Barakaldo, Bizkaia, 1977. Merchán holds a Ph.D. in Journalism with international mention from the University of the Basque Country. He has been a professor since 2016 at the Faculty of Social Sciences and Communication. In addition, he has developed his predoctoral research work at the Central European University of Budapest (2012) and postdoctoral at the University of Buenos Aires (2020). He has been visiting professor at Università di Siena (2021), Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (2005), Universidad de Deusto (2017), Mondragon Unibertsitatea (2016) and Universidad de Cantabria (2006).

In his professional stage, he was the author of the launch and development of Consumer.es, according to OJD, the fifth digital media with the largest audience in Spain. Subsequently, he became responsible for the distribution company Eroski on the Internet, product manager in the startup of computational linguistics Semantix, and the audiovisual production company manager for the Internet Soda.tv. Besides, he founded the corporate communications consultancy Sarean Sar and re-founded the Bilbao beer company La Salve.

Member of the research group Bitartez, his research work focuses on reducing social exclusion and promoting equality through communication in digital environments.

ORCID: 0000-0001-9213-4759

Gender, cyberjournalism, digital divide, branded content.

• Castell, C. T., Merchan, I., & González, M. J. C. (2021). Las salas de prensa virtual como herramientas de Relaciones Públicas para la comunicación con los medios en Cuba: un estado de la cuestión. Revista Internacional de Relaciones Públicas, 11(22), 5-26.
• Mardaras, L. I., González, M. J. C., Peñín, L. M., Merchan, I., & Illera, A. E. (2020). El reto de la igualdad en la formación universitaria en Comunicación. De la concienciación a la capacitación en perspectiva de género1. Estudios sobre el mensaje periodístico, (26), 1433-1444.
• Illera, A. E., Merchan, I., & Larruskain, N. V. (2018). El" Social Big Data": una oportunidad empresarial y laboral. Estudios sobre el Mensaje Periodistico, 24(2), 1213.
• Cuesta, J. J. G., Azkarate, T. A., & Merchan, I. (2018). Los estudiantes de periodismo ante el mercado laboral. Emprender para poder trabajar. In Perfiles actuales en la información y en los informadores (pp. 95-104). Tecnos.

• Bitartez (IT1081-16). Consolidated research group (type A) of the Basque university system
• Research lines:
  • Media, corporations and the public
  • Profiles and skills of communication professionals.
  • Gender, communication and teaching