Gender Studies in Communication Research: A Longitudinal Analysis of Scientific Papers Published in Spanish Journals Indexed in the Journal Citation Reports (JCR) and the SCImago Journal Rank (SJR) (1988–2017)

169 Journal of Research in Gender Studies 8(2), 2018 pp. 169–200, ISSN 2164-0262, eISSN 2378-3524 doi:10.22381/JRGS82201810 GENDER STUDIES IN COMMUNICATION RESEARCH: A LONGITUDINAL ANALYSIS OF SCIENTIFIC PAPERS PUBLISHED IN SPANISH JOURNALS INDEXED IN THE JOURNAL CITATION REPORTS (JCR) AND THE SCIMAGO JOURNAL RANK (SJR) (1988–2017) BELÉN ZURBANO-BERENGUER bzurban[email protected] Faculty of Communication, The University of Seville (corresponding author) LORENA CANO-ORÓN Department of Language Theory and Communication Sciences, The University of Valencia IRENE LIBERIA VAYÁ Faculty of Communication, The University of Seville ABSTRACT. This paper describes the evolution of gender-related research in indexed communication journals in Spain, on the basis of a comprehensive analysis of all those papers relating to gender studies that were published between 1988 and 2017. Specifically, it analyses the scientific production of Spanish journals indexed in the “communication” category of the Journal Citation Reports (JCR) and the SCImago Journal Rank (SJR), in which the presence and development of works relating to gender and women’s studies have been assessed. The study time frame covers a period from 1988, when the first journal appeared, to 2017, with a set of 8,300 papers. The results highlight the following: 1. Gender studies are thin on the ground in Spanish communication journals; 2. The majority of these studies were conducted by one author and when more than one was involved, the co-authors were normally Spanish; 3. Most of the studies were performed by women; 4. Mainly qualitative methodologies were employed; and 5. Thematically speaking, they focused on the study of identities and stereotypes. Notwithstanding the gradual increase in the number of studies of this type, considering the far-reaching legislative changes and the social progress in gender and equality that have occurred over the past 15 years in Spain, the results pose a potential contradiction between the social, political, and 170 academic interest that gender issues currently awaken and their underrepresentation in Spanish communication journals. Keywords: social communication; gender studies; feminism; academic journals; scientific research; Spain How to cite: Zurbano-Berenguer, Belén, Lorena Cano-Orón, and Irene Liberia Vayá (2018). “Gender Studies in Communication Research: A Longitudinal Analysis of Scientific Papers Published in Spanish Journals Indexed in the Journal Citation Reports (JCR) and the SCImago Journal Rank (SJR) (1988–2017),” Journal of Research in Gender Studies 8(2): 169–200. Received 2 May 2018 • Received in revised form 24 July 2018 Accepted 2 August 2018 • Available online 25 August 2018 1. Introduction The research field of gender studies has grown over time to become a specific subject in some university programs in several countries, such as India (Nagalia, 2018), Spain (Verge & Cabruja, 2017), Sweden (Söderlund & Madison, 2015), and the Netherlands (Pavlidou, 2011), among others. Specifically, in Spain, despite not having a research unit offering institutional support and funding for this specific discipline, as is the case in other countries, i.e. some in Northern Europe (Lombardo, 2016; Söderlund & Madison, 2015), there has been a clear increase in scientific and academic research pertaining to gender over the past few years. At the same time, from a structural perspective, equality plans have been implemented at Spanish universities in order to eliminate the gender gap and promote the participation of women in the scientific field. Notwithstanding this, there is still much work to be done in order to eradicate gender inequalities in the academic sphere (Pastor Gosalbez & Acosta Sarmiento, 2016). Turning to the research issues that are the primary focus of this paper, in such diverse disciplines as medicine, sociology, psychology, history and education, to name but a few, the so-called “gender and women’s studies”1 have gradually come to the fore in scientific research, contributing new approaches, objects of study and methodologies. Communication as a field of study has followed the same trend, as can be seen in the number of works published in recent decades about cyberspace as a symbolic site of social and feminist debate (Rodríguez-Darias & Aguilera-Avila, 2017; Weber, 2014; Reader, 2012) or focusing on communication as a tool for the eradication of gender violence (Luengo, 2018; Rodríguez-Pérez & Gutiérrez, 2017; LindsayBrisbin, Deprince & Welton-Mitchell, 2014; Wozniak & McCloskey, 2010; Carlyle, Slater & Chakroff, 2008), among many other examples. At an international level, the first study of the state of the research in the fields of communication and gender