Works of Naos 2010

Les cultures pedagògiques de la comunicació, IX

Las culturas pedagógicas de la comunicación, IX

The cultures of teaching communication, IX

Els treballs del NaosLos trabajos del NaosWorks of Naos

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PrologueFrancesc Llobet DalmasesPresident, OETI

In this twelfth edition of the Works of Naos, as is the tradition at OETI, we are presenting the research from various international scholars on the theme of the Observatory Sessions: the pedagogical cultures of commu-nication IX. The days were held last November 2009, once again, thanks to the collaboration of the Representation in Barcelona of the European Commission at their headquarters. The generous participation of a variety specialists from around the world, enables us, year after year, to be able to see and discover the importance of the world of communication in our culture and the need for it to interact with the world of education and vice versa. Together, communicators, semiologists, pyschologists, pedagogues, educators and audiovisual professionals can and must draw up new ways of collaborating and consequently we are very happy and grateful for this joint research, as well as being convinced of the need for it. On behalf of the European Observatory on Children’s Television I want to thank once again all the institutions, organisations, personalities and investigators for their generosity that have made it possible for us to celebrate the XIV edition of our activities.


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CORPUS THEORY: How to educate?

Guillermo OrozcoProfessor, University of GuadalajaraCommunication Studies DepartmentMèxic

Víctor FuenmayorDoctor Honoris Causa University of ZuliaVenezuela

Nicolàs TorresProfessor, Educational Institution MontserratSpain

CORPUS STUDY: Are we all journalists?

Nicolàs LoriteProfessor, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona Member of MIGRACOMSpain

Xavier LabordaProfessor, University of BarcelonaSpain

Regina de AssísProfessor, Catholic University of RioBrasil

CORPUS TEÓRICO: ¿Cómo educar?

Guillermo OrozcoProfesor de la Universidad de GuadalajaraDepartamento de Estudios de la Comunicación. México

Víctor FuenmayorDoctor Honoris Causa de la Universidad de Zulia. Venezuela

Nicolàs TorresProfesor de la Institución Educativa Montserrat. España

CORPUS PRÁCTICO: ¿Todos somos comunicadores?

Nicolàs LoriteProfesor de la Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona y miembro de MIGRACOM.España

Xavier LabordaProfesor de la Universidad de BarcelonaDepartamento de Lingüística. España

Regina de AssísProfesora de la Universidad Católica de Rio.Brasil

IndexÍndice


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Els treballs del Naos


CORPUS THEORY: How to educate?

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Nicolás Torres, Francesc Llobet, Guillermo Orozco, Víctor Fuenmayor

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BETWEEN SCREENS: NEW COMMUNICATIVE AND EDUCATIONAL ROLES FOR CITIZENS

Guillermo Orozco

For various decades now, one of the utopias of communicators interested in the education of citizens has been to contribute to forming participative and not just critical, audiences, in the face of and in response to different communication media and their content. This utopia now seems to be within reach, without this affirmation being simply a declaration of intent, or idealistic defiance, the product of a technological optimism.

Today there are various motives and distinct conditions for thinking that the utopia of a new audience, that is simultaneously both receiver and producer, is beginning to happen. But it will mean a long process, in which the educational and communicational challenges will become more complex. What is needed, among many other things, is to agree upon “new motives” for teaching, “new pedagogical approaches”,

“new styles of communication” and the development of different skills, by the educators as much as, above all, by the subjects who make up contemporary audiences, including, of course, the educators themselves in this role. What is also required is the definition and consensus of public policies and the implantation of socio-cultural and political strategies that make it possible to build scenarios that favour a distinct type of interaction with diverse technological, communicational, educational and strategic components and subjects who are interested in developing themselves as citizens.

From this perspective the object of these pages is to discuss some ideas and proposals that specifically enable this utopia to

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Guillermo Orozco 207

become a reality. For this I highlight first what I consider to be the “communicational condition” of our time, that makes it possible to think that the new challenge we are faced with has transformed, in that the very nature of communication has transformed; from the condition of the audience being predominantly receiver or recipient, to becoming an audience that essentially produces and transmits. It is this “communicational condition” that enables the participants in communicative processes mediated by screens, to deconstruct in a real or material way, and not simply to reinterpret symbolically, the objects and referents of their exchange. It is also what modifies the possibilities of pedagogical intervention, dialogue and the generation of knowledge.

