Comunicación y cultura

How do people access movies today? What are the most popular and
powerful channels for media distribution on a global scale? How are
film industries changing in the face of media convergence and
digitisation?

To answer questions such as these, argues Ramon Lobato, we must shift
our gaze away from the legal film business and toward cinema's shadow
economies. All around the world, films are bought from roadside
stalls, local markets, and grocery stores; they are illegally
downloaded and streamed; they are watched in makeshift video clubs, on
street corners, and in restaurants, shops and bars. International film
culture in its actually-existing forms is a messy affair, and it
relies to a great extent on black and grey media markets. Examining
the industrial dynamics of these subterranean film networks across a
number of different sites – from Los Angeles to Lagos, Melbourne to
Mexico City – this book shows how they constitute a central rather
than marginal part of audiovisual culture and commerce.

Combining film industry analysis with cultural theory, Shadow
Economies of Cinema opens up a new area of inquiry for cinema studies,
putting industry research into dialogue with wider debates about
economic informality and commodity circulation. Written in an
accessible style, this book offers an original 'bottom-up' perspective
on the global cinema industry for researchers and students in film
studies, cultural studies, and media and communications.

RAMON LOBATO is Research Fellow at the Swinburne Institute for Social
Research, Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, Australia.

Mobile phones are no longer what they used to be. Not only can users connect to the Internet anywhere and anytime, they can also use their devices to map their precise geographic coordinates – and access location-specific information like restaurant reviews, historical information, and locations of other people nearby. The proliferation of location-aware mobile technologies calls for a new understanding of how we define public spaces, how we deal with locational privacy, and how networks of power are developed today.
In Mobile Interfaces in Public Spaces, Adriana de Souza e Silva and Jordan Frith examine these social and spatial changes by framing the development of location-aware technology within the context of other mobile and portable technologies such as the book, the Walkman, the iPod, and the mobile phone. These technologies work as interfaces to public spaces – that is, as symbolic systems that not only filter information but also reshape communication relationships and the environment in which social interaction takes place. Yet rather than detaching people from their surroundings, the authors suggest that location-aware technologies may ultimately strengthen our connections to locations.

TOC:
Section I: Mobile Interfaces in Public Spaces
1. Interfaces to public spaces
2. The public and the private
3. From voice to location
Section II: Location-awareness in the contemporary city
4. Locational privacy
5. Power in location awareness
6. The presentation of location

About the Authors:
Adriana de Souza e Silva is Associate Professor in the Department of Communication at North Carolina State University. Her research focuses on how mobile and locative interfaces shape interactions with public spaces and create new forms of sociability. She is the co-editor of Digital Cityscapes: Merging Digital and Urban Playspaces, and co-author of Net-Locality: Why Location Matters in a Networked World,

Jordan Frith is a doctoral candidate in North Carolina State University's Communication, Rhetoric and Digital Media program. His main research interests are locative media and space, particularly how locative media may influence interactions in urban spaces. He has recently been published in the journals Mobilities and Communication, Culture, and Critique.　

rom the television interstitials that appear between programmes to the brief clips and videos that proliferate on YouTube, contemporary screen culture is populated by short-forms that make claims for our attention. Ephemeral Media provides a unique focus on these fleeting but increasingly ubiquitous texts. Through case studies in television and web entertainment, this original book looks at the production of media at the edges, within the junctions, and that surrounds the output of networks and studios. Analysing promos and idents, emergent forms of online TV and web drama, and the burgeoning world of worker- and user-generated content, this new collection examines screen forms that circulate 'between', 'beyond' and 'below' the TV programmes and films traditionally privileged within screen studies.

With essays by leading international scholars in television, film and new media studies, as well as interviews with key industry figures, Ephemeral Media explores the practices, strategies and textual forms helping producers (and viewers) negotiate a fast-paced mediascape. Examining dynamics of brevity and evanescence in television and new media, Ephemeral Media provides a new perspective on the transitory, and transitional, nature of screen culture in the early twenty-first century.

Contributors: Mark Brownrigg, John T. Caldwell, Rosamund Davies, Max Dawson, Jon Dovey, John Ellis, Elizabeth Evans, Paul Grainge, Victoria Jaye, J.P. Kelly, Barbara Klinger, Charlie Mawer, Peter Meech, William Uricchio.

