Ingrid Bachmann

Globally, journalism is shaped by persistent gender inequities, even as women now outpace men among university graduates. Drawing on discussions from the World Journalism Education Congress (WJEC) 2025 Syndicate, this work assesses the current state of journalism and gender education and identifies emerging challenges and opportunities. Participants and experts illuminated how political pressures on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI); industry shifts; technological changes; and rising threats are reshaping classrooms and career pathways. While these forces constrain engagement with gender and inequality in some contexts, educators are increasingly embedding these issues into core journalistic practices, emphasizing that inclusive reporting is fundamental to good journalism.

Digital literacy is often proposed as a remedy for misinformation, yet empirical evidence regarding its effectiveness remains mixed. One reason for these inconsistencies lies in the multidimensional nature of both literacy and misinformation. This article focuses on algorithmic literacy, a distinct and increasingly central form of digital literacy in platform-mediated communication, and examines how its cognitive and behavioral dimensions relate to multiple facets of misinformation engagement. Drawing on two probabilistic survey studies conducted in Chile—a nationally representative face-to-face survey ( N = 1,200) and a random-digit-dial telephone survey of urban adults ( N = 2,265)—we analyze how cognitive (algorithmic awareness and knowledge) and behavioral (strategic actions to navigate algorithmic systems) dimensions of algorithmic literacy relate to perceived misinformation exposure, misinformation sharing, objective and subjective news knowledge, and knowledge miscalibration. Across both studies, a consistent pattern emerges: algorithmic literacy is more strongly associated with cognitive outcomes—especially perceived misinformation exposure and knowledge—than with behavioral outcomes like sharing. Higher algorithmic awareness consistently predicts greater perceived exposure, suggesting heightened recognition, while its link to sharing behavior is less consistent. These studies highlight the relevance of distinguishing cognitive from behavioral dimensions of literacy across different stages of misinformation engagement.

Intimate image abuse, often called “revenge porn,” is a form of sexual exploitation that disproportionately targets women, especially those in public life. This research focuses on a case study of former U.S. Representative Katie Hill, who resigned from Congress after nude photographs of her were published without her consent. Analyzing social media content, this research examines how users framed Hill’s case and constructed meaning. This investigation sheds light on how gender and power in online mediated spaces cannot be distinguished from the inequalities and ideologies found in our so-called offline social interactions.

In December 2024, Apple’s AI-powered news tool, Apple Intelligence, falsely claimed that BBC News had reported a murder suspect’s suicide. A month earlier, the same tool had misrepresented a New Yo...

Institutional trust has decreased in Latin America over the past decade. Previous research has explained this crisis of institutional trust from a socio-political perspective, using variables such as satisfaction with public services, general attitudes, or sociodemographic characteristics. This study, however, analyzes the problem from the perspective of the incumbents themselves. We take the Chilean Congress as a case study, which has suffered one of the worst trust crises on the continent. Based on 15 in-depth interviews with deputies and senators, the study explores the main discourses articulated by members of Congress regarding the causes and dynamics of the institutional trust crisis they face. The findings show that politicians downplay the scope and magnitude of a crisis they consider is not their responsibility to solve. Instead, they blame, among others, the media for what they perceive as unfair coverage, which they argue has deteriorated public opinion about members of Congress.

The tension between health and economic considerations regarding COVID-19 has resulted in a framing contest, in which proponents and adversaries of strong containment measures hold oppositional frames about the pandemic. This study examines the effects of competing news frames on social media users' policy preferences and the moderation of framing effects played by melodramatic news treatment. Results from a pre-registered online survey experiment in Chile (N = 518) show that participants exposed to Facebook posts with an economic frame were significantly less supportive of measures that restrict mobility (e.g., quarantines) than participants in the control group. Contrary to expectations, exposure to a public health frame also reduced support for stay-at-home orders, and the presence of melodramatic features had no significant impact on users' preferences. Other variables, however, did alter these framing effects, such as fear of COVID-19 and frequency of social media news use. These findings paint a rather complex picture of framing effects during the pandemic in a digital media environment.