THE CONTEMPORARY COMMUNICATIONAL CONDITIONThe technological convergence that currently multiplies the combinations of formats, languages and aesthetics of the diverse screens and the possible interaction between them and their audiences, assumed here as the communicational condition, opens up new scenarios and educational options, that in turn contribute to facilitating other forms of production, exchange and creative communication with their audiences. The change in role or status of the audience, that is already appreciable among technologically advanced social sectors, is manifest in a shift, where audiences grouped according to reception, are becoming increasingly defined depending on their broadcasting and growing capacity for communicative production. A change that leads audiences to become users as the interactivity, made possible by the new screens, transcends a merely symbolic interaction with them.

In theory, this possible and of course desirable shift from receivers to transmitters, that as Castells (1996) said is not automatic, is perhaps one of the most significant changes in society today, and as it becomes a reality, will increasingly be the epicentre of other changes. From the “becoming an audience” and especially the act of “being an audience” and in the conformation and negotiation of identities and finally in the actual consuming of culture and information.

This shift from receptive audiences, albeit not passive ones, to audiences that produce, though not necessarily creatively or critically, is not the same as this other process of “digital migration”, that

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208 Los trabajos del Naos

some colleagues have touched on (Vilches, 2005). To be “digital migrants”(rather than “digitals natives”) according to the categorisation coined by Prensky, (2001) takes as a reference the digital dimension as the detonator for change, but excludes the anterior status of the analogical dimension. The shift to user, on the other hand, also brings with it a reference to the analogical, from where its transformation stems, thus making it possible to take advantage of and capitalise on the understandings of the pre-digital interaction of agencies and screens. This shift has repercussions on other areas, such as the generation of understanding and knowledge, the assimilation and circulation of information and the construction of learning (Piscitelli, 2009) and more particularly on forms of entertainment, amusement and the generation of emotions and feelings (Gitlin, 2004).

All due to the fact that the communicative references, placed in circulation through screens from different sources of transmission, as multiple as the participating users, also enter in to populate the material audiovisual world, as the visuals and sounds of the communicative exchange; that is to say, as referents that are the object of social interaction in general (Orozco, 2006). But how these new options of becoming and being an audience affect the modes of understanding, learning and producing knowledge is another of the big questions for education and communication at present and in the future.

EDUCATION, MUCH MORE THAN FORMAL LEARNING AND TEACHING Just as Martín–Barbero (2003) emphasised we are shifting from a society with an educational system to societies of education, with the understanding that education permeates many of the significant interactions of everybody, as social subjects, with information and knowledge. Education is no longer just a product of teaching, nor simply the result of schooling. Education is also the result of other interactions and encounters, above all of the discoveries and explorations of the students themselves. To live in a communicative ecosystem, where the exchange with different screens and platforms requires creative exploration and discoveries means that we can always educate ourselves or learn. The paradigm that we are abandoning is the one of imitation through

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memorisation, repetition or the copying of models. The paradigm that we are moving towards supposes a guide for the learner, a creative exploration, trial and error, and finally a discovery. This logic of learning through creative exploration is the very logic of contemporary technologies. The growing interaction with screens involves and demands of us that we situate ourselves in the new educational paradigm and permanently learn, even though we are not always totally conscious of our learning, nor do we necessarily manage to take advantage of all the digital potential within our reach. Partly, because we don’t think that what we “acquire” from our interactions is really learning. In part because the traditional idea that education is to do with school and the educational system still dominates, and that television and other screens don’t educate, they just amuse. It is also in part because this learning is not monolithic. What is the result of formal processes is just one type of learning, but there are many other types that are the result of non-formal and informal processes. These are what happen in the majority of the diverse interactions of audiences and users with screens. Even though it can be said more than ever that we are always learning, not everything that we gain is worthwhile. Not because extracurricular learning is in itself inferior in quality, but because it is determined by different elements pursuing different objectives, that don’t necessarily offer a service, or even less educate. Much of what is learnt non-formally has not been collectively, scientifically or academically sanctioned. It is not necessary to learn everything that one learns informally. Not everything that one learns from screens is free of problems. For this one of the main efforts of education should be to question and in this case refine, situate and complete or reorient the learning of those being educated, in effect the users of multiple screens.

