Receipt date: 31/07/2021 / Revision date: 08/11/2021 / Acceptance date: 11/01/2022

Introduction

The evolution and technological revolution imply constant challenges for academia and science, as both must interpret and explain sociocultural variations. And this scenario commits us to provide answers and find flexible ways to help teachers interpret and transmit current technological advances and the new narratives that emerge in the digital macrouniverse, taking as a reference the objectives of social communication as a promoter of the common good.

Likewise, with the constant application of techno-scientific innovations, errors can be corrected and programs and functions can be adjusted to facilitate the teaching-learning adaptation process. Synchronically, the educator and the communicator must understand and master these technological languages in order to interact with the different social segments, and so that young people do not perceive them as obsolete professionals who are not up to these changes and their confidence in the educational process is not affected.

To analyze in depth the preferences of new languages and technological innovations among communication students in the Dominican Republic, it is important to record that by 2017 they had a student enrollment of five hundred sixty-two thousand six hundred sixty-seven students (562,667), of which 63.96% were female and the remaining 36.04% male. Of these 31 academies registered in the country, twelve offer communication studies at the undergraduate level with different concentrations ranging from corporate communication, audiovisual communication, film and graphic arts to digital communication with different approaches.

The Universidad Autónoma de Santo Domingo, UASD, is the only one that offers journalism as a specialized branch. The number of communication students in this period amounted to a total of 6936 and, a relevant fact, is that communication is a predominantly female career, with a total of 5249 women, representing 75.6% of this student population.

In this context, the results of the consumption of digital platforms by communication students of five universities in the National District, Santo Domingo, with the largest population of communication students at the time of the study, are shown below.

Methodology

Our methodology is based on the analysis of data obtained from higher education institutions in the Dominican Republic and a percentage of 10% of their communication students, from the Ministry of Higher Education, Science and Technology and other institutions in the DR; through deductions of qualitative-quantitative data contrasted with other research. In order to approach an objective diagnosis, a questionnaire was applied to 626 young people from five universities in the National District of Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic.

In addition, five focus groups were carried out, which were coordinated through the schools of communication of each center of studies and were applied to those who came to participate voluntarily in each case. This research is defined as descriptive because it takes as a starting point the main objective of this study, which is to evaluate and identify the uses of the main digital platforms by communication students. The question that guides the development of this research -which is part of our doctoral thesis- is, what are the characteristics of digital media consumption by social communication students in the metropolitan area of Santo Domingo?

New communication paradigms

Currently, users of technologies seek to ensure that their stories have an impact on audiences and have electronic devices that help them to fulfill this purpose more effectively, but they need to learn to develop their creative potential and learn to structure new formats, for which transmedia language is a fundamental creative tool that breaks paradigms.

The six characteristics of the web, according to Area and Ribeiro (2012) and which are related to each other, should be taken into account: "As the universal library in which it is constituted, as a global market, as a giant puzzle of hypertexts, as a public square of communication and social interaction, as a territory of multimedia and audiovisual expression, and as multiple interactive virtual environments" (p.14).

An important attribute of the 2.0 platforms is the collective construction of knowledge and the organization of knowledge on the network, as indicated by Zayas (2012), who favors the possibility of direct access to information sources in this environment of media convergence, with the possibility of no one intervening in its interpretation.

Web 3.0 is more advanced and the difference is that, according to Hendler (2009), it allows the generation of information models or conceptual descriptions, to link data from various websites or databases. Web 3.0 is defined by many authors as semantic web, it represents one of the evolutionary bridges from web 2.0, and creates knowledge and qualitative information "oriented towards the protagonism of computer engines and information processors that understand descriptive logic in various more elaborate languages, such as metadata" (Küster, & Hernández, 2013, p.106).

Metadata use specialized programs to generate interaction with the user and with access from different types of devices with customized uses that allow them to become viral. The algorithms that already exist are part of the semantic web, which some specialists, such as Hendler (2009), call an emerging technology in an important moment of transition, based on the large number of investments, events and conferences that have been taking place since 2008.

In the economic field, they induce new styles of doing business, through programs with platforms capable of carrying out movements of large volumes of capital, sales of products and services with the minimum effort of people, concentrated and guided in networks by the interests of the user-consumer. Such is the case of virtual stores, package courier services, direct sales by small, medium and large companies and sales through social networks, the so-called "influencers", among others.

