual relations. Okdiario has published the most content on this topic (7.34%, 111 out of 1513), followed by Europa Press (4.89%, 99 out of 2024). Freeda, a medium that specialises in social issues, with a special focus on women’s information needs, stood at 4.77% (96 out of 2013).

Turning to the subsample, that is to say, the content items referring to sexuality and sexual education, the conventional media used both sites indiscriminately. However, the media cooperatives are not present on the TikTok platform. It is quite the opposite case regarding Freeda, which has twice as many publications on TikTok than on Instagram. In the period analysed, 8 March 2023 was the day on which most content referring to sexuality (N=25) was published on these sites. And, in second place, is 6 October (N=12), just one day before the ‘Only yes means yes law’ came into effect.

In the response to RQ2, the protagonists of this information were analysed (table 2). Politicians are prominent (40.6%, 203); and the most conspicuous among them is the Minister for Equality, Irene Montero (94), the promoter of the law. Secondly, the focus is on the victims of sexual assault (19%, N=95). While in most media the presence of the minister Irene Montero is predominant, Freeda chooses different subjects for its content: victims (34), journalists from the medium who explain different issues relating to sexual education (28), young people (14) and politicians—including Montero (12).

As regards the topics and frames that dominate the coverage of sexuality and consent (RQ3), the conventional media published 72% of the items dedicated to the new law (206 publications). This position coincides with the three hashtags that are most widely used to give their content visibility, focusing on the legislative controversy and the attack on the ministry that drove the regulatory change. They are #IreneMontero, #SoloSíEsSí [only yes means yes] and #Igualdad [Equality] (RQ4).

The media cooperatives focus, by contrast, on the implications for sexual relations. And on Freeda, with 90 publications, 92.4% of its items address different aspects of sexuality, such as false myths, female pleasure, communication in a sexual relationship or the different forms that consent or sexual harassment take. In these cases, there is a predominance of labels that call for #EducacionSexual [Sexual Education] and #Sexualidad [Sexuality] to gain greater visibility among the audience.

The most frequent frame in the content on the ‘Only yes means yes law’ (table 3) was the political controversy over the new regulation (81.20%, 216 out of 266 items about the law). Specifically, Okdiario is the medium that focuses most on this frame; it signs 44.3% of these publications. However, the content items that address the law from an educommunicational approach barely amount to 50 (18.80%). Once again, in this aspect Freeda is the medium that is distinctive for drawing attention to the social change involved in this regulation in terms of the need for agreement in sexual relations. The platform analyses the law from the point of view of sexual education, as can be seen in image 1.

Image 1. Publication by Freeda on consent [Sentence in photo: Consent can take different forms…]

Source: Freeda, 28/10/2022 (https://bit.ly/48bXbCu)

As for the temporality of content (RQ5), Freeda is noticeable for registering the greatest volume of atemporal news items of special interest to young women (68 out of the 96 publications analysed). By contrast, 84% of the conventional media publish topics linked to the present. In these new narratives, most of the information weight (RQ6) mainly lies in the graphic part of the publication (69.2%, N=346), according to the formal requirements of the two social networking sites. In only 107 publications on Instagram (21.4%) was there a greater load of information in the text.

The most widely used format by Spanish media for this type of content (RQ7) is video (62%, 309), followed by photography (25.6%, 128). When the publication is a video—an optional format on Instagram, whereas it is obligatory on TikTok—most content weight is inserted into the graphic part and different communicative resources are used to build information. In just over half of their publications, the conventional media use a declaration by a source (66.8%), whilst the specialist media Freeda prefers to use the format of analysis or well-argued interpretation by a member of its team (53.6%). The media cooperatives, in turn, are not notable for their use of videos (8 items out of 52) and half of the time (50%) they opt to publish dynamic audio-visual presentation without a voiceover.

