Hibai Lopez-Gonzalez

Hibai Lopez-Gonzalez
University of Barcelona | UB · Information Science & Communication

Communication, PhD

About

93
Publications
55,010
Reads
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1,892
Citations
Introduction
I'm a Serra Hunter lecturer at the Department of Library, Information Science and Communication, University of Barcelona
Additional affiliations
January 2019 - present
Bellvitge Biomedical Research Institute
Position
  • PostDoc Position
January 2018 - January 2019
University of Deusto
Position
  • PostDoc Position
January 2016 - January 2018
Nottingham Trent University
Position
  • PostDoc Position
Description
  • 3-year PostDoc fellowship granted by the Basque Government

Publications

Publications (93)
Article
Full-text available
There is growing evidence that gambling advertising disproportionately affects those experiencing more severe gambling harm. Such association has been studied by recruiting gamblers using online panels, by analysing registered users’ data from gambling websites, and through surveys and focus group interviews. However, it is thought that these metho...
Preprint
Full-text available
Background There is a consensus in the literature that gambling advertising disproportionately affects those experiencing higher gambling severity. However, the relationship of gambling advertising and severity is typically assessed among samples recruited from online panels using screening tools as the method to categorize the gambling severity st...
Article
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Introduction: Traumatic life events (TLE) and difficulties in emotion regulation (ER) can be considered risk factors for the development of gambling disorder in adolescents and young adults. Methods: The aim of the present study was to examine the differences in TLE, ER strategies, positive and negative affect, and gambling severity in a clinica...
Article
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Fan tokens are a form of cryptocurrency that allow owners to participate in various fan-related experiences such as voting on the music to be played during half-time breaks in sporting events. Since 2020, many elite sport teams have issued fan tokens, allegedly as a way to engage with fans and hear their voice. However, fan tokens also raise some c...
Article
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Introduction/Objectives: Gambling and gaming disorder are usually comorbid addictive behaviours in which alexithymia and emotional regulation have been proved to be of relevance. The present study aimed to analyse the relationship between those variables and their differences depending on the presence or absence of gambling and gaming behaviours....
Article
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The structural addictive characteristics of gambling products are important targets for prevention, but can be unintuitive to laypeople. In the PictoGRRed (Pictograms for Gambling Risk Reduction) study, we aimed to develop pictograms that illustrate the main addictive characteristics of gambling products and to assess their impact on identifying th...
Article
Gambling disorder has an increasing impact among young adults, which is a relevant life period in which emotional states and their management are of great importance. This study aimed to analyze the relationship between positive and negative affect, alexithymia, gambling motives, and hopelessness, and the predictive role of affect, alexithymia, and...
Article
Full-text available
The presence of unsuitable coping and emotion regulation strategies in young populations with gambling disorder (GD) and in those who have experienced cyberbullying victimization has been suggested. However, this association has not been explored in depth. In this study, our aim was to analyze individual differences in emotion regulation, coping st...
Article
Full-text available
Online gambling has significantly altered the situational and structural characteristics of gambling products, to the extent that online gamblers might be substantially different from traditional offline gamblers. A growing body of literature has identified the evolving features of online gambling and the individuals who engage in it. However, beyo...
Article
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Lottery gambling can become an addictive behavior which can significantly interfere with daily functioning. The objectives of this work were to estimate the prevalence of lottery gambling, to assess the profile related to this gambling type in a large clinical sample of patients who met criteria for gambling disorder (GD), and to compare this profi...
Article
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Several therapy modalities have been developed for gambling disorder (GD), and the cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is one of the most promising approaches. The objective of this study was to explore the impact of patients’ adherence to guidelines concerning money control on the effectiveness and outcomes of a CBT program. Sample included n = 998...
Article
Numerous studies have explored the specific risk factors of sports betting attending to the singularities of sports bettors. However, many of these are also present in other gambling profiles (e.g. younger age, males, higher education, skill-based gambling) and fail to tackle the essentially distinguishing trait of sports betting, namely, its symbo...
Article
Full-text available
People with gambling disorder (GD) exhibit distorted cognitions and superstitious beliefs more often than the general population. Similarly, difficulties in coping and emotion dysregulation are more prevalent among those with GD, and could determine the onset of GD in particularly vulnerable groups such as adolescents. This study examines the relat...
