Highs and Lows in the Use of WhatsApp in Spanish Digital Newspapers

The use of WhatsApp messaging app for news consumption has experienced a sustained growth in recent years, being one of the most reviewed trend on content diffusion in recent communication reports. The study of data gathered by the messaging platform reveals that WhatsApp has been positioning since 2014, year for the first news dissemination experience in the app, as a new competitor when sharing news and generating discussion about the issues that matters. This research aims to identify whether Spanish digital newspapers use WhatsApp and, if so, what use they make of it. This is a case study carried out during the month of May 2019 in order to locate and typify the uses of WhatsApp in the Spanish digital press. Among the eleven newspapers studied, five have carried out some activity in the messaging application, and three, ABC, El Español and El Periódico, are currently active in the application. After the analysis, the results obtained conclude that this group of newspapers was key in the initial experimentation in regard to the content diffusion through WhatsApp in Spain, and those who carried it out, made it continuously and through the use of various formats. Nevertheless, currently Spanish generalist newspapers do not present an innovative and differentiated use of this channel with respect to other social networks.