The evolution of the web has also impacted education and represents an important leap towards new models of dissemination and appropriation of knowledge, as can be seen in some of the applications to support blended and virtual education in cyberspace, such as Moodle, Webcity and Edmodo, among others.

Online digital platforms at the service of knowledge

The new information spaces offered by the Internet are diversifying to facilitate the usability of the various platforms and technological devices. In this way, web page services and applications are adapted to portable devices, especially cell phones.

In the words of Ballesteros, López and Torres (2004), the Internet is a new collaborative scenario where culture is shared from different platforms, and specifies: "The Internet constitutes a new means of communication that brings together the attributes of printed publications, the conversations of millions of people, thousands of radio stations and, soon, an almost unlimited number of television channels.

Free online tools also abound, some with innovations in a specific field, such as journalism, and as Ferreras (2013) explains there are multiple ways to present a story in data journalism. Some are free and others are paid, such as Tableau, CartoDB, Google Fusion, ManyEyes, among others. Here is a sample of specific innovation projects that have helped with the organization and optimization of information for journalism:

It is increasingly common for both companies and professionals to hire the services of online applications or tools, and some of these can be categorized as particular businesses that allow them to organize and take greater advantage of public or private information and databases, either to solve problems or to obtain greater profitability.

Giraldo, Tejedor and Carniel (2017) highlight that one of the main interests that journalism students have in the use of social networks is to maintain a communicative link with their communities, which gives them a sense of belonging to a social group and a collective identity.

Also, young people use the networks as a way of acquiring social status within their group, so as not to be excluded and to assert themselves based on the validation of others.

Among the social networks that dominate popularity in this study by Giraldo et al (2017) are WhatsApp and Facebook, and coincides with the study by CEDAL, RIIAL and CELAM (2017) in which these two networks have a preference between 90% and 70%, and emphasize that the time of use of WhatsApp ranges from 8 to 22 hours, while on Facebook it is from 1 to 7 hours per day. Another social network that has gained importance is Instagram, which is gaining presence among teenagers and young university students, judging by the interest it generates in the relationship with publications in other social networks, since its content can be shared jointly.

YouTube and media literacy

As a social network YouTube (2017) increases by more than 400 hours of video per minute according to its statistics, the content stored ranges from tutorials, music, movies or audiovisuals and a growing phenomenon that of youtubers, producers and partners, who have built for themselves a new format of self-presentation and production in this social network, which at the same time is the second largest search engine on the internet (Brandwach, 2019).

These audiovisual producers use their own and localist language, uninhibited, spontaneous and interactive, in which they show both youth lifestyles, as well as other unusual topics that are difficult to find on television, their purpose is to expand the number of followers to "monetize" their channels. They differ, in addition to the peculiar style to transmit information, in that their content is not exclusively informative, nor does it depend on a professional use of audiovisual language.

The company Open Slate (2016) published that by 2011 YouTube had more than two billion videos viewed in a day, hence this phenomenon of youtubers is taken into account as one of the most attractive for young people.

According to the portal SocialBlade.com, at the top of these new video makers is the youtuber PewDiePie, a character whose real name is Felix Kjellberg, born in 1989 in Sweden, who as of October 2019 had more than 102 million subscribers, and is a video game player who stands out for his sense of humor (Socialblade, 2017).

The second most important among these entrepreneurs in the world on YouTube is "HolaSoyGerman" by 27-year-old Chilean Germán Garmendia, who has almost 39. 9 million subscribers is dedicated to making humorous parodies and is the most viewed in Latin America, and the third in the list of the most quoted youtubers in the world is the channel of the Spanish Ruben Doblas Gundersen, known as "ElrubiusOMG", and is a leader in his country by the number of views, more than 36 million subscribers and also stands out for playing video games sprinkled with humor.

However, women do not have the same result, SocialBlade points to the channel of the Mexican "Yuya" by Mariand Castrejón, as one of the main female youtubers, she is the third in Ibero-America (after Holasoygermán and ElrubiusOMG), her channel has more than 24. 1 million subscriptions and is dedicated to giving beauty tips, but within the 50 youtubers channels with more subscribers only two women appear, this indicates the magnitude of the difference between youtubers (Socialblade, 2017).

