Investigative journalism and information dissemination on the causes of the COVID - 19 pandemic

Abstract

In the media convergence scenarios, two sources of information take place, one belonging to the journalistic exercise based on research and the other, the dissemination of information promoted by the millions of Internet users, who apparently only disseminate information but have a great impact on their surroundings; This is how this contribution proposes an analysis on this tension and now especially on the global problems of the pandemic, specifically on its origin, an aspect on which there is little clarity and great controversy.From a semiotic perspective, based on the triadic relationship of Pierce (1974) and the enigmatic components proposed by Zecchetto (2002), on the one hand, newspaper articles from three media outlets are addressed on their respective virtual platforms, the newspapers El Comercio (Peru) and El Clarín (Argentina) and the television station CNN in Spanish; and on the other, the audiovisual contents in their digital spaces of two renowned influencers, the Argentine political scientist Agustín Laje and the Spanish journalist Iker Jiménez, in order to describe and analyze the dimensions of meaning in the aforementioned media contents as structures of meaning, identify the enigmatic components in their respective narratives as proposed by Zecchetto as it is an enigmatic issue due to its lack of clarity; and to show how the communicative process of both aspects correspond and update, although with obvious variations, with two of the classic models of communication, that of the Hypodermic Needle and that of the theory of the two Steps.