With reference to the polarisation regarding the Law on the Comprehensive Guarantee of Sexual Freedom (RQ8), 74 publications by conventional media reveal a position against this regulation; these media are Okdiario (N=64), Europa Press (5), El País (2) and El Mundo (3). These publications generally focus on the political controversy in parliament. 8 March 2023 was the day when most negative publications were published about the change in legislation. 7 publications in favour of the law were identified. They are by Freeda (3), El Salto (2), Pikara Magazine (1) and El País (1). The other posts analysed show non-existent or neutral positions regarding the law. In this sense, Europa Press is by far the most neutral medium on the subject of the law and CTXT is the only medium to present non-existent polarisation about the law. If we analyse the existence of polarisation in video declarations, Okdiario has the greatest number of publications with verbal quotations against it (N=49). Europa Press is the medium that has posted the most declarations in favour of ‘Montero's law’ on its social media regarding this regulation (N=24). And Freeda opts for declarations with non-existent polarisation (N=51).

In terms of the presence of disinformation in these content items (RQ9), it is important to note that there are different typologies of disinformation in publications by Okdiario (42). They are to be found in the publications that focus on the political controversy surrounding the new law (31) and words are misrepresented to a greater extent (as can be seen in this example, https://bit.ly/3GDgqsP). Likewise, Okdiario is the only medium analysed that disseminates hate speech in its texts (N=7): othering (3), dehumanisation (2) and insults (2). When we analysed whether hate speech is present in the declarations taken from sources, it was detected in 137 publications; of these, 77 were based on othering. This was followed by insults (36) and dehumanisation (9). The media that have published most declarations containing hate speech are Okdiario and Europa Press (https://bit.ly/48fYS1B).

Finally, in answering RQ10, the performance indicators analysed show that content items about sexual relations attract the most interest among the audience on these two social networking sites. Publications on sexuality generate 5 million more views than those referring to the ‘Only yes means yes’ law’; and in the case of Instagram—where the audience reacts with a ‘like’—this number increases fourfold. The same is true for the number of comments, which is 21% higher for journalistic items that concentrate on sexual relations. By medium, El Mundo collected the most comments, over 30,000, followed by El País, which registered more than 20,000 comments on Instagram.

In particular, the TikTok publication by El Mundo about the social controversy caused by the sexual assault involving penetration by the right-back football player Dani Alves on a young woman in the toilets of a nightclub in December 2022 (https://bit.ly/47UHrnB) is the content with the highest number of views, standing at 3 million. This post includes the declaration of the footballer’s ex-wife, who published a text on her official Instagram account after the event, and the reaction of surprise from a world-famous footballer, one of the alleged offender’s colleagues. This news is presented with a tone of morbid curiosity and a sensationalist approach.

Although the total number of posts by Freeda is lower than in the conventional media, it represents 30% of all the ‘likes’ on Instagram. And when we analysed the total number of views on TikTok, Freeda is the most-viewed medium on this platform, with over 2 million views, followed by Europa Press, with more than one million views in total. Specifically, the publication with the highest number of views—over one million visits—is a video featuring a female couple who are talking about periods and sex between women (https://bit.ly/47XPsIv).

4. Discussion

On the basis of the theoretical framework proposed regarding the media’s influence on public opinion and in view of the results of this research, which focuses on the media coverage of aspects related to sexual relations and consent, it is evident that journalism in Spain does not currently prioritise the topic of sexuality, particularly when it is aimed at the younger members of their audience.

An analysis of the total number of publications over 7 months and 17 days, shows that the mass media, also known as conventional media, have reported the most on issues relating to sexual relations. Nevertheless, this newsworthiness stems from the political debate regarding the Law on the Comprehensive Guarantee of Sexual Freedom, which was created specifically in order to place non-consensual sexual relations in the spotlight. This concerns content items on sexuality that are temporary, linked to the present, controversial and in a sensationalist tone, far from the respectful, positive approach towards sexuality advocated by the World Health Organisation (2018).

Additionally, this type of publication is usually related to days of protest such as International Women’s Day or in connection to significant days in parliamentary debate. In general, these figures demonstrate that the media’s agenda-setting analysed on Instagram and TikTok does not regard sexual topics as a priority, whereas the younger audience do consider them to be so (Dudek et al., 2021), which is seen in specialist media for these audiences such as Freeda. The lack of information in the Spanish media represents greater ‘vulnerability’ for adolescents (McCombs, 2002), who feel that their information needs are not being met by this type of journalism company.

