Computational methods in Communication. Presentation

Métodos computacionales en Comunicación. Presentación

Métodos computacionais em comunicação. Apresentação

Esta obra está bajo una Licencia Creative Commons Atribución 4.0 Internacional.

The rise of new tools for communication and access to data through the internet and current digital media have brought in recent years a complete revolution of indicators and methods aimed at the study of the different processes and socio-communicative phenomena carried out in them. What a challenge means, not only at the level of traditional media, who have before them the task of adapting their influence and communication strategies, given the rise of social networks, for example; but also, to the current and future generation of professionals and researchers interested in acting and analyzing the current digital ecosystem, from the multiple perspectives generated at the level of different fields of knowledge.

Part of the complexity that the current digital scenario has brought with it has been a consequence of the emergence of new paradigms of interaction and organization among people, which have generated new practices in daily life, in all the referents of contemporary societies. A phenomenon in which more and more science and computational methods are becoming fundamental for the automatic collection and understanding of large volumes of data, generated from the current digital ecosystem. Something that is not without problems, such as those related to the lagged effect on data extraction and analysis (Ye & Abbe, 2018); in the identification of indicators that help to measure and understand phenomena from these digital contexts (Casero-Ripollés, 2018); and in the construction of ethical principles required for the development of professional and research actions, which adapted to the paradigm above shift (Suárez, 2015).

From the areas of knowledge related to Computational Sciences, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Big Data have become two of the primary references because of the possibilities that they can bring with them to different professional, academic and social sectors. Since the mid-1990s, in the case of AI¹, with the rise of Markov models², intelligent agents³, and other techniques that have allowed inclusion in a more significant number of everyday contexts. Something that has not been exempt from debate about how a conceptual approach to AI has established, as well as the ability of machines to act like people (Russell & Norvig, 2004; Torra, 2011), or from a notion more focused on the capacity of the machines to be able to carry out processes in a rational way (Charniak & McDermott, 1985; Nilsson, 1998). Nevertheless, beyond the approaches in which the AI debate has revolved, there seems to be a standard agreement on the potential contributions it makes to problem-solving, the way knowledge represented and the systems based on it., and the potential benefits that machine learning has brought (Torra, 2011).

In the case of Big Data⁴, there seems to be agreement when pointing out the growing importance that it has acquired since the 1990s, with the emergence of technology companies and the evolution that we have witnessed at the level of web storage capacity. A concept that has not been exempt from the debate, at the time of being understood. Either as a system that can control and master vast amounts of data (1,000,000,000,000,000 bytes or more), through different analysis techniques (e.g., data mining or text mining) or as a way of referring to a large amount of data, which require new forms for processing and that allow to obtain a better knowledge, decision making and process automation, around a specific subject (Serrano-Cobos, 2013; Gardner, n.d)

Regardless of the concepts mentioned so far, from the point of communication and Social Sciences, especially in recent years, it has not been separated from the diatribes, complexities, and challenges involved in computational methods, especially everything that has to do AI and Big Data, and the possibilities they bring to the understanding of socio-communicative processes carried out from the internet and digital scenarios.

In order to contribute to the above, it is that the present number reflects on the possibilities offered by computational methods at the level of communication, through the exhibition of a total of five papers that focus their gaze from different perspectives and scopes, which help to capture the central theme of this number, at the level of Social Sciences and communications.

The first work, entitled "Computational and ethical journalism: Analysis of the ethical codes of Latin America", by Jesús Díaz-Campo and María-Ángeles Chaparro-Domínguez, has as main objective to determine the relevance of the codes of ethics, present in the journalism, at the time of carrying out or putting into action what is known as computational journalism, that is, journalism that uses habitual methods, within the Social Sciences, to address issues of public interest (Coddington, 2015). Throughout this work, a general review made around the different denominations of computational journalism, as well as the ethical challenges inherent in this type of professional exercise. Topic that focuses particular attention at the level of Latin America, as a result of the set of specificities that this region has (Villanueva, 2002; Barroso, 2011), and whose most relevant conclusions help to see how the computational adaptation of the journalistic exercise in Latin America, does not depend on the age of the ethical codes present in each country. As well as the value of classic ethical principles of journalism has, under the new modalities and specialties generated with the rise of the internet and current digital scenarios.

