The use of notifications from mobile applications in the Spanish media

Introduction: Mobile phones have become one more communication channel for the media in recent years. This research analyzes how Spanish radio, press, and television use notifications to send journalistic content to users of their mobile applications. Methodology: a quantitative content analysis of 1,226 notifications received in the mobile applications of the nine main Spanish media that have a mobile app has been carried out: SER, COPE, Onda Cero, Radio Nacional de Espana, El Pais, El Mundo, ABC, La Vanguardia, and RTVE. Results: the study reveals that the Spanish media send notifications, fundamentally, with an informative purpose and narration of live events, and that they do so, especially, to address matters related to sports, national politics, and, currently, the health, economic and social crisis caused by COVID-19. The research shows notable differences between the strategies of the different media studied and reveals a low use of graphic elements in mobile notifications, as well as in advertising. Conclusions and discussion: informative alerts are systematized in the media, although they still present operational problems in some cases and a certain homogeneity in formats and contents. There is a notable margin of use, for example, in the case of advertising as an element of monetization of the apps themselves.