Article
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Attachment and alexithymia play a central role in the appearance and persistence of pathological gambling and related comorbid addictive behaviours among adolescents and young adults. The aim of the present study was to explore the differences between problem gamblers and non-problem gamblers in gambling severity, spending, video gaming, alcohol an...
Article
Full-text available
Gambling motives and cognitive distortions are thought to be associated because both coping and financial motives to gamble appear to be predictors of gambling related cognitive distortions. Therefore, there is an argument to be made that gambling motives, cognitive distortions, and materialism share common attributes and might be related to proble...
Article
Research question The business of sport has been radically challenged by the COVID-19 pandemic, impelling a rapid reassessment of practices to survive the disruption. One stakeholder comprehensively impacted has been the media, whose investments in augmenting sport’s commercial appeal have been immense. The media will need to rethink their strategi...
Article
Old age constitutes a vulnerable stage for developing gambling-related problems. The aims of the study were to identify patterns of gambling habits in elderly participants from the general population, and to assess socio-demographic and clinical variables related to the severity of the gambling behaviours. The sample included N = 361 participants a...
Article
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Gambling disorder, gambling-related cognitive biases, compulsive buying, and materialistic values lead to impaired functioning in important areas of life. The aims of the present longitudinal study are (1) to evaluate the change produced after one year in those mentioned variables and (2) to examine the gender role in these changes and to analyze t...
Article
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Background: Serious games have shown positive results in increasing motivation, adherence to treatment and strengthening the therapeutic alliance in multiple psychiatric disorders. In particular, patients with impulse control disorders and other disorders in which the patient suffers from inhibitory control deficits (e.g., behavioral addictions) ha...
Article
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Background and aims Sports betting has been barely explored independently from other gambling behaviors. Little evidence is available regarding the factors affecting its severity in a clinical sample. The current study explores new determinants for sports betting severity in Spain by the inclusion of psychopathological distress and personality fact...
Article
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Objetivos. Aproximarse a los problemas específicos de las mujeres con trastorno de juego online desde la perspectiva de género. Material y Método. Estudio cualitativo realizado en 2019 mediante 10 grupos de discusión formados por pacientes en tratamiento y profesionales. Seis grupos fueron con pacientes mayores de edad en tratamiento por juego onli...
Article
Older subjects are susceptible to develop gambling problems, and researchers have attempted to assess the mechanisms underlying the gambling profile in later life. The objective of this study was to identify the main stressful life events (SLE) across the lifespan which have discriminative capacity for detecting the presence of gambling disorder (G...
Article
Tipsters are sports betting experts that offer recommendations concerning betting opportunities, usually in exchange for money. With the growth of online sports betting, tipsters have become more accessible via social media. However, it remains unknown whether tipsters might have an impact on sports bettors experiencing gambling problems. In the pr...
Article
People with gambling disorder (GD) often experience co-occurring addictive behaviors, especially at young ages. This paper aims at examining cognitive biases, emotion dysregulation, and coping strategies in people with and without GD, as well as comparing the comorbid addictions profiles of those in clinical versus community-based sites. A sample f...
Article
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Significant increasing prevalences have been observed in gambling disorder (GD) in the last decades. This study analyzed the underlying mechanisms of the gambling severity with path analysis (implemented through Structural Equation Modeling, SEM), and assessed the potential moderator effect of the patients’ sex. A sample of n = 512 treatment-seekin...
Article
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Gambling disorder not only affects those who suffer from it but also has consequences for their families. Considering such repercussions are often understudied, and the aim of the present study was to evaluate the main differences between family members of people with gambling disorder (GDFMs) and those with no relatives diagnosed with gambling dis...
Article
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Betting on sport is one of the fastest developing forms of gambling internationally. Sports betting is attracting considerable scholarly, media, and regulatory attention due to the cultural salience of sport, and the rising public health concerns about the rapid proliferation and penetration of betting products in everyday life. Despite its global...
Article
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Participation in gambling is rising in older adults. Indeed, in the coming years, engagement in gambling as a social activity is expected to increase more sharply in the elderly than in any other age group. Due to their exposure to powerful age-specific risk factors such as isolation, inactivity and failing health, older people are highly vulnerabl...
Article
Full-text available
Sports betting products rely upon a balance between their knowledge and chance based structural characteristics. The emphasis by bookmakers on mastering the knowledge-based elements to become winners poses significant challenges for those seeking help for gambling disorder. Bettors find difficulties in integrating their preconceptions about the rol...
