"This volume addresses the tension between loud and often spectacular histories and those forgotten pasts we strain to hear. Employing social and cultural analysis, the essays within examine mnemonic technologies both new and old, and cover subjects as diverse as U.S. internment camps for Japanese A
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mericans in WWII, the Canadian Indian Residential School system, Israeli memorial videos, and thedesaparecidosin Argentina. Through these cases, the contributors argue for a re-interpretation of Guy Debord's notion of the spectacle as a conceptual apparatus through which to examine the contemporary landscape of social memory, arguing that the concept of spectacle might be developed in an age seen as dissatisfied with the present, nervous about the future, and obsessed with the past. Perhaps now "spectacle" can be thought of not as a tool of distraction employed solely by hegemonic powers, but instead as a device used to answer Walter Benjamin's plea to "explode the continuum of history" and bring our attention to now-time." (Publisher description)
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"Este trabalho delineia trilhas da pesquisa em Mídia e Religião, focalizando a aproximação desses estudos com a área de Comunicação. A pesquisa focaliza os livros sobre o tema publicados entre 1980 e 2013. São delineados três momentos, não isentos de mesclas e sobreposições: (a) investig
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ações a partir das Ciências Sociais, em particular da Sociologia da Religião; (b) primeiras articulações nos estudos sobre comunicação eclesial; e (c) a consolidação do tema na área de Comunicação. Observa-se como mídia e religião se articulam na produção de conhecimento no campo das pesquisas em Comunicação." (Resumo)
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"The Latin America mobile market is now the fourth-largest globally, with almost 326 million unique subscribers and 718 million connections as of September of 2014. A little over half of the population in the region have now subscribed to a mobile service, a figure that is expected to reach almost 6
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0% by 2020, broadly in line with the global average." (Executive summary)
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"El manual describe las formas más conocidas del tratamiento de la comunicación intercultural; postula criterios básicos para su desarrollo y ofrece lineamientos generales para su aplicación. El manual inicia con la definición de conceptos fundamentales sobre interculturalidad y comunicación i
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ntercultural; para posteriormente relacionarlo con aspectos fundamentales que se deben tomar a consideración para el periodismo ambiental y la gestión eficiente y efectiva de la comunicación en el contexto del cambio climático. Finalmente, proponemos postulados y acciones concretas para lograr la práctica de la comunicación intercultural. Estas son: comprender la complejidad de la interrelación entre comunidad y medio ambiente; comunicar desde el conocimiento tradicional; gestionar la comunicación desde el diálogo intercultural; y, construir narrativas diferentes tomando a consideración las técnicas de la comunicación comunitaria." (Presentación, página 5)
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"Journalism in Mexico has become a high-risk profession. With 137 journalists killed and 14 missing since the start of the “drug wars” there, Mexico has become the Latin American country with the most crimes against journalists (Rodríguez Olvera, 2011). Between 2000 and 2011, the National Commi
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ssion of Human Rights (CNDH. Mexico) reported 74 murders of journalists in Mexico (cited in Meneses, 2012); consequently, some international organizations placed it as the second most dangerous country to practice journalism (Meneses, 2012). They have become endangered observers of drug trafficking crimes when retaliation threatens their disappearance or murder. This reduces freedom of expression and freedom of the press, and threatens citizens’ right to be informed. Historically, journalists have performed their jobs under pressure, and have thus been dependent on the interests of the media. In Mexico, over the past decade, members of this profession have faced great risks in order to do their jobs in the midst of a war against drug trafficking." (Introduction)
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"Media consumption today takes on first order meanings that we can challenge, understand and clarify. This is where the audience learns to believe in watchdogging and vice versa. Citizen watchdog groups (Veedurias) attempt to critically understand public narratives beyond first order meanings that a
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re not necessarily oppositional. These readings provide a new opportunity to understand the medium, and the audience that obtains some satisfaction by listening to radio, listening to local or international music, and by watching and interacting with TV programming. Citizen watchdog groups and observatories confront the challenge of watching, debating and proposing in order to achieve a better understanding of the public world from their own private worlds. These groups and observatories are located in that interaction between public and private issues in the mass media, tracing the footprints left by public/private/intimate actors. Citizen watchdog groups and observatories analyze the mediations and intermediations that are regularly built." (Summary)
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"The role of the media as a civic institution that acts on behalf of and in alliance with civil society in times of crisis is the central theme of this dissertation. Prior research has demonstrated that Haiti’s media has been at the heart of such a role in civic society throughout the country’s
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two hundred plus years of independent existence. This dissertation argues that this media tradition has been revitalized, strengthened and put to the test by the current crisis the country faces in physical reconstruction from natural disaster, political reconstruction from fragile early attempts at democracy, and social reconstruction from decades of economic stagnation that have exacerbated poverty and living conditions of the average Haitian. This project uses a mixed methodological approach of qualitative methods and basic quantitative methods to analyze how Haitian journalists have covered the aftermath of the disaster. This research addressed three key elements: (1) the impact of the disaster on the fractions that existed within the leading news media outlets during the nation’s ongoing experiment with democracy (2) the impact of the disaster on how journalists view and practice their profession (3) the impact of the disaster on the quality of news being produced in Haiti." (Abstract)
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"El libro que ahora tienen entre sus manos, resultado de meses de ardua coordinación e investigación en Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua y El Salvador, recoge con mucha preocupación la firme tendencia que existe en Centroamérica hacia una mayor concentración de la propiedad de los medios de comun
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icación en oligopolios mediáticos comerciales. Esta preocupación se vuelve más fuerte cuando los procesos de digitalización de las comunicaciones, ya emprendidos en estos países, apuntan a generar más concentración de medios en pocas empresas o familias, afectando directamente a la calidad de nuestra democracia. Los resultados que recogemos en este libro no presentan un panorama alentador, sobre todo porque las autoridades encargadas de conducir este proceso de transformación o convergencia tecnológica buscan digitalizar la radio y la televisión con los mismos marcos jurídicos que nos han llevado a la concentración de la propiedad de frecuencias en pocas manos. Esto no es bueno para la democracia centroamericana. Entonces, es urgente que nuestros gobiernos y legisladores/as enfoquen y le den un nuevo rumbo a la digitalización de las comunicaciones, que no es un asunto meramente técnico, sino pr ofundamente político, que tiene ver con el futuro de las nuevas generaciones en Centroamérica. Todavía estamos a tiempo de modificar este camino, amañado por las asociaciones y cámaras de radio y televisión, pues la multiplicación de canales o las frecuencias resultantes del dividendo digital deben ayudar a modificar el actual mapa de medios en la región." (Presentación, página I)
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