studies which we have been able to find 171 dates from 1983, shortly after high-quality journals had started to publish papers on women’s studies. At that time, these kinds of works usually covered the following topics: a) Historical treatment of women; b) Sex differences; c) Images of women in the media; d) Education and pedagogy; and e) Surveys and integrated works. Their authors called for the need to perform more discourse analyses, as well as more studies of women’s movements; they also speculated about “those women heretofore neglected in […] journals” (Foss & Foss, 1983: 200). More recently, a number of interesting studies have been conducted in France, where Julliard (2016) argues that communication and gender studies mostly adopt a semiotic approach, analyzing the media construction of gender. However, even though gender studies were not so popular there before the turn of the century, more interdisciplinary research approaches have emerged since then, including those specifically focusing on the role of the media (Biscarrat, 2015). Furthermore, having analyzed the works addressing gender studies within the field of communication in France and Latin America, Hernández Orellana (2018) argues that despite representing very different sociopolitical contexts and research traditions, research on gender and the Internet is on the increase in both areas. The Latin American case, for its part, stands out because of the interest of researchers in studying the media agenda on feminism. In Spain, feminist approaches have gradually made inroads in the field of communication – as with others such as sociology (DiFrancesco & Ochoa, 2017) and psychology (Gartzia & Lopez-Zafra, 2014). Therefore, our aim here is to use scientific production to gauge the evolution of gender and women’s studies in this field. To this end, and on the basis of previous works using biometric and meta-analytical approaches to communication in a broad sense, we will focus on gender and communication studies in order to analyze academic production in this respect in Spanish communication journals. It should also be noted that Spain has been a pioneer in equality laws. So, besides offering a general overview of communication and gender research in the Spanish context, the importance of our study lies precisely in the comparison between the political commitment to eradicate gender inequality and how this has been reciprocated in academic production. Another of our aims is to replicate the study in other countries in order to plot a descriptivecomparative global map. Our study has resulted from the need to evaluate the track record of gender studies in the field of communication in Spain over the past few decades – what is studied, who researches, which techniques and methodologies are employed, etc. – for the purpose of assessing the presence, evolution and characteristics of an increasingly more relevant area of scientific interest in communication research. 172 The interest in determining the state of the research in any field of scientific knowledge should be taken as an indicator of its maturity. Even more so, when that effort is not limited to a mere description of what is being done, but proposes a critical evaluation to determine in some way the quality of what is being done. (Martínez Nicolás & Saperas Lapiedra, 2011) 2. Objectives The objectives are as follows: 1. To quantify the number of papers dedicated to women’s and gender studies in the top Spanish communication journals, specifically those indexed in JCR and SJR, the two most important rankings employed to measure journal quality and impact. 2. To assess the gender biases that may exist in current communication and gender research in the Spanish scientific journals under study. 3. To identify the main methodological aspects of communication and gender research in Spain. 4. To assess the international collaboration and adaptation to foreign languages of communication and gender research in Spain. 3. Hypothesis In line with the approaches proposed by Reigada Olaizola and Sánchez Leyva (2007), the principal aim of this work, which is based on the assumption that gender studies are still being sidelined in Spanish communication research, is to provide fresh data and observations in this regard. 