Article
The potential dangers of internet-based gambling as compared with more traditional land-based gambling have been increasingly investigated over the past decade. The general consensus appears to be that although internet gambling might not be a more dangerous medium for gambling per se, the 24/7 availability it generates for problem gamblers, howeve...
Article
Objective The comorbidity between gambling disorder (GD) and buying-shopping disorder (BSD) has led to explore the core features that could be interacting between them. The main aim of this study was to examine the differences in both conditions considering emotion dysregulation, coping and materialism, as well as the relationship between these var...
Article
Full-text available
Background and Objectives The Internet provides easy access to multiple types of gambling and has led to changes in betting habits. A severe rise in problematic gambling has been predicted among all sectors of the population, and studies are required to assess the emerging phenotypes related to the new structures of gambling activities. This study...
Article
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The use of instruments originally developed for measuring gambling activity in younger populations may not be appropriate in older age individuals. The aim of this study was to examine the presence of problematic and disordered gambling in seniors aged 50 or over, and study the reliability and validity properties of the SOGS (a screening measure to...
Article
Background: There are no studies based on a person-centered approach addressing sex-related differences in the characteristics of treatment-seeking patients with gambling disorder (GD). The main objective of the current study is to identify empirical clusters of GD based on several measures of the severity of gambling behavior, and considering the...
Chapter
Within the framework of the work carried out by the University of Deusto (http://www.deusto.es/) on the social impact of research, a series of research projects with high potential for social impact are selected annually, and from these, the so-called Deusto Social Impact Briefings (DSIB) are prepared and published as short monographs. They are aim...
Book
Full-text available
Within the framework of the work carried out by the University of Deusto (http://www.deusto.es/) on the social impact of research, a series of research projects with high potential for social impact are selected annually, and from these, the so-called Deusto Social Impact Briefings (DSIB) are prepared and published as short monographs. They are aim...
Article
Full-text available
With the adoption and popularization of internet-based platforms, sports betting has introduced new functionalities that transform the design of its products and therefore the way bettors interact with them. This study aims to explore the association between the use of new structural characteristics of online betting and gambling severity. Five cha...
Article
The saturation of advertising stimuli to gamble has become a major source of concern in many countries, especially when it comes to sports betting. Despite the growth of advertising restrictions, very few evidence-based recommendations are readily available for policymakers. Furthermore, advertising is a cultural construct, and country-specific stu...
Article
Full-text available
Resumen: La proliferación en nuestra día a día de los reclamos para jugar por dinero ha conseguido instaurar la idea de que el juego patológico está en aumento. Sin embargo, ¿es realmente cierto que haya aumentado la prevalencia de la adicción al juego a nivel poblacional? Este artículo repasa la evidencia científica disponible para aclarar esta cu...
Book
Full-text available
Guía para docentes universitarios/as sobre cómo detectar y afrontar en el aula los casos de juego problemático en sus alumnos/as
Chapter
La irrupción global del juego por internet durante la primera década del siglo XXI, y en concreto para el caso español, la regulación del sector a partir del año 2011, han supuesto un aumento de la participación de los jóvenes en el juego. Según datos de la Dirección General de la Ordenación del Juego (DGOJ), el ente dependiente del Ministerio de H...
Article
Full-text available
The way society perceives problem gambling, and its effects on how problem gamblers perceive themselves have significant consequences on the wellbeing of people experiencing gambling disorder. Associated with social perception, stigma and other social perception-related features have an impact on the way problem gamblers identify themselves, seek f...
Article
Research question: The proliferation of marketing stimuli to gamble on sports is a growing concern in many jurisdictions. However, little is known about the perceived influence of marketing among the most severe group of problem gamblers (i.e. those receiving treatment). This study aims to explore how problem sports bettors perceive gambling market...
Article
Gambling, video gaming, and Internet use are typically included as everyday activities that could potentially become behavioral addictions. There is growing evidence that views non‐substance related addictions as coping mechanisms, and considers that attachment styles are likely to play a pivotal role on the development of such addictions, especial...
Article
This article focuses upon two contexts which have arguably received the most academic and media attention with regard to the interconnection between sport and secessionist nationalism, Scotland and Catalonia, given that both “submerged nations” have held public referenda on the topic of independence/secession from the states of the United Kingdom a...
