Digital media
The internet media have a history of somewhat more than twenty years in Spain (Salaverría, 2016). The first online news publication was the weekly El Temps, in June 1994. The first newspapers soon appeared -El Periódico de Catalunya and El Mundo were the pioneers-, the first radio and television channels, and even the first media created on the Internet itself. After the first ten years, a survey showed 1,274 active Internet media in Spain (Salaverría, 2005).
In 2017, there is no updated general census, but it seems clear that the number and, above all, the influence of digital media has increased. According to the EGM (AIMC, 2016), the Internet was the second most consumed medium in Spain (69.9 percent of the population accessed it daily), exceeded only by television (88.3 percent). Just ten years earlier, in 2006, the daily Internet audience was just 26.2 percent.
Of course, citizens spend much of their time online on entertainment, financial and business activities and social relationships. However, information consumption has also become an essential part of these habits.
The Digital News Report, in its study on Spain, shows which are the favourite media for the consumption of news on the Internet. The main brands are, in this order: El País, El Mundo, 20 Minutos and Antena 3. The first three are newspapers and a TV channel appears only in the fourth place.
It is worth noting the consolidation that digital native media have achieved. According to ComScore, the official Internet media gauge in Spain, by the end of 2016 the ranking of online information media was headed by Elmundo.es and ElPaís.com, but in the third place was a native digital medium: ElConfidencial.com. The establishment of digital media also refers to its number: Between January 2008 and November 2015, 458 new media were launched in Spain, the vast majority of which appeared on the Internet (APM, 2015).
According to the Digital News Report 2016, in Spain, 50 percent of adult online news consumers younger than 45 years read the news mainly on the mobile phone, compared to 38 percent on the computer and 7 percent on the tablet, and in general the mobile is now the leading news device for one in three adults of any age. Up to 52 percent use two or more types of devices to get information throughout the week, four percentage points more than a year ago.