4. Literature Review 4.1. PhD dissertations When trying to gauge the importance of a discipline or a field of study, there is clear evidence that doctoral programs and dissertations have definitively contributed to the production of new knowledge in that field (Kitch & Fonow, 2012: 99). In this regard, according to the most exhaustive studies performed to date, 624 PhD theses relating to gender and women’s studies were defended in Spain from 1975 to 20052 (De Torres Ramírez & Torres Salinas, 2007, 2005). This is solely an estimate owing to the fact that the searches were mostly performed in the automated repertory TESEO which, despite being “the most reliable and comprehensive currently available” (De Torres Ramírez & Torres Salinas, 2007: 13), does not contain exhaustive data – some of which are erroneous or, at best, incomplete – on indexed PhD 173 theses. Notwithstanding this, the figure provided by De Torres Ramírez and Torres Salinas can be regarded as representative of the total number of theses on gender studies defended in Spain until 2005, insofar as it is the result of applying a rigorous methodology3 based on a complex search algorithm, further supplemented by new searches and a thorough examination of the provisional results. Although the research area called “women’s studies” does not have a long tradition in Spain, it can be argued that it constitutes a well-established field of knowledge that is steadily gaining ground, as reflected in the data provided by the aforementioned studies: the average increase in PhD theses on gender and women’s studies is 0.914, a “practically exponential growth” (De Torres Ramírez & Torres Salinas, 2007: 17), since compared with the 17 defended between 1976 and 1985, there were 73 dissertations only in 2004. When the same research algorithm, as the one employed by De Torres Ramírez and Torres Salinas,4 is applied when searching for theses defended between the academic years 2005–2006 and 2017–2018, with the aim of supplementing the data until the present day, Teseo yields a total of 234 results. However, it would be absolutely essential to conduct a comprehensive review, such as those performed in the reference works, in order to discard theses that are invalid for any number of reasons.5 As for PhD theses on communication from a general perspective, Jones et al. (2000) published an in-depth study spanning the years 1926–1998. Using a bibliometric approach, the authors provide information on 1550 PhD dissertations focusing on communication in Spain. Some of the elements and perspectives researched in this work have also been applied to later studies: for instance, sex disaggregation of author data or universities where doctoral theses have been defended (Caffarel, Ortega & Gaitán, 2018; Caffarel-Serra, Ortega-Mohedano & Gaitán-Moya, 2017). Besides, other bibliometric studies focusing on more specific areas within the field of communication have been conducted over the past years (Castillo & Xifra, 2006; Repiso, DelgadoLópez-Cózar & Torres-Salinas, 2011a; Repiso, Delgado-López-Cózar & Torres-Salinas, 2011b), as well as more comprehensive ones analyzing the general situation of PhD theses in Spain (Sanz-Casado, 2018; Blázquez, 2015; Fuentes Pujol & Arguimbau Vivó, 2010). Generally speaking, these works with a broader perspective point to a huge increase in the number of doctoral dissertations defended at Spanish universities – increasing by 180.03% between 2007 and 2016 (Sanz-Casado, 2018: 37) – in which the thematic area of “social and legal sciences” (which includes the field of communication) comes in a meritorious second place, representing 22.5% of the total number of PhD theses defended between 1997 and 2008 (Fuentes-Pujol & AguimbauVivó, 2010: 68). Returning to gender and women’s studies, noting yet again the difficulties that arise when attempting to gather rigorous and reliable data on PhD theses 174 – and, more generally, on scientific production – relating to this field of knowledge in Spain,6 we confirm that there is an urgent need to introduce a specific field for this topic in the TESEO classification system.7 Besides, this is not only a Spanish problem but also needs to be dealt with at an international level: the European repertory “DART” – containing more than 766,000 open access research theses from 613 universities in 28 European countries – and the Latin American website “Portal de Tesis Latinoamericanas” – providing access to electronic PhD theses available in full text from several Latin American countries – encounter similar difficulties in providing accurate data on dissertations relating to women’s, gender and feminist studies. This classification problem also affects other reputed scientific databases, like Scopus or Web of Science, because as Söderlund & Madison (2015) have remarked: […] there is no established or well-defined way to categorize gender studies from other disciplines. The Scopus database, for instance, provides no way of performing a general search for gender or women’s studies. Thomson’s Web of Science has a research area called ‘Women’s studies,’ but it seems not to discriminate gender studies well, since for example journals dedicated to women’s health from a medical perspective are also included. (1351) From a more general point of view, for Kitch (2003) the exclusion of women’s studies from the world of research is due to several factors: for instance, the disjuncture between women’s studies and research on women and gender, as reflected in the weekly listing of new books in the Chronicle of Higher Education: Although that feature does