Metallized robotic voices are falling behind; now machines and tools respond to our orders and requests with a more organic pronunciation. But in addition to pronunciation, it is up to us to teach them the language; it is up to each language community. At the same time, the app that we use as a navigation assistant in our journey towards increasingly Basque environments has to repeat itself firmly, every time the paths are divided, “at the crossroads, take the path in favour of the language community”. Regardless of the scope: new contracts, execution of projects or products, budget design... We cannot ignore the declarations made by the Basque Language Council: we are in a linguistic emergency1 . Since the media are also strategic in the normalization of language, and since we are in the field of media and communication, this is where we have focused our attention and, following the call to move from emergency to empowerment, we have compiled in this issue some of the most significant projects and studies that are being developed in this field. There are many projects and studies underway in the ecosystem of Basque communication that need to be strengthened, protected and prioritized; also new ones need to be created. And in this task: at the crossroads, take the path to the benefit of the Basque speaking community.
The Yearbook is a place where performance and knowledge intersect and in this year’s issue this intersection is populated by fifteen articles and twenty authors. Knowing that there is a lot of knowledge in these actions and a lot of action in this knowledge, the combination of both enriches the Basque Media Yearbook 2024-2025.
The first two chronicles have a positioning function; the first one at the international level and the second one at the Basque Country level extend the look of what the year has given us and what awaits us, placing the emphasis on the challenges we face and the achievements we have achieved. The first one, written by Hibai Castro Egia of the Basque Media Observatory, contains explanations and reflections on the practical applications of technological transformations in the media field. In the second, the director of HEKIMEN, Igor Astibia Teiletxea, makes an important announcement about the new model of call for grants for the media in the Basque Country.
In the Signature section, Nerea Azurmendi Zabaleta, who has exhausted her profession as a journalist but has not abandoned her profession, explains her vision of the Basque media in her opinion article entitled “It’s time”, which is very substantial and the following is just a small sample, but here: “...the Basque media will be given their rightful place once and for all [...] and this recognition will have practical consequences”.
The section of articles that we present as a showcase of the sector is made up of five projects, four are media and/or communication projects and the fifth is technological, which also has a close impact on the media. The article “Hamaika TV: looking to the future”, written by Ainhoa Jauregi, the newly appointed director of Hamaika TV, to open the section, reviews the trajectory of the tv station and gives us an account of the current situation after fifteen years since their first broadcast: the relay in the direction, the new model in the organization, the freshness in the new programs... She"s got a future to look at. This is followed by the article “2024: a fruitful year for Primeran”, which makes a year-long assessment of the platform Primeran, signed by its current director, Ainoa Santisteban Rendo. The platform was launched on September 15, 2023 and this last year has been the first to be completed in its entirety. Within this text, Nerea Zendoia Elexpuru, also makes a small assessment of the Makusi platform for the youngest. Then, the communicative project Ikusgela, which has just won the Communication Award at the Rikardo Arregi Awards, explains in depth the project “Ikusgela: Videos to understand the world» comes from the hand of Ander Bolibar Zabala, who knows it from the ground up. Next comes “Bada: The Youth Media of Lapurdi, Baxe-Navarra and Xiberoa», written by Ana Sarria Muxika and that tells us the nature and main characteristics of the project created by young people for young people. To close the section, Asier Iturralde Sarasola, from Iametza and Argia, and Marko Txopitea Txopi, from Librezale, in the article “Common Voice: a digital team-work to teach Basque to technology”, give us an in-depth look at the project that teaches machines and advanced devices to speak Basque.
In the longer articles section we have brought seven studies that have been carried out over the last year: the first deals with data culture; the second deals with the use of artificial intelligence in the Basque newsrooms; the third focuses on producers and agencies involved in the podcast industry; the fourth deals with a classic article that involves an annual analysis of the digital traffic of Basque media websites; and finally, three studies focusing on audiovisual and cinema close the section.
Let’s explain these seven enumerated ones one by one.
Ane Martinez Juez and Josu Amezaga Albizu of the NOR Research Group of the UPV/EHU and the Basque Media Observatory “Data Culture in the Basque Media: A quantitative and qualitative analysis of the situation of the basque media in Hekimen” offers an approach to the diagnosis of data culture and the identification of the variables that influence its integration into work routines. The basis is a survey of the media themselves and five in-depth interviews.
Ainara Larrondo Ureta and her colleagues from the UPV/EHU’s Gureiker Research Group present “The Use of Artificial Intelligence in the Basque Media”, which explores another very important issue: the extent to which the knowledge and use of this field of technological development, called artificial intelligence, is widespread among journalists and media professionals. They have limited their research to the Autonomous Community of the Basque Country and based on the results of the questionnaires carried out, they indicate that the diffusion of this technology is limited.
Arantza Gutiérrez Paz, from the Department of Audiovisual Communication and Advertising of the UPV/EHU, in her article “New lines of business in the Basque podcast industry: audio productions and branded content”, discusses these relatively new and expanding practices in the Basque podcast industry. To this end, she has identified, listed and analyzed sixty-eight programmes made by production and/or advertising and communication agencies.
This is one of the must-do articles of the year, which measures and analyzes the traffic on the Basque media websites. Under the title “Hekimen website audiences in 2024: more media has been measured than ever before”, Libe Mimenza Castillo and Ane Martínez Juez, from the NOR Research Group of the UPV/EHU and the Basque Media Observatory, give us their latest study. It should be noted that 60 media outlets is the highest number in history and, in addition, the barrier of 40 million sessions has been overcome again.
To conclude, we have completed a set of three articles focused on audiovisuals and cinema with the studies that have been carried out in the last year, in the hope that reading them together will help us to have a broader vision in this area. June Ansa Agirre of Mondragon Unibertsitatea and her colleagues sign «Audiovisual in Basque from the eyes of young people. Opinions and prejudices». Josu Martínez of the NOR Research Group of the UPV/EHU signs «Wounds in the mirror: Analysis of the distribution of the film Bizkarsoro« and «Young people and the habit of going to the cinema« by Julen Ugartemendia Carcedo and his colleagues from the audiovisual observatory of the UPV/EHU Ikusiker. Regarding the first, we can draw conclusions that can give us some kind of grip that can be vaguely extracted from the opinions and prejudices that appeared in interviews with some young people, such as the fact that Basque productions are in urgent need of aggressive campaigns of promotion and visibility. The second shows that when a production of this type, albeit with few resources, manages to adequately address and connect the issues that interest the public, it is able to achieve an impact and become a competitive production. To round it off, in the article that gathers data on the preference for film salons of young university students in the Southern Basque Country, it can be seen that attendance at the cinema is still reserved by young people in their favorite bag, but in practice, there is an imbalance between the subjective and the objective. Promoting all of this is also a challenge that can be played by those who want to play and, here too, as we said before, at the crossroads take the path towards the speaking community.
1 https://kontseilua.eus/euskara-eu/euskararen-eguna-2024/
2 As the tenth issue is a noteworthy round number, we’ve added the appendix to this itinerary: https://behategia.eus/eu/argitalpenak/