THE MULTIPLE, COMMUNICATIONAL CHALLENGE OF EDUCATION AMONGST SCREENS. To question knowledge among users is nothing new in education but it is important to persist. The new challenges are multiple. For new challenges one has to understand not just those that are strictly pedagogical but also new objectives to be worked towards pedagogically,

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such as the new relations between these objectives and users. Without these new ideas involving massive aspirations of novelty and innovation. It is more about looking to call the reader’s attention to the urgency of including so many other objectives, such as processes, other

“intelligences” – to use Gardner’s (2004) term – to be developed with the help of appropriate pedagogical interventions, that rightly point to the educational challenges being faced in the light of this shift of status, into subjects who participate in media processes. For example, the development of the ability to select information from screens, at an instrumental, semantic and pragmatic level, that is at the same time efficient and reliable. An aim that previously it wasn’t so necessary to know, nor even to teach, as the information that was the object of education was already selected in the textbook. Or the strengthening of prospective thought that places emphasis on constructing various possible and desirable scenarios, requiring the thinkers to calculate and design the steps and routes to achieve or avoid them, while evaluating at the same time the consequences of one decision or another. A goal that before wasn’t so necessary as the future for younger ones had already been defined for them, to a certain extent, by adult generations (Martín- Barbero, 2008)

The educational endeavour in general has been to come to terms with the fact that the educational area surrounding screens brings with it a high index of “playfulness”, as Ferrés (2008) and Piscitelli (2009) have stated, and that up to a point it is novel for the potential interactivity and convergence made manifest by the digital. It is no longer about simply looking to elevate the critical level of audiences, as has been traditionally postulated, in the struggle for a “critical reception or reading” of the media, but more than anything about elevating the productive, creative capacity and the quality of expression of the subjects in the products that they exchange through screens. Here it is necessary to emphasise that through the opportunities of interactivity and convergence, through education, an area of inestimable opportunity is opened up to reinforce, amplify, orientate or deepen cultural production and to stimulate the generation of knowledge and learning.

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“BECOMING” AN AUDIENCE AND “BEING” AN AUDIENCE.In the midst of this era of interactivities and convergences, always in plural (Dorcé, 2009), if the way of becoming an audience has radically changed, then, being an audience can also change, although it does not stem automatically from the modifications made to the form of becoming an audience. One has to consider that becoming an audience has expanded territorially, due above all to the possible mobility and portability of the newest screens, such as the mobile phone and the Ipod, but ultimately due to the high convergence, in many senses. No longer does one have to be indoors to watch television, just as it is also not necessary to be indoors to play videogames or to make a phone call, listen to music or send mails, or “to chat” online.

But beyond this sort of ubiquity of contemporary audiences with their screens, that directly affects the possibility of always being in contact, or connected, of being participants of one or various networks at the same time, the nature of becoming an audience takes on unknown diverse possibilities. For example the possibility in itself of permanent multi-channel contact that diversifies into oral, visual and written communication. Channels of communication that although they already existed, it was never like it is now, with the convergence of multiple screens being the usual channels of connectivity between users of these screens. In this way, “mono-channel” communication is being superseded by multi-channel or multi-media communication, that also implies being multi-lingual, regardless of the other changes in the reference or content that is exchanged (Jensen, 2007).