In the period analysed, instead of clarifying key concepts in sexual health, the conventional media stuck to the controversy in the Lower House. They concentrated on a law that was brought to the Congress in order to regulate sexual violence but in their publications on social media they did not question the reason underlying the need for a structural law to address not only sexual assault but also, above all, to prevent it through sexual education.

Moreover, one of the companies with the largest audience, Okdiario, published false information and/or misinterpretations by distorting words and making unverifiable claims. It is also distinctive for the number of publications that include hate speech, especially against a member of the Government, with the purpose of damaging her politically as a result of the law on sexual consent. The content published by Okdiario could therefore be intended to promote its ideological agenda and influence users’ political or social identity (Barberá, 2020). In fact, as it infringes the criteria of journalistic quality and ethics (Gómez Mompart et al., 2013), it could be defined as a pseudo-medium (Palau-Sampio and Carratalá, 2022).

However, items of content on sexuality of an interpretive or informative nature, based on context and well-reasoned arguments—those that meet the requirements of quality journalism—are those that arouse the greatest interest among audiences, which is shown in ‘likes’ and views. The work by Freeda is particularly noteworthy due to its focus on gender in favour of sexual rights such as equality, dignity and freedom.

This is not the case for the comments, particularly on content published by conventional media. These comments tend to indulge in political squabbling, reflecting the media’s political segmentation. There is a predominance of a so-called ‘sentimental democracy’ (Arias-Maldonado, 2016).

The conventional media’s neglect of issues related to sexual relations could be due to three possible causes: the lack of knowledge and education regarding sex and relationships (Boynton and Callaghan, 2006) in Spanish society, and specifically among professionals in the journalism sector; the scientific sphere’s lack of proactivity in promoting information-sharing about sexuality (Mebane et al., 2006), in particular aimed at women; and the influence of conservatism among the senior management of the conventional media analysed.

In order to identify the significance of each of these reasons, we suggest that future research be conducted based on in-depth interviews with the professionals who address these topics in the media analysed. Another interesting aspect arising from this study is the analysis of compliance from the perspective of gender in these news pieces. We should bear in mind that two of the 13 media analysed have a female gender editor—El País and EFE—a new professional role created to ensure gender equality in the approaches used by the media, and in their sources (Iranzo-Cabrera et al., 2023). Similarly, and with the focus on the audience, it would be interesting to assess reception and diagnose the lack of information among young people.

As regards the limitations of this study, it should be noted that the research was conducted in parallel to the parliamentary process, and consequently it has not involved a time perspective that would provide greater knowledge of the changes that it represented and therefore enable us to create a bibliography to that effect. Additionally, four of the five media associations still do not use TikTok as an information channel, which has made it more difficult to analyse their media coverage in comparison to the five conventional media, the two news agencies and the specialist medium Freeda.

Author Contribution Statement

María Estéfano Sancho: Conceptualization; Data curation; Formal analysis; Investigation; Visualization; Writing – original draft. María Iranzo-Cabrera: Conceptualization; Methodology; Supervision; Writing – review and editing. The authors have read and agree with the published version of the manuscript.

Conflicts of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Funding sources

This research is part of the project ‘Desconcierto informativo: calidad precarizada, sobre(des)información y polarización’ [Information turmoil: precarious quality, (dis)information overload and polarisation], funded by the Generalitat Valenciana [Regional Government of the Region of Valencia] (Ref. CIAICO2021-125).

References

Ardèvol-Abreu, Alberto; Gil de Zúñiga, Homero; and McCombs, Maxwell (2020). Orígenes y desarrollo de la teoría de la agenda setting en Comunicación. Tendencias en España (2014-2019). Profesional de la Información, 29(4). https://doi.org/10.3145/epi.2020.jul.14

Arias-Maldonado, Manuel (2016). La democracia sentimental. Política y emociones en el siglo XXI. Página Indómita.