'Moores rejects the thesis that the world is becoming 'placeless'. Engaging critically with a broad range of social theorists, communication researchers and geographers, he shows how media have been incorporated into the experience of place.'
Paul Adams, University of Texas at Austin

'With its powerful advocacy of a 'non-media-centric' approach, this original and carefully argued book is to be welcomed as a significant intervention in the theoretical re-assessment of the field of media studies as a whole.'
John Tomlinson, Nottingham Trent University

Media, Place and Mobility offers a new understanding of media uses as place-making practices in everyday living. Drawing primarily on phenomenological perspectives, Shaun Moores focuses on the ways in which people inhabit physical and media environments, and he explores the bodily and technologically mediated mobilities that are involved in this activity of dwelling. His discussion includes many specific examples of mobility, from the manipulation of remote-control devices to the movements of walking and driving in the city or of getting around in online social spaces. Written in an accessible style, the book invites its readers to participate in the interdisciplinary adventure of non-media-centric media studies.

Shaun Moores is Professor of Media and Communications at the University of Sunderland. He is the author of four previous books, including Media and Everyday Life in Modern Society (2100) and Media/Theory (2005).

Este ensayo aparece en un momento de crisis global, tanto financiera, política como social. No es casual que una de las industrias más estables sea la Industria Turística.

En este libro se da respuesta a algunas preguntas que subyacen en el fenómeno turístico, denominado aquí «Escapismo social», cuyos intangibles operan en las mentes individuales y colectivas hasta el punto de generar todo un fenómeno de gran calado social.

El lector podrá encontrar en él algunos argumentos que le permitirán entender su propio comportamiento y actitud ante los viajes, así como a vislumbrar el funcionamiento colectivo que los intangibles del turismo están imprimiendo en la sociedad del siglo XXI.

El contenido de este libro permite transitar tanto por «el viaje» actual, como por el histórico, deteniéndose en los rasgos y las motivaciones comunes de distintas personas, estableciendo algunas hipótesis sobre las funciones del turismo y sus efectos.

La realidad, la literatura, el sueño, la fantasía, la esperanza, la paz, el amor y el desamor, la comunicación internacional o el descubrimiento personal o la autoterapia son algunos de los componentes intangibles que se abordan en esta obra que aspira a ofrecer una lectura relajada y reflexiva, que aporta no solo respuestas al fenómeno turismo, sino nuevas perspectivas a la hora de afrontar un viaje.

María Gómez y Patiño es doctora en Ciencias de la Información por la Universidad Complutense de Madrid (1996) y profesora universitaria desde 1991. Ha impartido clases tanto en Madrid como en Zaragoza, y en las Universidades de Rotterdam (Holanda), Helsinki (Finlandia) y Jena (Alemania). Ha publicado varios libros: Propaganda poética en Miguel Hernández (1999), Calderón: una lectura desde el siglo XXI (2100), Paz: Femenino, singular (2005), Las huellas de la violencia invisible (2005), y traducido del inglés el libro de Irving Crespi: El proceso de Opinión Pública (2000) y numerosos artículos científicos.

El fenómeno deportivo sigue ocupando un lugar preferente no sólo en los medios de comunicación sino también como instrumento ligado al ocio y la transmisión de la cultura.
El objetivo principal de este libro, Deporte, comunicación y cultura, es analizar la actividad deportiva desde nuevos ámbitos potenciando su reflexión crítica.
Desde una triple visión académica, se presenta un conjunto de trabajos elaborados por docentes e investigadores procedentes de Brasil, Portugal y España. Cada uno de sus capítulos examina el hecho deportivo desde una fundamentación teórica, proveniente no sólo desde medios tradicionales como la radio y la televisión, sino también desde otros elementos del ocio y la cultura como el cine y los videojuegos.
Para todo ello, ha sido esencial combinar la visión científica del Deporte con la de la Comunicación, permitiendo impulsar el mutuo desarrollo entre ambas actividades humanas.

