Pre-professional journalistic culture of Cuba, Ecuador and Venezuela. Motivation, expectations and professional experience of students of Journalism and Social Communication

Abstract

This article presents a comparative analysis of the pre-professional journalistic cultures of Ecuador, Cuba and Venezuela focused the aspects that motivate students of Journalism and/or Social Communication to pursue these careers and their expectations and professional experiences. In the fieldwork, 1273 students from 21 universities enrolled in Journalism and/or Social Communication were surveyed during the first semester of 2016 (Cuba = 383, Ecuador = 500, Venezuela = 390). A sample that has a confidence level of 95% and a margin of error of less than 5. The results indicate that students in Ecuador, Cuba and Venezuela, although they do not have professional experience in the area-with the exception of Cubans-and acknowledge their doubts about the job security offered by the profession, have journalism as the main professional option for their future and, specifically, television. The regression analysis shows that in general terms only occupational safety (B =-0.108, p <0.001), vocation (B =-0.083, p <0.01) and gender (B = 0.079, p <0, 05) have a significant influence on the perspectives of personal development of the students in the three countries, F (6, 1190) = 19.455, p <0.001, explaining 8.5% of their variance.