Alcántara (2025) Interés público y desinformación en tiempos de crisis: el caso de la DANA en Valencia en 2024

Identification

• Journal: Revista Internacional de Relaciones Públicas
• Year: 2025
• Date: 2025-12-29
• Authors: Carmen Sedeño Alcántara
• DOI: 10.5783/revrrpp.v15i30.920

Research Groups

• Universidad de Málaga, España (Carmen Sedeño Alcántara)

Short Summary

This study analyzes the evolution of public search interest in "bulos" (hoaxes) and "fake news" in Spain during the 2024 DANA crisis, examining its temporal relationship with fact-checking activity and identifying regional preferences in terminology. It found that search interest peaked during the acute phase of the crisis, coinciding with increased fact-checking, and revealed distinct regional patterns in the use of "bulos" (more homogeneous) versus "fake news" (more heterogeneous).

Objective

• To analyze the evolution of Spanish citizens' search interest in "bulos" and "fake news" during the crisis caused by the 2024 DANA in the Valencian Community.
• To examine the temporal relationship between this search interest and the fact-checking activity carried out by the platform Maldita.es.
• To identify potential territorial differences in the interest for the terms "bulos" and "fake news" to detect differentiated regional patterns in their use and contribute to understanding information-seeking dynamics in emergency contexts.

Study Configuration

• Spatial Scale: Spain, with a focus on regional differences across autonomous communities, particularly the Valencian Community.
• Temporal Scale: The acute phase of the DANA crisis, specifically from 29 October to 15 November 2024. Monthly data for November 2024 was also considered for broader trends.

Methodology and Data

• Models used: One-way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) and post-hoc Tukey HSD test for statistical analysis of regional differences.
• Data sources:
  • Google Trends: Used as an indirect indicator of relative search interest for "bulos" and "fake news" in Spain, providing aggregated, anonymized, and normalized data on a scale of 0 to 100.
  • Maldita.es repository: Analyzed for the number and timing of fact-checking articles published during the study period to contextualize the circulation of misinformation.

Main Results

• Relative search interest for "bulos" and "fake news" in Spain significantly increased during the DANA crisis in November 2024, reaching their highest levels since the COVID-19 pandemic.
• The term "bulos" peaked at a relative interest score of 100 on 8 November, while "fake news" reached 18 on the same day.
• This peak in search interest coincided with an intensification of fact-checking activity by Maldita.es, which published 98 verifications between 29 October and 15 November, many linked to high-impact misinformation narratives (e.g., flooded shopping center parking, alleged dam demolitions, false claims about emergency services).
• Regional analysis revealed differentiated patterns: "bulos" showed a broad and relatively homogeneous distribution across Spain (e.g., La Rioja 100, Valencian Community 82), while "fake news" exhibited greater regional heterogeneity, with proportionally higher values in Catalonia (43), Basque Country (35), and Cantabria (31).
• A one-way ANOVA confirmed statistically significant regional differences for "fake news" (F(3, 24) = 11.44, p < 0.001), with the Levante group (including Valencia) showing the highest mean interest.
• For "bulos," ANOVA also indicated overall variation (F = 4.65; p = 0.0106), but post-hoc Tukey HSD did not identify statistically significant pairwise differences between regions, suggesting a broadly shared pattern of search interest.
• The most pronounced increase in search interest occurred in a later phase of the disaster (after 3 November, peaking on 8 November), rather than at the immediate onset, suggesting attention intensifies as narratives become fragmented and questioned.

Contributions

• Provides recent empirical evidence on how information attention manifests during a sudden climate crisis, an area less explored than health or political crises.
• Highlights the existence of regional terminological preferences in how citizens search for and conceptualize misinformation ("bulos" versus "fake news").
• Underscores the utility of exploratory approaches like Google Trends for detecting patterns of information attention during emergencies.
• Emphasizes the importance of territorially adapted verification and communication strategies in crisis situations to mitigate the effects of misinformation.

Funding

[No specific funding projects, programs, or reference codes were mentioned in the paper.]

Citation

@article{Alcántara2025Interés,
  author = {Alcántara, Carmen Sedeño},
  title = {Interés público y desinformación en tiempos de crisis: el caso de la DANA en Valencia en 2024},
  journal = {Revista Internacional de Relaciones Públicas},
  year = {2025},
  doi = {10.5783/revrrpp.v15i30.920},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.5783/revrrpp.v15i30.920}
}