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This paper presents the findings of a project that aims to analyze the ethical treatment of the news, with special attention to the reporting of violent events, as it is carried out by digital news outlets from the State of Chihuahua (Mexico).

A media observatory was established to collect and analyze the 9,115 news reports of violent events from February to June 2019 and was published by 12 digital news outlets in Chihuahua. Quantitative data analysis was carried out using three analytical axes – ethics, human rights and violence. Each axis was, in turn, subdivided into three criteria, and this paper identifies how compliant were each news outlet and individual news report with those criteria.

Data analysis established that 5,385 of the news reports (59.1 per cent of the total news analyzed) met all the nine desirable criteria, whereas other subsets did not comply with up to a minimum five criteria. How the observed news outlets and their reports complied with the criteria used is specified in this paper.

The methodology used and the data analyzed seek to develop ethical and socially responsible journalism. Hence, this paper offers various possibilities, such as raising new questions related to journalistic deontology, helps engage responsible journalists and also represents an area of opportunity for library and information professionals who are immersed in digital environments (e.g. digital libraries and library professionals that are the ideal professionals to store, manage and disseminate the records produced by media observatories). Moreover, the data analyzed help to set a maximum limit for the non-compliance with each of the criteria analyzed, which can even lead to the development of an ethical and social responsibility accreditation that can be granted to news outlets with the best practices for journalism.

The purpose of this paper is to determine the challenges of scientific literacy that scientific journalism can promote or suppress as a scientific dissemination activity. To ensure that universities transfer knowledge to society, this vital activity is studied from the perspectives of their stakeholders: professors, researchers, newspaper directors and heads of research areas of two Mexican universities.

From a participatory action research perspective that consisted in applying semi-structured interviews, this study was conducted in two public universities in Chihuahua, Mexico. The group of participants constituted of a random sample of 90 Mexican professors, taken from a population of 246 subjects with the status of national researchers (confidence level = 95 per cent; margin of error = 5 per cent; P/Q correlation = 90 / 10 per cent), in addition to six local newspaper executives and eight research managers at participating universities.

Evidence suggests that scientific dissemination has a low social impact, its recognition by universities and scientific evaluation institutions is limited, and the act of making scientific content accessible to the general public is highly complex, especially when it comes to content related to the exact sciences. These results are predictable under the complex models that evaluate scientific production, because the measurement indicators that define scientific competitiveness levels prioritize specific scientific products other than dissemination products such as newspaper articles.

Data were collected from two Mexican public universities under the implication that the behavior identified through data analysis can occur in other similar environments. Although a participatory action research perspective was assumed, and because this research of a projective nature can be a part of a larger research, no particular actions or interventions were planned or executed, apart from the interviews that aimed to collect data that emerged from participants’ own practice and experiences on the issues studied. Further research can consist of developing forward-looking actions that can contribute to the development of scientific literacy, as well as to the exploration and solution of the issues identified through participants’ own practice.

One of the social roles of universities is to ensure that scientific knowledge reaches all citizens. However, there are not sufficient studies regarding scientific dissemination, especially from the perspective of professors as generators of scientific knowledge, newspaper directors and heads of research areas.