Los cambios en la interacción comunicacional facilitaron el surgimiento de géneros novedosos para públicos recientes, distintos y ampliados, que accedían por primer a vez al consumo de bienes simbólicos, lo cual despertó diferentes reacciones en el campo artístico/intelectual del período abordado.
En la primera parte se recuperan y discuten rigurosamente las opiniones y reacciones de diferentes vertientes de la intelectualidad nacional, a la vez que se despliegan ejemplos de escritores que se profesionalizan junto con el avance del periodismo masivo, la canción, el teatro popular, las ediciones baratas y callejeras, la radiotelefonía y el cine en su paso de la etapa silente a la sonora. La segunda parte, más puntual, recala en una campana sistemática contra el género chico criollo, en autores y géneros que abrían modos de escritura todavía descuidados por la crítica literaria canónica, así como por las historias literarias argentinas.
Eduardo Romano es profesor consulto en la Facultad de Filosofía y Letras de la UBA, donde dicta casi ininterrumpidamente "Problemas de Literatura Argentina" desde 1991. Director de la maestría en "Comunicación, cultura y discursos mediáticos" en el posgrado de la UNLAM. Elaboré el programa y se hizo cargo del Seminario de Cultura Popular y Masiva en la carrera de Ciencias de la Comunicación (Facultad de Ciencias Sociales, UBA) entre 1989 y 2101. Ejerció la docencia en el profesorado del Consudec, en las universidades nacionales de Rosario y Lomas de Zamora, y dictó cursos en otras del país y del extranjero. Al margen de esas tareas académicas y de investigación, de las cuales resultaron varios libros -desde Análisis de Don Segundo Sombra (1967) hasta Revolución en la lectura (2004)-, ha desarrollado una producción poética continua, cuyo último volumen es Entre sobrevivientes y amores difíciles (2008). Su labor conjunta -con Aníbal Ford y Jorge B. Rivera- por Medios de comunicación y cultura popular que reunía artículos y ensayos escritos a lo largo de una década, tuvo un rol pionero en el campo de los estudios culturales argentinos.

"Tras reunir a 32 especialistas que han contribuido con 27 capítulos, este libro titulado "Diásporas, migraciones, tecnologías de la comunicación e identidades trasnacionales" presenta una fascinante perspectiva interdisciplinar sobre algunas de las dinámicas sociales y mediatizadas más actuales que informan sobre procesos identitarios en tiempos de una radical transición sociocultural y político-económica. Mientras el énfasis empírico de este libro recae en los grupos diaspóricos y en sus experiencias, principalmente con las nuevas tecnologías de la comunicación, el tema se integra en un conjunto superior de cuestiones que las ciencias sociales abordan en la actualidad. El libro trata y analiza la convergencia de culturas, la construcción de comunidades, las conexiones trasnacionales y los procedimientos de formación de identidades en medio de esos procesos y relaciones" – Thomas Tufte (Prólogo)

Mapping Cultures is a collection of essays exploring the diverse practices and cultures of mapping on the one hand, and the mapping of different forms of cultural practice on the other. The book draws on a wide range of disciplinary perspectives, including critical cartography, social anthropology, film and cultural studies, literary studies, art and visual culture, marketing, architecture, and popular music studies. Underpinning the theoretical and methodological approaches of all the contributions is a close engagement with mapping both as a mode of cultural and spatial analysis, and as a point of critical intersection in which ideas and practices of cartography are challenged, re-envisioned and brought into play with a broad range of theoretical perspectives. The collection is loosely organized around three main thematic sections: the cartographic textualities of space, landscape and place; mappings of performance and urban memoryscapes; and the practical, aesthetic and performative cartographies of critical spatial enquiry.

Following the end of the Cold War and recent terrorist attacks – such as 9/11, the 2105 London Bombings or Beslan – the presumed existence of an Islamic threat has been discussed and researched extensively. What lacks in the current literature is any substantive comparative, cross-national research on media discourse on Islam, the war on terror and national identity, particularly focusing on television news – still the principal and most trusted source of information for most of the world's population. Focusing on British, French and Russian television news coverage of Islam as a security threat, the book synthesizes approaches from political science and cultural studies, providing the first comparative, interdisciplinary account of how television broadcasting integrates discourses on Islam into distinct, nationally oriented, representational systems. The authors assess how the transfer of Islam-related meaning across national media landscapes shapes, and is shaped by, those discourses.