Here the leading question for education is; apart from adding channels and languages, and the instrumental use of new technologies, or new screens, is there strictly speaking a cultural change through being with this multiplicity in a permanent multi-directional connection? Perhaps the key lies in that “ the whole is not the sum of its parts”. So to the extent that the use of the new screens exceeds the mere sum of possibilities, we could think that there is a product of a different quality. That what will be produced in the interaction with the screens, will be identity. An identity that if you want is “amalgamating” rather than essentialist, as Martín –Barbero (2004) said, but in the end is identity. Durable enough to be recognised, and flexible enough to be reproduced,

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modified, exchanged or negotiated, over and over again. In the current era, the production of identities necessarily passes

through screens. A production that implicates screens and that at the same time results from the screens. This is because these screens are not a sporadic option when searching for information or entertainment, in the way that going to the cinema at the weekend would have been 40 years ago, or reading a book or newspaper. Today the interaction with screens for those who interact with them is a “given”, a point of departure and also of arrival, it is a condition of daily life and of social exchange in general. To survive in the contemporary world, screens, perhaps some more than others, have become indispensable. To evade them carries the huge risk of being left out, excluded, precisely because to exclude oneself from the interchange with screens is to exclude oneself from contemporary culture (Winocur, 2009).

The conformation of identities as a cultural product of the converging exchange with screens is made possible as much by the use of them, as by their consumption and production by users. As Jensen (2005) sustains, the interactivity is the dimension that modifies the becoming of an audience, for the precise reason that the audience, through the interactivity transforms into user. And to be a user, I insist, carries with it a qualitative difference in relation to just being an audience. To be a user implies the agency of the audience. And agency, as Giddens (1996) thought of it supposes reflection, not just action. It is this very dimension of cognitive, conscious elaboration and decision that distinguishes it from a mere reaction to a stimulus or to any modification that is simply behavioural.

From the dimension of interactivity one has to understand that the convergence, is not just in one sense; that is to say, the convergence is not just technological, it is also cultural, cognitive, linguistic, situational and aesthetic. A convergence that doesn’t just occur in the confluence of the material or digital-technological devices, nor from the initial broadcast, but also through the reception, and later through the different transmissions-receptions between the different users as well as through the perceptual and mental mechanisms of the subjects involved (Dorcé, 2009). The skills, of forming databases and multiple registers, linked to the setting up of websites and blogs and other options, not

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simply for the adequate storage of information and knowledge but to be able to exchange and continue producing them, have to be developed through concrete educational endeavours.

The modes of being an audience, however, vary in the face of the diversity of the screens and of the interactivity in itself, that is, they won’t be the automatic result of becoming an audience. What is more, they also vary according to the diversity of the cultures and specific positions of the social subjects within them, although increasingly one finds greater similarities due to the current globalisation and commodification. There are persistent cultural differences that limit the development of certain skills and practices, and that can negatively influence an amplified cultural production or simply in front of screens.

HEADING FOR AN UNLIMITED CONNECTIVITY?Martín-Barbero (2003) has stressed how in these era of convergence, where one doesn’t read like before, write like before, or look and listen like before, one also doesn’t know or learn like before. Is should also be underlined that on the whole we don’t communicate like before.

From a traditional perspective, the sin-qua-non of adults and educators, (upheld for example by a linear or Aristotelian logic) that provide criteria for thinking, legitimising and evaluating youth and their relations, from where “connectivity”, understood as the phenomenon by which all young people tend to stay permanently connected, would not be understood as authentic communication or as communication in its fullest sense. Nor would due value be placed on “multi tasking”, the phenomenon by which a young person, in particular, can interact simultaneously with diverse screens and produce things in and through them, to the extent that they are like mere reactions to the intermittent flow of information.

The point is important as a counter argument to the cultural transformations that the convergence facilitates, but ultimately it is unsustainable, so from a more liberal position, the connectivity as much as the “multi tasking” would be the new form or a privileged form of “being” an audience in relation to screens, others and with the other in daily life. This would be a new form of communicative interaction. From this inter-connectivity new signifiers are thus created

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and consumed, and new meanings are exchanged and produced. To be online is a way of becoming, but above all it implies and brings with it a form of being, that is distinguishable from others, with a different potential for other ways of simultaneously becoming and being.