The second work, entitled "Influence of media on the political conversation on Twitter: Activity, popularity, and authority in the digital debate in Spain", by Andreu Casero-Ripollés, makes a practical approach, focused on understanding the most influential messages of the political debate, published in social networks, carried out in Spain. This, based on a sample of 127.3 million tweets published on Twitter, and the use of Big Data, machine learning and social network analysis. An analysis that helps to see, while recognizing the possibilities offered by computational methods, in addressing issues such as those proposed here, the features that influence the more significant influence of certain types of messages published in the Spanish political debate. It contributes to giving relevance to the role that the current digital scenarios are fulfilling (in this case, Twitter), in the ecosystem of media available in this country.

The third work, entitled "Artificial Intelligence: theoretical, formative and communicative challenges of datification," by Víctor Lope Salvador, Xhevrie Mamaqi and Javier Vidal Bordes, not only contribute to reaffirm the paradigm shift exposed at the beginning of this paper but also recognizes the opportunities that computational methods can provide to the process of theoretical and methodological innovation at the level of Social Sciences and Humanities. Something that does from the perspective of scientific revolution proposed by Kuhn (1996), and the process of adaptation to which we are currently involved, before the realities that are wanted to know, from the digital scenarios present today in the daily work of our societies. A reflection that makes three strategic aspects that, as the authors indicate, need to be taken care of: the updating of the digital skills that must be put in place for data analysis, under the digital and massive data context (1); the rise of AI as a conceptual reference for the development of new epistemological frameworks at the level of Social Sciences and Humanities (2); and the need to implement academic actions that ensure the implementation of computational procedures that help assess quality and innovation (3). Aspects that, from the exposition by these authors, will help to reduce the lagged effect that today seems to exist at the level of the areas of knowledge from which the reflection made on AI and its potential academic achievement start.

The fourth work, entitled "Call into the platform! Merging platform grammatization and practical knowledge to study digital networks", by Janna Joceli Cavalcanti de Omena and António Granado, assumes a practical approach, through image analysis and data mining, to analyze the use that universities in Portugal have been making of Facebook APIs. It will help to visualize patterns of use of digital scenarios such as those mentioned above, from Portuguese academic institutions, whose presence in this type of context is recent (15 years or less), without focusing on scientific communication. Those mentioned above are interesting, being a way of visualizing, from the institutional point of view and at the academic level, the gaps that are still present in terms of use and social and scientific use of the digital ecosystem currently available.

The fifth and final work, entitled "Analysis of academic production networks on television programming", by Alicia Moreno, Julio Montero, and Rafael Repiso analyzes the academic evolution that television production has had, from scientific production published and indexed in Web of Science. A work that is also interesting to observe, as a case study of the use of computational methods (in this case network analysis) and its application at the bibliometric level for the study of the issue raised in it.

The set of papers presented in this special issue are only examples of the diversity of approaches that, from the Social Sciences and Humanities, can be addressed, applying or taking into account current computational methods. What makes it easy to recognize the scope that is today around the analysis of networks, artificial intelligence, and Big Data, for example; but also the diversity of approaches and scope available, from the variety of socio-communicative issues that occur and are of study interest, at the level of the internet and current digital scenarios.

ISSUE DATA: Published: 1 January 2020 Journal editors: Francisco García García ((Professor of Audiovisual Communication and Advertising, UCM) & Manuel Gértrudix Barrio (Associate Professor of Digital Communication, URJC) Coordinators of the issue: Elias Said Hung Ph.D. (Full professor, Faculty of Education, UNIR) & Daladier Jabba-Molinares Ph.D. (Research professor, Universidad del Norte)

To cite this article: Said Hung, E. y Jabba-Molinares, D. (2020). Computational methods in Communication. Presentation, Icono 14, 18 (1), 1-9. doi: 10.7195/ri14.v18i1.1537