In the case of the Dominican Republic, these trends and the type of humor and lifestyle that prevails are also evident, but as in the international cases, none of these channels have educational functions and women are at a disadvantage.

This participation of young people in the web makes it even more necessary to reflect and socialize the criteria to be taken into account in order to generate an information media literacy (IML₁), to promote education from the key areas of the educational curriculum and should cover from the knowledge and evaluation of the media to their production and use from a critical perspective.

¹Definition provided by UNESCO.

Different approaches attribute different names to it, but all agree on the general definition of the concept, as Durán (2016) points out, it can be understood as information literacy, media literacy, digital literacy and many other combinations that arise from these, but what is not in doubt is the growing relevance of its study (p.7).

Gutiérrez (2015) states, "The basic education to which any individual is entitled if it is to be a preparation for life, is today an education for the media, a media education" (p.22).

The term digital literacy or media literacy is used to describe a double dimension, firstly educational and secondly technological. Training digital citizens to understand the usefulness of the media and current technology.

In this sense Tejedor (2006), citing Perez, defines it as "the process of using digital technology and communication tools and networks to access, manage, integrate, create and evaluate information in order to function in the Knowledge Society" (p.373). Gros and Contreras (2006) define a series of characteristics of the concept of digital literacy, taking into consideration various approaches ranging from the technocratic and functional, to the critical view of its functioning and interpersonal relationships.

Another similar approach developed by Lara (2012) analyzes media literacy competencies at three levels; knowledge or knowing, interpretation or knowing how to do and participation or knowing how to be.

Media education has to be shared with the integral education of individuals, but to achieve this goal it is necessary to recover the critical and ideological approaches to education, as stated by these authors.

Results

The non-probabilistic sample of 10% of university students of Social Communication in the universities with more than 100 students in the Metropolitan Zone of Santo Domingo turned out to be a representative study group in which 77% are under 24 years of age, while 16% are between 25 and 29 and only 6.7% are over 30 years of age, while 79.6% are women and 20.4% are men.

Some 10% of the student body lives in the Metropolitan Zone-Central Polygon, where the universities are located, 20% live in Santo Domingo East, 17% reside in Santo Domingo West, while 16.4% and 13.26% live in the peripheral neighborhoods of the Metropolitan Zone and Santo Domingo North, respectively.

Students who reside in different provinces, but study in one of the five universities located in the Metropolitan Zone of Santo Domingo amounted to 17.9%. A 45.85% of those consulted work and within these the majority earn less than RD$15,000 (the equivalent of US$300), with 53%, in contrast with 2% of the students who receive more than RD$60,000 (US$1,200). Meanwhile, 39% earn between RD$15,001 and RD$30,000 and 5% of the young people receive between RD$30,001 and RD$60,000.

Technological equipment owned by students

Of the students surveyed, almost 79% own smartphones and 48.08% have a Smart TV at home, a higher percentage than those who own computers (47.6%). Taking into account that about half of those surveyed work, but more than 53% earn less than fifteen thousand pesos, it is understood that for them the possession of technological equipment is a priority, since 78.59% own a smart phone, despite the fact that the prices of these phones are above, in most cases, a full month's salary.

Figure 13.Technological equipment owned by students

Source: Author’s own creation based on SPSS data from the surveys applied.

An interesting observation is that 56.8% of students with a smart cell phone earn less than RS$15,000 pesos and 34.9% earn from RS$15,001 to RS$30,000 pesos. Meanwhile, 88% who earn less than RS$30,000 own a Smart TV (smart TV).

The interest in technology contrasts with the more than 65% that use prepaid services (39.94% of those surveyed use prepaid cell phones, in addition to 25.56% who have prepaid internet service) and only 17.41% have cell phones with a bill and 28.43% have fixed internet.

Regarding the types of portals most frequented by students, the relevance of the use of social networks is evident with 42.49%, followed by digital newspapers with 29.87%. However, the information of the educational and university portals visited contrasts with the information previously provided by 54.2% that the purpose for which they use the web is to do homework, which indicates that it is not part of their favorite online activities.