Article
It has been generally argued that, despite the emergence and wide adoption of second screen devices (SSD) as ancillary tools, television screens continue to be the medium of choice for watching live sport. In this article, however, we maintain that a transition of SSD to first screen status is already underway. First, we dispute that SSD content an...
Article
Fans watching live sport events, both mediated or in stadia, have witnessed an increase in sports betting products. Most of these products feature in-play betting, that is, the ability to bet on a game once it has started while watching it. In-play betting has raised many concerns among responsible gambling advocates due to its perceived relationsh...
Technical Report
Full-text available
Informe final sobre el perfil del apostante deportivo en España y la influencia que la publicidad y promociones tienen en su conducta de juego problemático.
Article
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Background and aims: The Problem Gambling Severity Index (PGSI) is one of the most widely used screening tools for problem gambling (PG). However, to date, no empirically validated adaptation of the instrument to Spanish-speaking countries exists. Methods: A sample of 659 sports bettors (Mage = 35.1 years, SD = 10.12, 74.2% males) were recruited...
Article
Full-text available
The legalisation of online gambling in multiple territories has caused a growth in the exposure of consumers to online sports betting (OSB) advertising. While some efforts have been made to understand the visible structure of betting promotional messages, little is known about the latent components of OSB advertisements. The present study sought to...
Article
Full-text available
Environmental stimuli in the form of marketing inducements to gamble money on sports have increased in recent years. The purpose of the present paper is to tackle the extended definition of the gamblification of sport using sponsorship and partnership deals of gambling, forex trading, and fantasy gaming as a proxy for assessing its environmental im...
Article
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The prevalence of sports betting advertising has become a major concern for gambling regulators, particularly since the legalization of online gambling in many European jurisdictions. Although the composition of gambling advertisement narratives has received some limited attention, nothing is known regarding how betting advertisements (often referr...
Article
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Background Risky behaviors have been related to emotional regulation and attachment, which may constitute risk factors for developing an addictive behavior. However, there may also be differences between substance and non-substance-related addictions. Aims This study aimed to examine the relationship of emotional regulation and attachment, with su...
Article
Full-text available
The retweet overlap network (RON) method has proved to be successful in quantifying the distances between political parties in multiparty democracies. These distances are frequently used in political science to explain the formation of coalitions and governments. This article explores how data collected from Twitter can be related to ideological si...
Article
Full-text available
Background and aims Recent technological developments have brought about notable changes in the way people gamble. The widespread use of mobile Internet devices and gambling websites has led to a significant leap in the number of people who recreationally gamble. However, for some, gambling can turn into a psychiatric disorder resembling substance...
Article
Sports betting advertising has arguably permeated contemporary sport consumption in many countries. Advertisements build narratives that represent situations and characters that normalize betting behaviour and raise public concerns regarding their detrimental effect on vulnerable groups. Adopting a grounded theory approach, the present study examin...
Article
Full-text available
La fragmentación de la audiencia junto con otros factores ha provocado que las cifras de audiencia disminuyan en la mayoría de las cadenas de televisión. En un nuevo contexto en el que hay que reconsiderar lo que es una buena cuota de audiencia, el contenido deportivo destaca como el último antídoto contra la fragmentación de la audiencia. Metodolo...
Article
The pervasiveness of sports betting marketing and advertising is arguably normalising betting behaviour among increasingly larger groups of population. In their adverts, bookmakers represent characters and situations that conventionalise betting and promote specific behaviours while ignoring others. The present study examined a sample of British an...
Article
Gambling disorder is known to have a negatively detrimental impact on affected individual’s physical and psychological health, social relationships, and finances. Via remote technologies (e.g., Internet, mobile phones, and interactive television), gambling has come out of gambling venues and has brought the potential for online gambling to occur an...
Article
CashOut is a feature offered on single and multiple bets on various sports including horse-racing (both win and each way), football and golf. CashOut gives you the opportunity to settle your bet early at the value displayed, without having to wait for the event to finish. The amount you are offered to CashOut is based on your original bet, the stat...
Article
In this article, online sports betting is explored with the objective of critically examining the potential impact on problem gambling of the emerging product features and advertising techniques used to market it. First, the extent of the issue is assessed by reviewing the sports betting prevalence rates and its association with gambling disorders,...