Arias-Maldonado, Manuel (2020). A Genealogy of Post-Truth Democracies: Philosophy, Affects, Technology. Communication & Society, 33(2), 65–78. https://doi.org/10.15581/003.33.2.65-78

Barberá, Pablo (2020). Social Media, Echo Chambers and Political Polarization. In Nathaniel Persily and Joshua A. Tucker (eds.) Social Media and Democracy. The State of the Field, Prospects and Prospects for Reform (pp. 34–55). Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108890960

Barranquero Carretero, Alejandro; and Sánchez Moncada, María (2018). Cooperativas de medios en España. Un periodismo emprendedor y ciudadano en tiempos de crisis. REVESCO. Revista de Estudios Cooperativos, 128, 36–58. https://doi.org/10.5209/REVE.60735.

Benassini, Claudia (2022). La construcción del discurso de odio contra las mujeres por los participantes en espacios misóginos de una red social. Revista Internacional de Comunicación y Desarrollo, 4(17). bit.ly/48LTPWX

Boczkowski, Pablo J.; Mitchelstein, Eugenia; and Matassi, Mora (2018). News comes across when I’m in a moment of leisure: Understanding the practices of incidental news consumption on social media. New media & society, 20(10), 3523–3539. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444817750396

Boynton, Petra M.; and Callaghan, Will (2006). Understanding media coverage of sex: A practical discussion paper for sexologists and journalists. Sexual and Relationship Therapy, 21(3), 333–346. https://doi.org/10.1080/14681990600798770

Brown, Jane D.; Keller, Sarah N.; and Stern, Susannah. (2009). Sex, Sexuality, Sexting, and SexEd: Adolescents and the Media. Prevention Researcher, 16(4), 12–16. https://doi.org/10.1037/E630642009-005

Concejo, Edurne (9 April 2018). Descubre a qué generación perteneces según tu fecha de nacimiento. La Vanguardia. bit.ly/47llDk9

Dudek, Debra; Woodley, Giselle; and Green, Lelia (2021). ‘Own your narrative’: teenagers as producers and consumers of porn in Netflix’s Sex Education. Information, Communication & Society, 25(4), 502–515. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118x.2021.1988130

Europa Press (25 August 2022). El Congreso, sin PP y Vox, aprueba definitivamente la Ley de «solo sí es sí». Europa Press. bit.ly/4aMcW5a

Forteza-Martínez, Aurora; and Córdova-Tàpia, Rebeca (2021). La educación sexual a través de las series de televisión para adolescentes: Sex Education y Sexify como estudio de caso. In Elke Castro (ed.) Oportunidades y retos para la enseñanza de las artes, la educación mediática y la ética en la era postdigital (pp. 1410–1427). Dykinson.

Fowler, Leah R.; Schoen, Lauren; and Morain, Stephanie R. (2021). Sex Education on TikTok: A Content Analysis of Themes. Health Promotion Practice, 23(5), 739–742. https://doi.org/10.1177/15248399211031536

García-Rivero, Ainhoa; Martínez Estrella, Eva; and Bonales Daimiel, Gema (2022). TikTok y Twitch: nuevos medios y fórmulas para impactar en la Generación Z. Revista ICONO 14. Revista Científica De Comunicación Y Tecnologías Emergentes, 20(1). https://doi.org/10.7195/ri14.v20i1.1770

Goldfarb, Eva S.; and Lieberman, Lisa D. (2021). Three Decades of Research: The Case for Comprehensive Sex Education. Journal of Adolescent Health, 68(1), 13–27. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jadohealth.2020.07.036

Gómez Mompart, Josep Lluís; Gutiérrez Lozano, Juan Francisco; and Palau-Sampio, Dolors (2013). La calidad periodística. Teorías, investigaciones y sugerencias profesionales. Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona, Universitat Jaume I, Universitat Pompeu Fabra y Universitat de València.

