Editorial 1

Dra. Carmen MARTA-LAZO

University of Zaragoza. Spain. cmarta@unizar.es

Form and content: new trends in advertising

Forma y fondo, nuevas perspectivas de la publicidad

The Mediterranean Journal of Communication will celebrate its 10th anniversary this year. Following a decade of growth, it is our pleasure to celebrate this anniversary with those who have trusted our journal; i.e., the authors, the researchers and the readers who have turned this journal into a source of reference in the field, as confirmed by the positions within the different rankings. Since we are in a celebratory mode, nothing could be better than to give you some good news. Later, we will toast to our successes achieved and to those that are to come, thanks to you. Here is the lead headline: we have achieved 5th position within the first quartile in Dialnet Metrics behind the prestigious journals Comunicar, El profesional de la información, Revista Latina de Comunicación Social and Comunicación y Sociedad. We have achieved a prominent impact index of 0.688, with 128 articles and 88 citations. Furthermore, it is important to mention the FECYT seal of quality, since the journal belongs in the Emerging Source Citation Index (ESCI) from Clarivate where the study of Comunicar (2018) has obtained its 6th position in Spain (42/102 in the world, Q2, IF: 0.241, percentile 57); 3rd in Spain within REDIB (CSIC) ranking; 8th out of 41 in Google Scholar Metric in the field of Communication (2018); and the current fourth position in the communication Latin American journals. This is an index of Red Iberoamericana de innovación y Conocimiento Científico (the platform for aggregating scientific and academic content in electronic formats produced in the Ibero-American space), promoted by Clarivate and CSIC, among other achievements.

Given the exceptional nature of our 10th anniversary, we would like to share with you some key points which have enabled us to steadily attain this privileged position. It has been our purpose over this time to facilitate the publishing processes through the Open Journal System (OJS) by making reviews within an average of 62 days. As signs of identity, we seek to offer the international scientific community a space for exchange to share, promote and disseminate scientific production in the area of social communication. Our ethical principles meet the standards of international organisations: the authors’ freedom of expression; attention accorded to diversity and minorities; freedom of decision for those who assess and edit; and the auditable record of all interactions, among others.

Publishing in open access, in different languages and cost-free for the authors who process or publish articles are also characteristic features. Furthermore, the journal addresses both consolidated academic and training researchers. In this way, the new talent pool appearing in the field of research may be fostered. One of our main purposes is to cover new trends regarding Communications. Hence, innovative contributions making rigorous use of the methodology and covering the fields of commercial, persuasive, journalistic and audio-visual communications will be taken into account.

I would like to use this opportunity to talk about the technical details of the journal. The editorial board is largely composed of women, with 68% of the total of 25 members being woman. With regard to their origin, the international members comprising 64% deserve particular mention. As regards the advisory board, its numbers have increased significantly between 2017 and 2018, from 37 to 57 members, of whom women are in the majority. The same applies to female authors, who made up 60% in 2018. Thus, an evident female trend is perceived from all aspects of this journal. With all these details, we assert Mediterránea to be a modern, innovative journal supporting the public service to the researchers.

This issue will be focused on one of the most relevant subjects of the journal: advertising, in particular from two perspectives. On the one hand, advertising self-regulation, consumer protection against commercial communication and, on the other hand, in new forms of communication: integrated advertising. In this way, analysis of the new formats and safeguarding of the basic values of the commercial messages is presented in a total of 10 articles.

The first special issue, which focuses on the new forms of integrated advertising, was coordinated by Dra. Lidia Maestro-Espínol aand Dra. Natalia Abuín-Vences from Complutense University, and Dr. David Cordón-Benito from the International University of La Rioja. The second special issue, dealing with the content of advertising values, was coordinated by Dra. Clara Muela Molina, King Juan Carlos University and Dra. Luisa Agante from the University of Porto (Portugal).

As regards the miscellany section, six articles are presented in this issue, of which two were written by international authors. Cristina Ponte’s article, from the New University of Lisbon, focuses on the online challenges faced by Italian and Portuguese youngsters. Moralistic and compassionate portrayals of prostitution in Moroccan cinema: the case of Casablanca by Night versus Much Loved is the subject of the article written by Lidia Peralta García, from the University of Castilla-La Mancha and Mériam Cheikh, from Université-LAMES- CNRS. UK/France. The subsequent contribution is Digital journalism and empowerment. Informational trends in Google news during 2017, written by Francisco García García and Francisco José Gil Ruiz from Complutense University. The next item deals with the assessment of an educational intervention for data literacy using scientific method and situated learning and was written by Alejandro Carbonell Alcocer and Manuel Gertrudix Barrio from King Juan Carlos University. The next contribution tackles the accessibility services offered for deaf and hard-of-hearing viewers by Catalan-language broadcasters. This centred-user study was written by Irene Tor-Carroggio and Sara Rovira-Esteva from the Autonomous University of Barcelona. Finally, this section ends with the article entitled Smartphones, minors and vulnerability: a literature review, by Esther Martínez Pastor, Beatriz Catalina García and María Cruz López de Ayala López, from King Juan Carlos University.

This volume ends with three reviews of recently published works. The first, entitled Female sexualities in the small screen, is by Sara Rebollo-Bueno based on the book Sexo y series. Las sexualidades femeninas, una revolución televisiva (Brey, 2018). The second review is by Sara Osuna-Acedo, and stems from the publication Calidad informativa en la era de la digitalización: Fundamentos profesionales vs. infopolución (Marta-Lazo, ed., 2018). While the third review is signed by Raúl Rodríguez-Ferrándiz and is about the book entitled Investigar en la era neoliberal. Visiones críticas sobre la investigación en comunicación en España (Rodríguez Serrano and Gil Soldevilla, 2018).

Finally, our last step is to uncork the bottle to toast these last ten years and also the coming years. To all of you!

Marta-Lazo, C. (2019). [Editorial] Form and content: new trends in advertising. Revista Mediterránea de Comunicación/Mediterranean Journal of Communication, 10(2), 5-6.

Table of Contents

The Mediterranean Journal of Communication will celebrate its 10th anniversary this year. Following a decade of growth, it is our pleasure to celebrate this anniversary with those who have trusted our journal; i.e., the authors, the researchers and the readers who have turned this journal into a source of reference in the field, as confirmed by the positions within the different rankings. Since we are in a celebratory mode, nothing could be better than to give you some good news. Later, we will toast to our successes achieved and to those that are to come, thanks to you. Here is the lead headline: we have achieved 5th position within the first quartile in Dialnet Metrics behind the prestigious journals Comunicar, El profesional de la información, Revista Latina de Comunicación Social and Comunicación y Sociedad. We have achieved a prominent impact index of 0.688, with 128 articles and 88 citations. Furthermore, it is important to mention the FECYT seal of quality, since the journal bel