Teorías de la comunicación y metodología

Los discursos sociales pueden acabar legitimando y normalizando hechos sociales claramente discriminatorios. Ante esta realidad, la presente obra se propone explorar cómo se construyen los discursos sobre la diferencia en América Latina y en el Caribe, qué actores participan y cuáles son las prácticas sociales relacionadas, a partir de la observación de múltiples escenarios. El libro se divide en tres partes. Mientras que la primera es de carácter más bien teórico —una completa reflexión alrededor del concepto diferencia—, las otras dos analizan discursos específicos. En un apartado, se trabaja sobre discursos que criminalizan a grupos sociales vulnerables y, en el otro, se abordan discursos mediáticos sobre la pobreza y el racismo.

La comunicación es un proceso esencial en la vida de los seres humanos y de las sociedades que conforman. De ahí la necesidad de estudiarla, pero también de reflexionar acerca de la investigación y la enseñanza, actual y futura, que se realiza de este complejo fenómeno.
Esta reflexión se realizó en el marco de la Cátedra en Estudios Socioculturales del ITESO que impartió Raúl Fuentes Navarro, la cual se concibió como «un ejercicio de producción social de sentido sobre la producción social de sentido.»
En Centralidad y Marginalidad de la Comunicación y su estudio se recogen la exposición y debate de ideas de Fuentes Navarro, autoridad y referente ineludible en el estudio de la comunicación, en el que se aborda:
—el fenómeno comunicacional como problema, recurso y solución (dimensión ontológica);
—como objeto de conocimiento (dimensión epistemológica);
—como práctica, profesión y política (dimensión praxeológica);
—la construcción de objetos de investigación (dimensión metodológica) de la comunicación y de la centralidad y la marginalidad de su estudio académico, entre otros.

Una polifonía de saberes propone al reportaje como método transcultural, pues su historia de préstamos y contactos con otras artes y disciplinas refleja una hibridez que lo enriquece y le permite encontrar maneras diversas de relatar el mundo. Pero, por más que el reportaje sea creativo y abierto a las realidades que investiga, el autor es enfático en recordar que no se trata de un género de ficción. Por ello, la obra da un vistazo a la historia del periodismo y a las opciones en las cuales se apoyaron algunos periodistas para la creación de crónicas y reportajes que marcaron momentos de evolución de la profesión. El reportaje como metodología del periodismo. Una polifonía de saberes apuesta por una profesionalización del periodismo que cultive la libertad de pensamiento y la formación integral, fundamentales para seguir escuchando la pluralidad de matices sobre la cotidianidad que ofrece una metodología como el reportaje.

A new edition of a lively and critically-enriched guide to writing for the media in a range of different professional contexts. Combining theory with practical techniques, this original text caters for students seeking to hone their skills in areas as diverse as journalism, PR, copywriting and screenwriting.

Media Events: A Critical Contemporary Approach proposes an interdisciplinary and multicultural approach of Dayan and Katz's theory of media events (1992) by applying it to contemporary situations. The contributing authors come from a range of countries (UK, USA, Mexico, Germany, Finland, Italy, Greece, Portugal, Ukraine) and analyse the theory of media events from different perspectives, incorporating social media and offering a re-positioning of Dayan and Katz's theory of media events. By bringing new perspectives into this field, the proposed volume is an important contribution as it grounds the intervention and rethinking of the theory into further empirical research. This volume has the potential to function as a 'cross-generational' link between one of the 'early classics' of media and communication studies on the one hand and the present generation of researchers on the other.

This new edition of a popular book provides an overview of mass media in society today. With illuminating examples and enhanced international coverage, Watson covers the core areas for media and communication degrees, as well as discussing hot topics such as the possibilities brought about by digital technology for citizen involvement in the media.

Perhaps the greatest strength of choosing video as a method for social research is its flexible and almost limitless potential for gathering, analyzing, writing up, and disseminating the research findings. Understanding the rich potential of video as both method and methodology is a process inextricably linked to epistemological, study design, analysis, and dissemination choices. As technology and media have evolved, video has become a primary tool of presenting information and ideas and a means of culture making.

Video as Method provides researchers with a guide to understanding, designing, conducting, and disseminating video-based research, and the rapid proliferation of approaches, uses, and designs now available. In the face of large data sets, and the great range of types and uses of video as an effective research tool, many researchers struggle to know how best to represent both video-based methodologies and research findings. Anne Harris provides in-depth examples in each chapter, and guides readers step-by-step through the chapter topics in a methodical fashion that mirrors the research journey.

Now, more than 21 years since its initial release, John Fiske’s classic text Media Matters remains both timely and insightful as an empirically rich examination of how the fierce battle over cultural meaning is negotiated in American popular culture.

Media Matters takes us to the heart of social inequality and the call for social justice by interrogating some of the most important issues of its time. Fiske offers a practical guide to learning how to interpret the ways that media events shape the social landscape, to contest official and taken-for-granted accounts of how events are presented/conveyed through media, and to affect social change by putting intellectual labor to public use.

A new introductory essay by former Fiske student Black Hawk Hancock entitled ‘Learning How to Fiske: Theorizing Cultural Literacy, Counter-History, and the Politics of Media Events in the 21st Century’ explains the theoretical and methodological tools with which Fiske approaches cultural analysis, highlighting the lessons today’s students can continue to draw upon in order to understand society today.

This volume provides a graduate-level introduction to communication science, including theory and scholarship for masters and PhD students as well as practicing scholars. The work defines communication, reviews its history, and provides a broad look at how communication research is conducted. It also includes chapters reviewing the most frequently addressed topics in communication science. This book presents an overview of theory in general and of communication theory in particular, while offering a broad look at topics in communication that promote understanding of the key issues in communication science for students and scholars new to communication research. The book takes a predominantly "communication science" approach but also situates this approach in the broader field of communication, and addresses how communication science is related to and different from such approaches as critical and cultural studies and rhetoric. As an overview of communication science that will serve as a reference work for scholars as well as a text for the introduction to communication graduate studies course, this volume is an essential resource for understanding and conducting scholarship in the communication discipline.

THE BASICS OF MEDIA RESEARCH provides an applied approach to research in mass communication with contemporary examples from media and market research and expanded coverage of focus groups and online methods of data collection.