Website and social network preferences

Regarding the three web pages that students visit the most for information, entertainment or thematic purposes, the results were very varied, taking into account that it was an open question with three options that they could suggest.

Many of the answers had only one or two coincidences and were registered in the line of others with an average of 27.53%, which cannot be listed due to the diverse number of names. Meanwhile, the most repeated answers were grouped by area, and in the case of social networks it was decided to place them apart from the networks that wrote individually, because they reflect the preferences of respondents with a higher frequency of repetitions.

The pages of the traditional media that migrated to the web were grouped in a single line and occupy a preponderant place, since on average of the three possible options, 14.70% registered the name of one of these media, which apparently have relevance for the respondents, since it was in first place, although it is noted that none of the media by itself came to occupy a privileged place, only Listín Diario and Diario Libre managed to position themselves in the taste of the students with 10.24% and 7.68% respectively.

However, two web projects such as Cachicha and Alofoke, which have more than two hundred thousand and almost one and a half million followers respectively, only obtained 26 mentions among the 626 university students for both YouTube projects, which could suggest that the young people surveyed do not give them importance.

Within the most resorted websites individually they were given freedom to suggest the three most preferred ones, and the one with the highest predilection was Instagram which has 13.69% in the average of the three options, but as first option it represents more than 20%, despite functioning more as an application than as a website.

In this line the second most recurrent is the social network YouTube with 11.66% that individually and as first option represents 12.62%, this network was defined by the expert Michael Hoechsmann as the "big screen of the world", because it has become one of the most frequented spaces by young people seeking "to learn in an easier way" as indicated in one of the focus groups. In third place is Facebook with an average of 10.59% and, curiously, the respondents who mention the search engine Google as their favorite page account for 6.71%, as can be seen in the following table:

To specifically establish the position of social networks, the surveyed students were asked which are the most used and the answers coincide with the previous ones, but WhatsApp is added in first place, a social network that many do not consider it as such, however as confirmed by the findings of the study by Chávez and Gutiérrez (2015) applied to students of the Autonomous University of Chihuahua, it coincides with being one of the most used: "The social network used to a greater extent is WhatsApp, in almost 100%, followed by Facebook, with more than 80%; in third place is YouTube, with more than 70% of students using it" (p. 10 ).

For the present study, the use of WhatsApp is also widespread, although its reach is slightly more than two thirds of the students surveyed (70%), followed by Instagram with 52.9% and YouTube with 39.3%.

Rubio and Perlado (2015) analyzed the use of WhatsApp in students and show the comfort they experience in this type of communication, mainly because it does not involve emotionality, nor warmth, but at the same time it is easier to express feelings, in addition to the fact that young people highlight the need to be permanently communicated which motivates, according to the authors, to "a certain conversational frivolity", exemplified in the following testimony of one of the young people: "Before they thought about when and whom to call, at what time, the reason for the call. However, now it doesn't matter the time or the reason to write you on WhatsApp, for example, Hello what are you doing?" (p.84).

In one of the interviews of the present research, the Mexican Jorge Hidalgo analyzed the issue of young people's participation in networks, especially in Instagram, indicating that their inclination to use these networks refers to the need to seek self-affirmation that is typical of adolescence. On their side, De Casas, Tejedor and Romero (2018), indicate in their study on micro-narratives on Instagram that, out of a group of 204 there are 175 who use Instagram, and within this group the most important publications they make are photos with friends, everyday life situations and personal hobbies.

Pinto, J. (2018) describes the use that fourth year middle school students make of Instagram, and the result obtained is that 39% use it to post important photos of themselves and their surroundings, 33% to maintain contact with others and also indicates that 33% of the students use it to observe what others share and in 44% of the informants said they use it as a personal agenda.

The portal Multiplicalia.com, which is dedicated to online sales, has conducted a series of measurements for several years among millions of Internet users. This company annually publishes the preferences of network users around the world, and this shows a five-year evolution that can serve as a reference for comparison with the preferences of students.

It highlights the upward growth of Facebook in the world, as the most used with 2271 million users in 2019, followed by YouTube with 1800 million and the third network is Instagram with 1000 million active users. WhatsApp stands out in 2018, tied with YouTube.