Article
The future of sport broadcasting is uniquely positioned between the analogue paradigm of long-standing television broadcast networks and the digital prototype of agile new entrants. Juxtaposed between the two, sport consumers are being marshalled into digital enclosures for efficient commodification. In this article, we map the collision and the di...
Chapter
Gambling disorder is known to have a negatively detrimental impact on affected individual’s physical and psychological health, social relationships, and finances. Via remote technologies (e.g., Internet, mobile phones, and interactive television), gambling has come out of gambling venues and has brought the potential for online gambling to occur an...
Article
Betting on sports via online platforms has rapidly become a popular form of gambling in many countries. Despite the growing body of research investigating the psychosocial and individual psychological factors determining gambling behaviour, much less attention has been devoted to understanding the market characteristics of online sports betting and...
Article
Full-text available
The aim of this study was to explore the intersection between Medium Theory (MT) and Third-Person Effect (TPE) and evaluate how the research on MT can further our knowledge of the TPE. The study has proven that the perceptual hypothesis of the TPE is confirmed in different media contents and across media types (TV and the Internet) and that media t...
Article
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Introduction. This paper analyzes several Spanish TV news about sexuality, gender, religion and interculturality to explore how these news are interpreted by audiences and experts. Methodology. We have used three complementary methods. First, we have conducted a critical discourse analysis (CDA) of different sexual, religious and intercultural iden...
Article
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Introducción. En esta investigación se analizan distintas noticias sobre sexualidad, género, religión e interculturalidad en televisiones españolas. Metodología. Se realiza un análisis del discurso de las distintas identidades enmarcadas en las mencionadas categorías. A continuación, en distintos grupos discusión se analizan las interpretaciones qu...
Article
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La tecnociencia, la tecnocultura y la tecnocracia son procesos convergentes que definen la era contemporánea. Todos ellos están construidos sobre una ideología que presenta a la tecnología no como un medio sino como un fin, una realidad autosuficiente para mejorar la realidad, que resta poder de acción al ser humano. Partiendo de estos conceptos, e...
Article
This article explores the intersections between sports bodies, media companies and gambling industries in European football. While betting, communication and sport have maintained an ongoing relationship for over two centuries, this article argues that the digitalisation of betting platforms has reconfigured the links between the traditional act...
Article
In recent years, social networking sites (SNS) have become enormously popular, in particular microblogging sites such as Twitter. Twitter is nowadays one of the most used SNS for social, economic and political communication. Drawing on well-known characteristics of social networks and human behavior, i.e. the homophilic behavior of individuals, the...
Article
Full-text available
Since Davison (1983) proposed the hypothesis regarding the Third-Person Effect (TPE), it has been widely accepted by researchers in communication. The objective of this study is to test both perceptual and behavioral components of TPE in Spain related to media in general, violent, pornographic, and trash TV shows (in particular, the TV show Sálvame...
Article
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Marca Community is arguably one of the most popular online sports communities in Spain with over 400,000 members. In its forum, users can comment on the news published by the sport-based newspapers Marca while interacting with other members. Drawing on the existing literature on virtual communities, this study empirically examines the engagement in...
Article
Full-text available
El artículo presenta una aproximación teórica para entender la transformación que los medios de comunicación han provocado en el deporte moderno profesional y, más concretamente, explora el llamado proceso de comodificación que en las últimas décadas ha convertido al deporte en un producto apto para el consumo de audiencias globales. Se proponen pa...
Article
User-generated content management poses a challenge to the media. It requires professional handling in order to facilitate user engagement and avoid verbal aggression. To illustrate this point, the article examines the comments posted to the online edition of Marca, the major Spanish sports newspaper. Empirical assessments of the data alongside int...
Article
The aim of this article is to examine the way readers who participate in the comments section of online sports newspapers produce hate speech toward the medium. The research focuses on the Marca sport-based online community in Spain, in the context of the Real Madrid vs. FC Barcelona rivalry. The article explores the medium's quandary between allow...
Article
In the last century, professional sport has experienced a process of standardization that has favoured the development of its two most recent characteristics: the quantification and the pursuit of records, as Guttmann exposed in From Ritual to Record (1978). This article reflects on the ramifications that those characteristics have had in the sport...
Article
Full-text available
In recent years online participation has become an essential object of study in research conducted into the new media. This participation of the individual citizen not only attracts the attention of researchers, but it is also a unique opportunity for many organizations to form virtual communities of users. This paper presents the development of a...