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Transmission or ‘creative Fidelity’? The Institutional Communicator’s Role in the Church Today

Alberto Gil, Guido Gili

Church, Communication and Culture, volume 5, issue 3 (2020), pp. 320-338

"The role of the institutional communicator in the Church today has a special relevance derived from the credibility crisis suffered by this institution. A greatly increased awareness to this theme leads to the discovery of profound and essential dimensions of this role, which are discussed in this ... more

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Narrativas de paz, voces y sonidos: Análisis de la paz en Colombia, desde la comunicación

J. Ignacio Chaves Gil, Beatriz E. Múnera B., Gabriel Alberto Ruiz Romero (coord.)

Bogotá: Ediciones Desde Abajo;Revista Latina de Comunicación Social;Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES) (2020), 247 pp.

"La violencia armada tiene también una dimensión narrativa, acaso tan devastadora como su dimensión física. No sólo destruye vidas y altera relaciones, sino que su ejercicio –especialmente cuando es sistemático– quiebra la propia posibilidad de otra narrativa que logre articular algún sen ... more

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Trust in Institutions

Church, Communication and Culture, volume 5, issue 3 (2020), pp. 293-510

"Speaking of trust in the Catholic Church necessarily leads to talking about the management of the crisis of clerical sexual abuse by its leaders. The focus is on managing responsibility and information, with case studies by Paulina Guzik and Patrick O'Brien. The first deals with the case of Poland, ... emphasizing the need for accountability and suggesting five actions to regain trust. O'Brien offers a map of the management of abuses in the 197 dioceses of the United States, and points to transparency in communication and government as a key to regaining trust. As you will read in these pages, neither the communicator nor the communication serves to mask a negative reality. The institution must justify its existence only if it is a good for society, even if it makes mistakes. This question is approached from a theological point of view: Is it still possible to trust the Church? To answer this question, Marco Vanzini highlights the tensions that characterize and define the identity of the Church: such as her divine origin and her human composition, or the inner coexistence of holiness and sin, among others. On the other hand, Gabriel Magalhães, taking a cue from passages of sacred and universal literature, invites reflection on the contrast between human and divine justice, highlighting the excessive and almost ‘scandalous’ nature of divine mercy. Faced with the reality of a certain human solidarity in evil, he explores the need for collective guilt and forgiveness as a common horizon that allows trust to be recovered at the social level. It is precisely ‘the Church communicator’ on whom the article by Professors Gil and Gili puts the focus. His role as spokesman for an institution and bearer of a message gives him great responsibility. The credibility that he demands and needs, the authors maintain, depends to a great extent on his human and professional virtues. Creative fidelity, reliable transmission of an ideal and embodiment of the values he communicates are expected from him. Internal communication in organizations, with the transformation of the channels through which trust travels – more horizontal and collaborative than vertical and hierarchical (Botsman Citation2017) – represents a challenge for those who govern the organization. Receiving trust from the leadership in turn generates confidence in the workers. To put these ‘spirals of trust’ into action, Gara and La Porte analyze one of the most important moments in the relationship between an employee and an organization: recruitment. Trust, they say, must be considered one of the great strategic tools of the Human Resources department. In the legal field, Moreno and Díaz show with a case study the ‘legal defense of corporate reputation’, where law and communication work in a complementary way. In recent years, especially with the digital revolution, new fields of interaction have opened up with their own followers, as well as new spaces for vulnerability (e.g. privacy, personal data, copyright…). In this context of the Internet, the authors present the crisis of reputation of an NGO linked to the Church and show how law and communication are two strategic tools of the organizations destined to collaborate. Looking at trust management in the public sector is a necessary source of inspiration for an institution like the Church. María José Canel conducts the academic interview with Steven Van de Walle on trust in public administration. He deals with a wide range of topics: from the ways of measuring trust and its typologies, to the influence of emotions on the inspiration of trust. The interview offers some comparative considerations between some other institutions, such as NGOs, and the Church. It also includes a final reflection on the new scenario created by COVID-19, which is testing citizens’ trust in the state and the health system. In the public sphere, the management of vulnerability takes on a particular nuance in the case of high reliability organizations, entities that by their nature must avoid errors at all costs (Lekka Citation2011). Sanders takes the criteria of the HROs as her model to measure the trust that the British government has earned (or lost) with its public communication during the pandemic generated by the COVID-19, a situation that has tested the strength of social relations – especially trust toward public services – and that will merit another special issue of this journal." (Editorial: Contents of the special issue, pages 295-296) more

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Narrativas de paz, voces y sonidos: Análisis de la paz en Colombia, desde la comunicación

J. Ignacio Chaves Gil, Beatriz E. Múnera B., Gabriel Alberto Ruiz Romero (coord.)

Bogotá: Corporación Universitaria Minuto de Dios (Uniminuto) (2019), 277 pp.

"Los artículos del CAC162 “Narrativas de paz: voces y sonidos” surgen de la mesa de debate homónima presentada en el marco del X Congreso Internacional Latina de Comunicación Social, realizado en la Universidad de La Laguna (Tenerife) en 2018. Nueve textos sobre los retos que afrontan dichas ... more

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Comunicación y cambio social

Alex Iván Arévalo Salinas, Griselda Vilar Sastre, Marcial García López (eds.)

Valencia: Tirant Humanidades (2019), 241 pp.