sometimes contain a category called ‘women’s studies,’ most often, new scholarship about women or gender is parceled out to categories such as ‘political science,’ ‘religion,’ or ‘sociology,’ even if the research behind the books is arguably interdisciplinary. […] Another sign of women’s studies’ exclusion from the world of research is its absence as a category in lists of prospective grants or fundable projects by most foundations or agencies. (Kitch, 2003: 435) As Kwasnik has stated, classifications are always created in a specific sociopolitical context that involves a hierarchy and, for that matter, the organization of concepts defines a concrete worldview that contributes to shape the minds of the people who consult such classifications (Kwasnik, in Muñoz, 2004: 48). Above and beyond the influence that classifications may have on the way people think, and given the growing interest in gender studies (Ortiz Gómez, 2004, 1999; Ballarín Domingo, Gallego Méndez & Martínez Benlloch, 1995), 175 this paper stresses the need to standardize specialized repositories in order to facilitate full and direct access to the studies that have been performed in Spain (and beyond) in a wide range of disciplines – multidisciplinarity is one of the most defining characteristics of this field of knowledge (Hawkesworth, 2011) – since the introduction of women’s studies in university curricula at the end of the 1970s. 4.2. Research production The greater attention now paid by researchers to gender studies is reflected not only in the growing number of PhD theses defended in this field, but also in other data as significant for academic production as the following: 1. The gradual appearance in Spain of journals and platforms specializing in these topics: Feminismo/s, published by the University of Alicante since 2003; Cuestiones de Género: de la igualdad y la diferencia, first published in 2005 by the University of Leon; DUODA. Estudios de la Diferencia Sexual, one of the pioneering journals published by the University of Barcelona since 1990; and Asparkía: investigación feminista, created by the Jaume I University in Castellon in 1998, among many others. 2. The proliferation of monographs in non-specialized journals focusing on gender. At a state level and merely by way of example, the following are worthy of mention: the special number of the Revista Latina de Comunicación Social on gender violence and communication published in 2016; the monograph of No. 11 of Redes.Com entitled “Género y/en Comunicación” [Gender and/in Communication]; and that of the journal Dígitos on Women’s Internet, “Prácticas, estereotipos femeninos y representaciones de género en la web” [Practices, feminine stereotypes and gender representations on the Web], published in 2018. 3. The consolidation of monographic academic congresses on gender: the presence of a large number of specialists and research in different specific gender studies forums has justified the field of knowledge’s continued existence over the years. Examples include the biennial International Conference on Gender and Communication, organized by the University of Seville, whose fourth edition will be held in 2018. This university also hosts the International Conference on Micromachismo in Communication and Education, whose third edition is scheduled for 2018. By the same token, other higher education centers, such as the Oñati International Institute for the Sociology of Law (IISL) and the Polytechnic University of Valencia (UPV) have also organized encounters revolving around this theme over the past decade. In 2013, the IISL hosted the International Congress on Gender Violence: Intersectionalities, and in 2010 the International Congress on Woman, Art and Technology in the New Public Sphere was held at the UPV. Other relevant encounters on the 2018 agenda include the 10th International Congress of the 176 University Association for Women’s Studies (AUDEM): La universidad de las mujeres. Ocho siglos de luces y sombras [The university of women. Eight chequered centuries]. However, despite the growing popularity of this field of scientific knowledge – which is only briefly addressed here – there is still a dearth of qualitative, quantitative and typological research in this regard. As with communication studies (Martínez Nicolás & Saperas Lapiedra, 2011), whose exponential growth began in the 1980s, while the first meta-analyses date back to the year 2000, this type of analysis has been practically conspicuous by its absence in gender and communication studies in Spain. In this respect, Caro González and Guarinos (2017) state that “there are multiple papers that have used bibliometrics in the field of communication, but none of them have influenced their practice on gender studies in a comparative way” (65). The only ones that stand out are a number of sectionalized studies such as those performed by Miquel-Segarra, Navarro-Beltrá and Martín-Llaguno (2016), Arranz Lozano (2015) and Navarro and Martín (2013), who in spite of providing interesting overviews of their specific areas (public relations and corporate communication, gender violence, and films and advertising, respectively), do not offer a general snapshot of gender and women’s studies. However, this snapshot is utterly essential to evaluate, as has been done in the field of communication in general, the past and present of a line of research that is gradually gaining ground in Spain. The observation of scientific research through the prism of academic production in specialized journals is a procedure with a meta-analytical track record (Fernández-Quijada & Masip, 2013; Navarro & Martín, 2013; Castillo & Carretón, 2010), and the study presented here, based on these advances in the general field of communication, shifts the focus towards the specific production of communication and gender studies. As for the track record mentioned above, in 2010, Castillo and Carretón published a study of the main communication journals, whose sample was chosen according to IN-RECS, the impact index most used at the time. Their work provided an exhaustive description of the type of research that had been performed hitherto in Spain and already included the sex disaggregation of author data. The results revealed an unequal distribution: 53.7% of the papers were authored by men, versus 46.3% by women (Castillo & Carretón, 2010). Nevertheless, in the academic literature specifically dealing with gender issues there was a majority of authoresses (Navarro & Martín, 2013). Or, in other words, women are more inclined to inquire into this subject, which poses interesting questions for future research – in this regard, it should be noted that Caro González and Guarinos (2017) have studied the scientific productivity and collaboration of Spanish authors who have published papers 177 with a gender perspective in Scopus communication journals between 2008 and 2014. Despite the importance of Castillo and Carretón’s work as one of the first and foremost bibliometric studies of communication research in Spain, the sample used by these authors was restricted to papers published in 2008. Nevertheless, a year afterwards Martínez Nicolás and Saperas Lapiedra (2011) published a work based on four journals8 with a much longer time frame, i.e. from 1998 to 2007. One of their most noteworthy conclusions, in the context of communication studies, was the superiority of those studies focusing on journalism from an empirical approach, as well as the lack of methodological rigor that was regrettably detected in a large proportion of the papers analyzed by them: [...] generally speaking, what is involved are empirical studies with serious methodological shortcomings, at least as far as the use of standardized data collection techniques is concerned. Only in a third of these works can such techniques be identified, whether they be quantitative or qualitative, with a clear predominance of those employed in media message studies (content and discourse analysis) and scant recourse to procedures for accessing data gathered from live sources (surveys, in-depth interviews, focus groups, etc.). (Martínez Nicolás & Saperas Lapiedra, 2011) The study most similar to the one conducted here (Martínez-Nicolás, Saperas & Carrasco-Campos, 2017) provides a 25-year overview of academic production relating to journalism published in the top five Spanish communication journals.9 It is based on the following “coding criteria” (154) which have served as inspiration and guidance for the research described here: knowledge interests (the journalistic field approached and the object of study) and modes of research (the type of research, methodological approach and techniques employed in empirical studies). Here, the following basic elements have been recouped from the aforementioned studies: the sex disaggregation of author data (Navarro & Martín, 2013; Castillo & Carretón, 2010); the study of research methodologies and techniques (Arranz Lozano, 2015; Martínez Nicolás & Saperas Lapiedra, 2011); the types of objects of study (Martínez-Nicolás, Saperas & CarrascoCampos, 2017; Martínez Nicolás & Saperas Lapiedra, 2011); and the collaboration between different research centers (Fernández-Quijada & Masip, 2013; Castillo & Carretón, 2010). What is noteworthy is the special attention paid to the following perspective in relation to the different methodological currents: Our interest in methodological paradigms, known as the quantitative or qualitative path to knowledge, is to observe their epistemological 184 Figure 4 Distribution of authorship by sex Own elaboration. As regards collective efforts, irrespective of the group’s composition, women were not only the first authors (in 76.3% of the cases), but also overwhelming the last ones (67.7%), which seems to tie in with the fact that the majority of research groups were entirely