Sociología de la comunicación

El concepto democracia se ha convertido recientemente en un verdadero trending topic —tema del momento— no solo en el espacio 2.1 sino también en el conjunto de la esfera pública y de la teoría política que se pregunta por su situación actual, sus problemas y sus cambios más recientes. En una era mar­ca­da por el creciente distanciamiento entre la ciudadanía y la cla­se política, por las movilizaciones ciudadanas y por la incer­ti­dumbre, el autor examina algunas dinámicas transfor­madoras que afectan a la democracia como resultado de la aparición de nue­­vas formas de participación ciudadana. Unas dinámi­cas que se consolidan, al menos en parte, debido a la expan­si­ón y a un uso determinado de las posibilidades que ofrece la nueva ga­la­xia mediática. En el presente libro se profundiza, en concreto, en el concepto de democracia monitorizada, propuesto por John Keane, como una noción capaz de explicar estos procesos transformadores así como de contextualizar fenómenos como las filtraciones llevadas a cabo por Wikileaks o el reciente movi­miento 15-M. Acontecimientos que ocupan un lugar especial en esta breve obra.

Research consistently shows how through the years more of our time gets spent using media, how multitasking our media has become a regular feature of everyday life, and that consuming media for most people increasingly takes place alongside producing media.
Media Life is a primer on how we may think of our lives as lived in rather than with media. The book uses the way media function today as a prism to understand key issues in contemporary society, where reality is open source, identities are – like websites – always under construction, and where private life is lived in public forever more.
Ultimately, media are to us as water is to fish. The question is: how can we live a good life in media like fish in water? Media Life offers a compass for the way ahead.

Book Synopsis:
Sociologists can learn a lot from studying a group’s media consumption patterns. In this study, Ogunyemi researches what stories are most resonant with Black Africans living in England. The book tries to discover whether or not this minority group adopts normative approaches to media coverage, by not only consuming but participating in media. It also discusses the omission of African stories by the mainstream media in England. This book will contribute to understanding ethnic media trends.
Table of Contents
Foreword by Professor Martin Conboy

Chapter 1: Introduction: Theorizing the Media of African Diasporas

Chapter 2: Organization and Production Practices

Chapter 3: Content: Professional Values, Orientation and Connective Functions

Chapter 4: Audiences: Media Habits and Migratory Experiences

Chapter 5: Internet Habits, Representation and Participation

Conclusion: Future: What does the future hold for media of African Diasporas?

Bibliography
Index

A los medios en los procesos electorales en México por lo general se les ha analizado desde una perspectiva nacional, haciendo énfasis en las empresas de comunicación asentadas en la Ciudad de México. el centralismo que padecemos en los medios con frecuencia se ha trasladado al análisis de la comunicación política. Pero el conocimiento de los medios, la política y la sociedad resulta incompleto si no atendemos a su comportamiento en situaciones locales. De allí el mérito de este libro. Seis de los artículos que aparecen en estas páginas estudian con detalle a los medios en las elecciones locales que tuvieron lugar en 2110 en Hidalgo, Oaxaca, Zacatecas, Veracruz y Puebla. Otro examina la cobertura que la prensa de la Ciudad de México ofreció a las elecciones estatales de ese año. Un texto más se ocupa de los monitoreos de medios desde una perspectiva regional que no descuida enfoques federales. Y otros dos se refieren a la propaganda política en Internet y a las varias maneras que, en elecciones locales y federales, han desplegado candidatos y medios para burlar la legislación electoral. Este es un libro para entender las elecciones, aquilatar el papel de los medios y reconocer la dimensión local en los procesos políticos.

Consumer culture is synonymous with westernised societies. How did this particular ethic come to achieve so much success? This book argues that one reason is the seductive way in which it is promoted through the media. To demonstrate this, the book provides a detailed analysis of the case study of consumer magazine covers and argues that the ways magazines are displayed and sold in retail spaces, the literal glossiness of the texts, and the intertwined messages about sexiness, commodities and self-identity communicated by them combine to create a powerful and seductive advertisement for consumer culture. These strategies are not taken for granted, but questioned and put into the context of bigger scholarly debates about 'the public', 'power' and identity in neoliberal societies.