Time of use of social networks

In addition to inquiring about the most used platforms on the web and the preferred social network, this research questioned young people about the hours they spend in contact with their social networks. The results suggest that WhatsApp is the social network they spend the most time using.

Regarding the number of hours that students are exposed to social networks, it is striking that most of them were in the range of one hour or less, and although this is contrary to the perception that young people are hyperconnected, if we add the number of hours they spend on the multiplicity of networks and online activities, it confirms their hyperconnection. Those who use the networks for an hour on Facebook add up to almost 50%. Only in the case of WhatsApp the percentages of use are more distributed between those who use the application for less than an hour (17%) to those who interact for more than 11 hours (20.1%), passing through the 25% who spend from 2 to 4 hours per day.

64.5% of Instagram users spend between 1 to 4 hours, while the majority of Facebook users who spend that amount of time total 68.7%.

On YouTube something similar happens, 71.5% of users spend between 1 and 4 hours in contact with this network. In this case, it is noteworthy that only 10% do not take it into account, which indicates that there is a high level of use and acceptance in the population studied in this research, which indicates that it is one of the favorite social networks.

While the least used social networks are Linkedin, Pinterest and Twitter, this is deduced by the number of students who did not select the hours of use of these options with 69, 62 and 61 percent, respectively.

On the other hand, there is much speculation about the addiction of young people to video games, however, something that most of the experts interviewed for this study agree on with the responses of the types of portals most used by students is that it is not a widespread problem. It is confirmed that video games are one of the portals least consumed by the group studied, with only 4.4%.

Ratifying what Martín-Barbero (2009) said, addiction is not the fundamental problem of young people in their relationship with technologies: "There is a certain addiction, but it is neither the only one nor the strongest, and it is certainly not the one they are dying from, but rather other very different ones" (p.29).

Discussion and conclusions

Cell phones are the most consumed products in the Dominican Republic, with 88.8% and among university students of communication the total number of cell phones is in the hands of 72.9%. Internet penetration has surpassed 60% of the population, and this advance in access to technology in the country is relevant for young people, 48% have a smart TV or smart TV at home, in addition to 47.60 have laptops or desktops and only 23.8% have televisions without access to cable. Given this high exposure to technologies, students are in a good position to interact with technologies for educational use.

Learning strategies in universities should take into account the cell phone or cell phone and the Internet as essential tools in the educational process, since, as confirmed in the present study, they are widely used among communication students. Only 1.6% do not own cell phones, while more than 79% own smart phones, and more than half of them access the Internet on a regular basis, not counting those who do so via wifi. This is indicative of the high exposure of young people to technological devices, which increasingly accentuate the need to own a cell phone to enter the social dynamics, so as not to be left out of the topics that mark the interaction of the group to which they belong.

It is possible to conclude that the fact that communication students in Santo Domingo are constantly exposed to the cell phone as a basic technological device, explains that their presence in social networks is high and that their demand for information increases. This high exposure to a large volume of content constitutes the most important challenge faced by both teachers and students and as pointed out by Hernández (2013), it is necessary to train them in the selection of information, to help them become strategic searchers who can follow systematic processes and thus achieve the necessary competencies for an adequate professional performance.

The large number of cell phones and smart TVs owned by students allows thinking about the possibility of working strategic axes in the medium term, which help to deepen, as indicated by Area and Ribeiro (2012), in the liberating, dialogic and democratic training approach, to approach the more comprehensive perspectives of digital literacy and help students build a digital identity as autonomous citizens. The participation of young people in different networks due to the majority access they have to smartphones creates links with their communities, conferring them status and allowing them to stay connected with their interest groups, so as not to be excluded from them. These are social phenomena that are transferred to the virtual world and are increasingly as intangible as material existence itself.

On the other hand, this model of networked society develops a predominance of the global over the local and can be seen in the diversity of pages that students visit, which in most cases have to do with global realities, rather than with their own immediate reality.

It can be concluded that the excess of global content can confront young people with problems that require their participation and it is necessary that students learn to identify the contents that are pertinent from those whose possibility of incidence is null, from the needs of their local context, so that a false idea of participation is not generated, since they run the risk of being distracted with sterile actions in front of transcendental situations that require their attention.

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