Gozálvez-Pérez, Vicent; and Contreras-Pulido, Paloma (2014). Empowering media citizenship through educommunication, [Empoderar a la ciudadanía mediática desde la educomunicación]. Comunicar, 42, 129–136. https://doi.org/10.3916/C42-2014-12

Hernández, Roberto; Fernández, Carlos; and Baptista, Pilar (2014). Metodología de la Investigación. McGraw Hill España. bit.ly/48LTFij

Instituto de las Mujeres (2022). La sexualidad de las mujeres jóvenes en el contexto español. Percepciones subjetivas e impacto de la formación. Instituto de las Mujeres. bit.ly/3TP7B70

Iranzo-Cabrera, Maria; Figueras-Maz, Mònica; and Mauri-Ríos, Marcel (2023). Journalistic Self-Regulation for Equality: The Role of Gender Editing in Spain. Journal of Media Ethics, 38(1), 2–15. https://doi.org/10.1080/23736992.2022.2158336

Lorca, Ornella (2023). Calladita te ves más bonita: subjetividad y silencio en tres novelas de escritoras chilenas de la Generación del 50. Lectora, 29, 171–194. https://doi.org/10.1344/Lectora2023.29.10

McCombs, Maxwell (2002, Junio). The agenda-setting role of the mass media in the shaping of public opinion. Mass Media Economics 2002 Conference, London School of Economics, 1–17. https://bit.ly/3vzhGuH

Mebane, Felicia E.; Yam, Eileen A.; and Rimer, Barbara K. (2006). Sex Education and the News: Lessons From How Journalists Framed Virginity Pledges. Journal of Health Communication, 11(6), 583–606. https://doi.org/10.1080/10810730600830005

Olmo, Julia Alicia (2019). Desinformación: concepto y perspectivas. Real Instituto Elcano. bit.ly/47ttlIV

ONUSIDA (2022). En peligro: Actualización mundial sobre el sida 2022. ONUSIDA. bit.ly/3TWwTjX

Organic Law 10/2022 of 6 September on the guarantee of sexual freedom (BOE, núm. 215, 7 September 2022). bit.ly/48K3rli

Palau-Sampio, Dolors; and Carratalá, Adolfo (2022). Injecting disinformation into public space: pseudo-media and reality-altering narratives. Profesional de la información, 31(3), e310312. https://doi.org/10.3145/epi.2022.may.12

Pérez, José Luis (2016). Ahora los medios de comunicación “enseñan” educación sexual. Comunicación: estudios venezolanos de comunicación, 174, 21–26. bit.ly/47q7lP2

Sanjuán, Cristina (2020). (Des)información sexual: pornografía y adolescencia. Save the Children. bit.ly/3U8Pw4j

Sánchez-Muros, Patricia Sonsoles; and Jiménez-Rodrigo, Maria Luisa (2021). Digital media and youth suicide: Analysis of media reporting on ‘blue whale’ case. Communication & Society, 34(3), 117–133. https://doi.org/10.15581/003.34.3.117-133

Serisier, Tanya (2017). Sex Crimes and the Media. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Criminology and Criminal Justice, 1–33 https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190264079.013.118

Subdirección General de Sensibilización, Prevención y Estudios de la Violencia de Género (Delegación del Gobierno contra la Violencia de Género) (2020). Macroencuesta de Violencia contra la Mujer 2019. Ministerio de Igualdad. https://bit.ly/3zkI0eh

UNESCO. (2018). International technical guidance on sexuality education: An evidence-informed approach. UNESDOC Digital Library. https://bit.ly/47llw88

Vara-Miguel, Alfonso; Amoedo-Casais, Avelino; Moreno-Moreno, Elsa; Negredo-Bruna, Samuel; and Kaufmann-Argueta, Jürg (2022). Digital News Report España 2022. Servicio de Publicaciones de la Universidad de Navarra. https://doi.org/10.15581/019.2022

Vázquez-Herrero, Jorge; Negreira-Rey, María-Cruz; and Sixto-García, José (2022). Mind the Gap! Journalism on Social Media and News Consumption among Young Audiences. International Journal of Communication, 16, 3822–3842. bit.ly/3NSycwe

Viciana, Hugo; Gaitán, Antonio; and Hannikainen, Ivar (3 de noviembre de 2019). Polarización afectiva: entre el tribalismo y el absolutismo moral. El País. bit.ly/3NQYgaY

World Health Organisation (2018). La salud sexual y su relación con la salud reproductiva: un enfoque operativo [Sexual health and its linkages to reproductive health: an operational approach]. World Health Organisation. bit.ly/3vxssSc