In Life after New Media, Sarah Kember and Joanna Zylinska make a case for a significant shift in our understanding of new media. They argue that we should move beyond our fascination with objects–computers, smart phones, iPods, Kindles–to an examination of the interlocking technical, social, and biological processes of mediation. Doing so, they say, reveals that life itself can be understood as mediated–subject to the same processes of reproduction, transformation, flattening, and patenting undergone by other media forms. By Kember and Zylinska’s account, the dispersal of media and technology into our biological and social lives intensifies our entanglement with nonhuman entities. Mediation–all-encompassing and indivisible–becomes for them a key trope for understanding our being in the technological world. Drawing on the work of Bergson and Derrida while displaying a rigorous playfulness toward philosophy, Kember and Zylinska examine the multiple flows of mediation. Importantly, they also consider the ethical necessity of making a “cut” to any media processes in order to contain them. Considering topics that range from media-enacted cosmic events to the intelligent home, they propose a new way of “doing” media studies that is simultaneously critical and creative, and that performs an encounter between theory and practice.

How do precarious workers employed in call-centres, universities, the fashion industry and many other labour markets organise, struggle and communicate to become recognised, influential political subjects? "Media Practices and Protest Politics; How Precarious Workers Mobilise" reveals the process by which individuals at the margins of the labour market and excluded from the welfare state communicate and struggle outside the realm of institutional politics to gain recognition in the political sphere.

In this important and thought provoking work Alice Mattoni suggests an all-encompassing approach to understanding grassroots political communication in contemporary societies. Using original examples from precarious workers mobilizations in Italy she explores a range of activist media practices and compares different categories of media technologies, organizations and outlets from the printed press to web application and from mainstream to alternative media.

Explaining how activists perceive and understand the media environment in which they are embedded the book discusses how they must interact with a diverse range of media professionals and technologies and considers how mainstream, radical left-wing and alternative media represent protests. Media Practices and Protest Politics offers important insights for understanding mechanisms and patterns of visibility in struggles for recognition and redistribution in post-democratic societies and provides a valuable contribution to the field of political communication and social movement studies.
Contents: Preface; Introduction; Theoretical reflections on the study of grassroots political communication; The discursive context and contentious field of precarity in Italy; The construction of precarious subjects in mobilisations against precarity; Reflections in the mirror: media knowledge practices; Surfing media diversity: relational media practices; The construction of public identities: media representations of protest; Conclusions: the circuit of grassroots political communication; Methodological appendix; References; Index.
About the Author: Alice Mattoni is at the University of Pittsburgh, USA. Her research interests include social movements, new labour movements, political communication, and qualitative methods.
Reviews: 'A vital question today is how the range of political actors can be expanded. New political movements must take action within an unequal media environment. Alice Mattoni's tightly argued new book on Italy's movement against precarity is one of the most important on alternative media practice to be published in recent years. Its contribution to our understanding of contemporary struggles for visibility is fundamental.'
Nick Couldry, Goldsmiths, University of London UK

'A fresh look at the complex relationships among activists and media. In this insightful study of collective organizing among precarious workers in Italy, Mattoni provides a useful framework for understanding the media practices of social movement actors. Highly recommended for both scholars and activists.'
Kathleen Blee, University of Pittsburgh, USA