made up of women. Thus, of the total number of co-authored papers published, in 33.7% of the cases the coauthors were all women, while in 7.9% they were all men. This contrasts with scientific collaboration in general, in which men are more likely to collaborate with other men, while women tend to work with both other women and men (Araújo et al., 2017). On a separate issue, this study, following a number of precedents, also inquired into the internationalization of gender and communication research in Spain. To assess this reality, two indicators were resorted to: the presence of groups comprising authors of both sexes affiliated with non-Spanish universities, that is, international collaboration and the translation of papers into other languages. With respect to the type of collaboration networks established at the universities of the authors, it can be observed that only 8.4% of the papers had some sort of foreign involvement. Moreover, as shown in Figure 5, 74.2% were written by male and/or female researchers belonging to a sole university, to wit, if there had indeed been some kind of collaboration, this was restricted to the habitual scope of academic production with work colleagues of both sexes. As of 2014, there has been a progressive involvement of nonSpanish researchers and scholars in the papers published, as shown in Figure 5. Despite being relatively low in number, a trend towards the consolidation of a more cooperative and less individualistic form of work, also with a greater level of international collaboration, can apparently be observed. 185 Figure 5 Evolution of collaboration networks over time Own elaboration. 186 The university that stands out most for its international collaboration is the Complutense University of Madrid, while at a national level the combinations that appear are not normally repeated. Noteworthy examples of universities with which researchers of both sexes, pursuing their work in international collaboration networks, are affiliated include the Complutense, Seville, Santiago de Compostela and the King Juan Carlos (Madrid). This international collaboration has to date involved the following research centers, among others: The Free University of Berlin (Germany); the University of Alaska Anchorage (USA); the Autonomous University of Ciudad Juárez (Mexico); and Hallym University (South Korea). However, very few papers in several languages were detected: 85.4% were published only in Spanish, 10.7% in Spanish and English and a mere 3.9% exclusively in English. 6.3. On methodologies and formats: Gender issues are researched from a qualitative approach and in a large number of communication formats One of the objectives here is to identify the most studied communication formats and the way in which researchers have approached them. Firstly, the results indicate that the qualitative approach was the most popular (50.6%), versus quantitative (29.8%) and mixed (18.7%) ones, which despite their strong presence were less frequently employed. This trend towards qualitative methodologies is also borne out by the type of tools/techniques used to approach the objects of study, the most frequent being content analysis12 (43.3%), bibliographic review (16.9%) and reasoned debate (15.2%).13 The last two serve as an example of the importance that the interpretation of secondary data and theoretical production have in qualitative gender and communication research, as shown in Figure 6.14 Figure 6 Frequency of tools employed Own elaboration. 187 In relation to the most studied communication formats, and taking into consideration the deductive and artificial division that had to be performed to define the realities and objects of study, it is possible to perceive a marked trend towards studying the press (26.4%), versus radio (1.7%) and the Internet and social networks (4.5%). With respect to these last two formats, it should be noted that their popularity as objects of study has nonetheless increased over the past decade and what has recently been witnessed is most certainly a greater interest in these media on the part of the research community. When analyzed longitudinally, a growing interest in audiovisual formats, above all television, but also social networks, has been detected. Furthermore, as can be seen in Figure 7, this has been accompanied by a progressive loss of interest in advertising formats. By the same token, from a comparative perspective what also stands out is the diversity of formats studied, 2008 marking a before and after in gender research: a before characterized by a predominance of the press, advertising and media as a whole; and an after when there has been a clear trend towards multiple formats.15 6.4. Research focusing on identities The main theme addressed in gender and communication studies to date, according to the results of the analysis performed here, has been what could generally be called “identities” (Figure 8). More specifically, out of the different options included in the previously established categorization (i.e. identities; violence; representation/treatment/coverage; female production; work; education; politics; equality–inequality; childhood–adolescence; sports; maternity; the Internet and social networks; gender studies; disaggregated analyses; consumption; prostitution; and others),16 the most frequent topics are as follows: identities (27%), violence (11.8%) and representation/ treatment/coverage (10.7%). 