Comunicación y cultura

Si alguien aduce que neolenguas hay muchas, habrá que aceptarlo de buen grado. Saltará pronto a la vista, con todo, que la que en estas páginas nos interesa es la más vulgar de las neolenguas, aquella que, de carácter políticamente manipulador, y no sórdidamente tecnocrático, obedece a un objetivo preciso: el de evitar que comprendamos lo que ocurre por detrás de las palabras ocultadoras que emplea o, al menos, el de conseguir que percibamos los hechos con lentes llamativamente distorsionadoras. En la trastienda se ha impuesto la certeza de que las grandes mentiras son mucho más fáciles de imponer que las mentirijillas.

Para melhor compreender as dinâmicas que os jovens, muito em particular os portugueses, evidenciam em relação à participação e ao jornalismo – tentando escapar às visões reducionistas que meramente apontam para um afastamento –, lançámo-nos no desafio de melhor perceber os contextos de ação, os seus moldes e os seus propósitos. Estas matérias foram alvo de reflexão através de um estudo de caso longitudinal (2110-2012), realizado com 35 jovens com formas de participação diferenciadas, na intensidade e na diversidade, e com distintas proveniências sociais, culturais e económicas.

O corpus permitiu melhor apreender e compreender contextos específicos e chegar a perfis quanto ao consumo de notícias (inclusive de política) e quanto à participação.

As tipologias apontam para uma realidade complexa, em que são marcantes os fatores familiares, os contextos sociais mais vastos e a vontade individual.

O Prefácio é assinado por Peter Dahlgren, professor emérito da Universidade de Lund, na Suécia, e um dos mais conceituados estudiosos das dinâmicas do jornalismo e das culturas cívicas, muito em especial entre os jovens.

Frames of Memory makes an important intervention into the emerging body of scholarship surrounding the culture and politics of the post-9/11 world. Bond provides a sweeping analysis of American memorial culture after 11 September, examining the ways in which diverse modes of commemoration, from Acts of Congress to museum exhibits, the military commissions at Guantánamo Bay to the corpus of 9/11 trauma fiction, have adhered to delimiting templates of remembrance that present an artificial impression of a unified American response to the attacks. In so doing, the book poses a series of urgent questions about the ethical and political factors at stake in the work of memory, asking why, and with what consequences, commemoration becomes an ideological endeavour; in what ways the academic discipline of memory studies influences contemporary memorial practice, and vice versa; what it means to seek justice for the dead; and how we might open the exceptionalist and exclusionary culture of memory surrounding 9/11 to a more diverse, globally oriented engagement with the recent past.

Media, Myth and Terrorism provides a rigorous case study of Blitz mythology in British newspaper responses to the July 7th bombings. Considering how the press, politicians and members of the public were caught up in popular accounts of Britain's past, Kelsey explores the ideological battleground that took place in the weeks following the bombings as the myth of the Blitz was invoked. By providing conceptual discussions of myth, discourse, and ideology, Kelsey proposes a discourse-mythological framework designed for analysing discursive constructions of mythology. In doing so, this research considers multiple recontextualisations of the Blitz myth when popular memories of 1941 recurred in 2005. Kelsey encourages readers to understand the politics of remembering by showing how popular yet inaccurate stories from the past have a significant impact on our perceptions of the present. Heroism, trauma, economics, royalty, rituals, human rights, foreign policy, immigration and multiculturalism are just some of the topics covered across a vast landscape of stories embracing a myth from the past in order to understand the present.

The environment is part of everyone's life, but the degree to which there is public disagreement and uncertainty about issues like climate change shows that there are difficulties in communicating these complex environmental problems to a lay audience. There are also further challenges in moving from communication to instigating actual behaviour change in this audience. In The Psychology of Pro-Environmental Communication, Christian Klöckner defines environmental communication and provides a comprehensive and up-to-date summary of the possibilities and limitations involved. This book draws on psychological theories as well as empirical findings to illustrate the links that can be made between environmental, social, cognitive, and marketing psychologies; communication theory and real life examples. Bringing together the research in environmental psychology and environmental communication, this book highlights established and innovative intervention techniques that can be used to improve and encourage pro-environmental behaviour.

A tool kit, done in A–Z form, for understanding the world around us through the way we design and use things. Covering subjects that range from authenticity to Grand Theft Auto to Dieter Rams, Deyan Sudjic’s latest book has been called "a master class in musing on modern design." Though it is organized in A–Z format, it is not a dictionary or an encyclopedia in the strictest sense. Rather, it is an essential tool kit for understanding the world through emblematic examples, both historic and contemporary, from the field of design. In stand-alone chapters, Sudjic explores concepts as a whole, specific movements, or specific objects and people. The result is a kaleidoscopic view of the profound way in which design—both good and bad—has colored the modern world and influenced our interactions with popular culture. Woven throughout are surprisingly nostalgic remembrances and intensely personal perspectives on a life in design by someone who clearly lives and breathes it. Sudjic demonstrates not only a passion for the subject, but also an ability to illuminate what is most inspiring and intriguing about the way we create.

While the term «public intellectual» has been used to describe scholars who seek to share their re-search with the public, little work has been done to examine the role of a public intellectual in the field of education. This book builds upon the notion of the public intellectual in a way that makes the term more accessible, using it to refer to education scholars who seek to share their research outside of academia. Media coverage of educational issues is rife with self-appointed experts on education who have claimed space in public discussions to define educational problems and dominate public dialogues on education. But where are the education researchers in these academic dialogues? This book addresses their absence, sharing the stories of scholars who are seeking to enter public dialogues and reclaim space for reasoned dialogue on education. The stories of public scholars highlighted here acknowledge that the policymaking arena is teeming with value conflicts that can lead to dismissing or ignoring research if it does not fit with political agendas.

What does online community look like in the age of social networking? How do participatory culture platforms reflect both their designers’ intentions and the desires of their users? In this incisive and timely work, Adrienne L. Massanari discusses how culture is created and challenged on Reddit.com, the self-proclaimed «front page of the internet». Reddit enables the sharing of original and reposted content from around the web, and provides a platform for like-minded individuals to commune around topics of interest – everything from the joys of drinking beer in a shower (/r/showerbeer) to celebrating the pleasures of tidy penmanship (/r/penmanshipporn). Massanari’s ethnographic work provides a detailed examination of the contradictions that shape Reddit’s culture and how they reflect its role as an epicenter of geek culture. The book explores the ways in which community on Reddit is formed and solidified through play and humor, and the complex ways in which Redditors come together, which demonstrate a deep capacity for altruism and charitable giving, but can easily lapse into mob action. It also explores the community’s troubling gender and racial politics and how some Redditors are carving out their own space on the site to fight back.

Guía práctica para hacer de la comunicación un elemento efectivo para organizar y dirigir todos los esfuerzos que permitan un mayor y mejor conocimiento de las Organizaciones Solidarias para lograr una mejor aproximación y retroalimentación con todos los públicos a los que se dirigen

Se muestra el papel crucial y a veces inesperado que desempeñan los medios de comunicación en la literatura española contemporanea, papel cuyas dimensiones antropológicas, historico-cultural y estética trata de reconstruir el presente volumen.