Estéticas Midiáticas e Narrativas do Consumo é uma obra que traça um espectro amplo e instigante sobre as relações entre comunicação e consumo, afirmando assim a relevância desse debate para a compreensão da vida contemporânea. Organizado por Rose de Melo Rocha e Vander Casaqui, Estéticas Midiáticas e Narrativas do Consumo tem origem nas atividades do COMUNICON 2111, evento organizado pelo PPGCOM ESPM, cujo sucesso, desde a primeira edição, confirma a importância e a urgência dos temas e abordagens apresentados neste livro. Os artigos dos convidados do Simpósio Internacional em Comunicação e Consumo e dos coordenadores dos Grupos de Trabalho, estes últimos docentes do Programa de Pós-Graduação em Comunicação e Consumo da ESPM, em meio à diversidade de temas e perspectivas teóricas, têm como ponto comum o olhar complexo para o consumo, compreendido em seus aspectos comunicacionais e enquadramentos midiáticos. Acadêmicos, professores, estudantes de comunicação, de ciências sociais e humanas de uma maneira geral, encontrarão neste livro uma obra de referência para a compreensão da centralidade do consumo e dos processos comunicacionais na sociedade em que vivemos.
Confira a fanpage da Editora Sulina www.facebook.com/editorasulina?ref=hl

Indagar la gestión del control social a través de la comunicación pública o, dicho de otro modo, en las formas en que la opinión pública, las instituciones y los medios masivos discuten, explican y dan sentido al control de la sociedad en nuestro país como efecto visible de las problemáticas del delito y la seguridad, resulta un abordaje cuya originalidad ha permitido la búsqueda entre discursos y prácticas, en el sentido común y en el centro del poder, concretado en un conjunto de textos que, en el viaje por la ciudad, trabajan sobre aspectos y fenómenos diversos, todos ellos marcados por acciones como la vigilancia, la discriminación, el etiquetamiento y la represión. Rescatando desde los márgenes personas, geografías y tiempos en estado de vulnerabilidad, el libro propone un recorrido inquieto por el sentido que se da a la vida cotidiana implicada en una habitualidad del control, y una lectura critica de una realidad que conserva aquella impronta cultural que, constituida en matriz fundacional, esta presente en la exacerbación de la exclusión como política naturalizada. Prácticas y representaciones estigmatizantes y violentas se unen, desde diversos lugares enunciativos, para lograr el efecto de una realidad y un territorio que sería preciso sanear para el retorno de un pasado mítico, entre el locus amoenus del espacio público como paraíso y la aurea aetate de la seguridad total.

Stella Martini es Doctora en Ciencias Sociales por la Universidad de Buenos Aires, Profesora Titular de la Carrera de Ciencias de la Comunicación y del Posgrado de la Facultad de Ciencias Sociales de la UBA e investigadora del Instituto Gino Germani. Es autora de Periodismo, noticia y noticiabilidad (Buenos Aires/ Bogotá, Norma, 2100 y 2004) y de Los que hacen la noticia. Periodismo, información y poder (Biblos, 2004), junto a Lila Luchessi, y editora de la compilación La irrupción del delito en la vida cotidiana. Relatos de la comunicación política (Biblos, 2009), junto a Marcelo Pereyra.

María Eugenia Contursi es Doctora en Lingüística por la Facultad de Filosofía y Letras de la Universidad de Buenos Aires, Profesora Adjunta de la Carrera de Ciencias de la Comunicación de la Facultad de Ciencias Sociales de la UBA y de posgrado en la Universidad del Salvador (Argentina) y en la Universidad Católica del Uruguay. Es autora, junto a Fabiola Ferro, de La narración. Usos y teorías (Norma, 2000) y Los géneros académicos (Prociencia, 2000).

How is 'participation' ascribed meaning and practiced in science and environment communication? And how are citizen voices articulated, invoked, heard, marginalized or silenced in those processes? Citizen Voices takes its starting point in the so-called dialogic or participatory turn in scientific and environmental governance in which practices claiming to be based on principles of participation, dialogue and citizen involvement have proliferated. The book goes beyond the buzzword of 'participation' in order to give empirically rich, theoretically informed and critical accounts of how citizen participation is understood and enacted in mass mediation and public engagement practices. A diverse series of studies across Europe and the US are presented, providing readers with empirical insights into the articulation of citizen voices in different national, cultural and institutional contexts. Building bridges across media and communication studies, science and technology studies, environmental studies and urban planning studies, Citizen Voices also offers a range of different theories and research methodologies which foreground the role of communication processes in scientific and environmental governance.