188 Figure 7 Evolution of the communication formats studied Own elaboration. 189 Figure 8 Distribution of academic production by topic Own elaboration. From an historical perspective, what again stands out is the fact that the progessive incorporation of these studies in the field of communication has been characterized by a broader range of themes. In contrast with the classic studies of the differential representation of women and men and violence treatment and discourses, topics such as maternity (1988–2010: one paper; 2011–2017: three), work (1988–2010: zero papers; 2011–2017: 11) and sports (1988–2010: zero papers; 2011–2017: four) have started to carve out a niche for themselves in the communication and gender research agenda (Figure 8 and 9). Besides the main theme, the most recurrent secondary themes were also assessed. The latter provide a clear picture of the specific issues that have caught the attention of communication and gender research over the past few decades. For example, stereotypes are a secondary theme in 34 papers, identities in 28, work – which, as already noted, is fast becoming a main theme – in 25, tensions and analysis of equality-inequality in 13 and the concept of feminism in 11. On the other hand, and bearing in mind the relevance of keywords, essential for indexing and disseminating scientific research, the NVivo programme18 – specializing in qualitative or mixed unstructured data processing – was used to conduct a keyword frequency analysis focusing on the total number of genderand communication-related papers comprising the sample. As can been observed in Figure 10, the keywords género [gender], mujer [woman], comunicación [communication] and estereotipos [stereotypes] are the most frequent. 190 Figure 9 Evolution of the main topic of papers over time17 Own elaboration. 191 Figure 10 Graphic representation of the most frequently employed keywords Own elaboration. The keywords employed on more than 20 occasions are as follows: género [gender] (84), mujer [woman] (64), comunicación [communication] (31), estereotipos [stereotypes] (27), medios [media] (23), televisión [television] (22), social [social] (21), violencia [violence] (21) and prensa [press] (20). In addition to the most evident terms in communication and gender studies (i.e. género, mujer and comunicación), the rest of the keywords repeated most often broadly speaking reflect the predominant trend of the papers analyzed, i.e. approaches to gender representation, the stereotypes lingering in society today and structural problems (like violence against women) using media content analysis. 7. Discussion An analysis of the results underscores that although communication and gender research is still a marginal field with proportionally very little influence on the discipline, it is nevertheless gradually gaining ground. What is involved is a field of research that has steadily diversified as regards the communication formats and themes with which it deals, for it is based on its historical links to journalism studies (Castillo & Carretón, 2010; Martínez Nicolás & Saperas Lapiedra, 2011) and has focused overwhelmingly on the 192 analysis of identities, violence and gender representations in the media, before gradually including new formats and topics. In this respect, maternity, work and sports are now more frequent objects of study. As to formats, besides becoming clearly more diverse, some that in previous stages aroused the greatest interest, such as those relating to advertising, have now been abandoned to a certain extent. This could be explained by the growing number of specialized journals and platforms available. In other words, it might not be due to the academic community’s disaffection with certain formats, but to the fact that there are now more opportunities to publish these works in emerging specialized journals (in the field of advertising, for instance), which still have not been included in the ranking of journals with an impact factor. Moving on to other issues, as has been seen in the results section, 2008 marked a turning point as regards both the proliferation of gender-related papers in communication journals and their diversification (topics, formats studied, etc.). In this connection, as highlighted on another occasion (ZurbanoBerenguer, 2015), emphasis should be placed on the far-reaching legislative changes and social progress in Spain since the turn of the century, not only concerning gender and equality (Spanish Organic Law 1/2004, 28 December, on Comprehensive Protection Measures against Gender Violence; Spanish Organic Law 3/2007, 22 March, for the effective equality of women and men, etc.), but also precisely in relation to the role of the media in this respect. For example, the aforementioned laws, as well as regional legislation seeking the same goals (Comprehensive Law 7/2012, 23 November, of the Valencian Government, on Violence against Women in the Valencian Community; Law 13/2007, 26 November, on Comprehensive Protection Measures against Gender-based Violence in Andalusia; Law 17/2015, 21 July, for the effective equality of women and men in Catalonia, etc.), highlight the social responsibility that the media has in the fight against gender-based violence and, more generally, in the achievement of equality between the sexes. What is more, on the basis of the above-mentioned laws, many regulatory bodies and media companies themselves have developed ethical codes in order to include the gender perspective in information practices and to inform about gender-based violence adequately. In this connection, over the past 15 years communication scholars have analyzed the impact that legislative changes and ethical codes have had on information about violence against women and, more generally, on society’s perception of this social problem. In most cases the results point to a positive relationship between the promotion of legislative and feminist initiatives, like those referred to above, and the proliferation of ethical codes and improvements in the news treatment of gender-based violence (ZurbanoBerenguer & García-Gordillo, 2017; Htun & Weldon, 2013; Martínez, 2012). On the other hand, another important change occurring in Spanish academia in 2008 should also be taken into account, i.e. ACADEMIA, an accred- 193 itation program for university teaching and research focusing on scientific productivity, launched by ANECA (National Agency for Quality Assessment and Accreditation of Spain). ACADEMIA, following international trends in accreditation systems, gives top priority to research. Within the specific field of communication, this decision is supposed to have led to both an increase in papers published in Spanish communication journals and the exponential growth of the presence of Spanish authors in international communication journals as from 2008 (Martínez-Nicolás, Saperas & Carrasco-Campos, 2017; Martínez-Nicolás & Saperas, 2016; Fernández-Quijada & Masip, 2013). Returning to the results of this paper, with reference to the data on study typologies (national or international, depending on the academic affiliation of the authors), these coincide with those of the field of communication in general: there is an increasingly greater tendency towards teamwork and the participation of multinational groups (Fernández-Quijada & Masip, 2013). In this respect, it should be added that some journals have started to request that papers be translated into English. Therefore, an increase in the number of studies published in this language is to be expected in the near future. This will call for research into the influence (or not) that this greater international access to Spanish academic production – thanks to a wider use of English in scientific communication – may have on the international make-up of research groups at Spanish universities. In the same vein, the specific methodology-related data on communication and gender research presented here coincide with existing information on the discipline of communication in general, for papers often do not include a credible methodological strategy and even frequently lack a clear description of the tools and methods employed. By the same token, in recent research (Madison & Söderlund, 2018; Söderlund & Madison, 2017) the aforementioned weaknesses have also been detected in scientific production in the area of gender studies. Beyond that, when the methodological conception and design are clearly set out, content analysis has been to date the most frequently used technique in the field of communication (Castillo & Carretón, 2010; Martínez Nicolás & Saperas Lapiedra, 2011). 8. Conclusions As regards the objectives established at the beginning of this work, the following can be claimed: 1. With respect to the number of papers dealing with gender, women’s and feminist studies appearing in Spanish communication journals in comparison with those dedicated to other topics, it can be held that, proportionally speaking, the number of gender-related papers is still negligible, although a gradual and patchy increase has been observed, depending on the journal. 200 Reigada Olaizola, A., & Sánchez Leyva, M. J. (eds.) (2007). Crítica feminista y comunicación. Salamanca: Comunicación Social. Repiso, R., Delgado-López-Cózar, E., & Torres-Salinas, D. 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