To be an audience and above all to be a user brings possibilities and demands. One isn’t born an audience (Orozco, 1998). Nor is one automatically a user. The audience is conformed in a great part by the activity itself and now by the interactivity with screens. This supposes processes, the acquisition of skills, the development of “competencies” and creativity. It also presupposes diverse renunciations and explorations. One renounces the routines and expectations of other types of interaction and other forms of becoming and being an audience, in order to be able to accede to this new status as a user of present day cultural production. This is especially the case for those who are not digital natives, who have to make a decision and learn, and at the same time unlearn a lot, in order to be able to do so.

The new endeavours of education for communication, therefore, have a propitious field of action in the face of this specific shift of becoming an audience in other ways, particularly because these other ways involve criteria, motives, formulae and expectations that are questionable to say the least. Criteria that need to be questioned through processes of critical reflection, as part of the greater processes of forming subjects into implicated users. But at the same time, they call into play communicative dimensions and competencies that should be promoted.

THE “COMMERCIAL CONDITION” IN THE CONVERGENCE OF SCREENS. Screen culture is increasingly determined by the market (Orozco, Hernández and Huizar, 2009). This is evident not just in the permanent obsolescence of models, packaging and branding with which the technologies are presented, but also in the very possibilities of audiovisual register and production. The industrial formats increasingly depend more on market decisions, this dependence being accentuated in certain genres and programming formats, such as that of fiction. The technological development does not advance in accord with the scientific discoveries that make it possible, but in accord principally with

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the profitability of certain elements or specific technological features in the marketplace (Martín- Barbero, 2008). The old affirmation of R. Williams that a technology exists only until it is profitable in the market, is more apt than ever. In the screens with which we communicate, it would seem that it is not enough to have something to say, one has to “say” something that “sells”, or that what when said it moves and seduces. Increasingly, whether we like it or not, to construct a story is not enough, one has to do something more, adding those elements that give it a little more spectacle and then yes, it can be consumed by more audiences; triggering emotions and feelings. This is the commercial condition that dominates the majority of the interchange and cultural production around screens, in the Western world.

The case of television fiction is paradigmatic of the globalisation in these times of exacerbated commercialisation. If up until a decade ago what was bought and sold and exported were complete television productions. That is to say, a soap opera produced in its country of origin was then exported to others, whereas today it is only the script that is exported, with indications to be followed for its (re)production. It is this “franchise model” that makes globalisation possible not the cultural products themselves. The formats are globalised, the themes and their treatment as well, but not the final product. The product is remade with the characteristics specific to the place where they will try to sell it. It is recomposed with the cultural characteristics that are subordinated to the commercial objective.

This means, in the market of television and film, inverting the sense of audiovisual production. Culture has to sell and what doesn’t is unlikely to remain on screen. For this elements have to be added where necessary to reinforce the buying and selling power of an audiovisual product, elements such as violence, sensationalism, pornography, etc. This is what has been happening in recent soap operas, where the melodramatic story in itself doesn’t seem to be enough or doesn’t go far enough in motivating its wider consumption, so that from the commercial perspective of its producers, it has to be packaged with different resources, “extras” in a marketing strategy of major proportions. This happened with the Mexican production, “a

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la Televisa” (to Television), of the Argentine script for the soap opera “Rebelde” (Rebel) (Orozco, 2006), where the group of perpetrators was commercialised as a music group, many products were directly promoted in the narrative of the episodes and photographs of the main actors were placed in a variety of products, from cereals to clothing.

The above has repercussions on cultural production, and of course on education, particularly on those ideas or premises that sustain non-formal educational processes. What one has as the result of the multiple exchanges between users and screens, one must emphasise, does not just contain strong residues of previous models or aesthetics. There are also and above all commercial elements in the new “homemade” cultural production. There are greater degrees of overdramatisation in the images and registers that the young make and exchange today (Winocur, 2009). For example, images that start as a photograph of a face, and are recomposed with colours, mutilations, and additions, until the original reference has become disfigured and another with much more impact is produced. The result is due as much to the treatment and special effects, visual and audio that are embedded in it, as to the fact that one manages to recognise the original reference. That is to say it is not an invention pulled out of the air, but one that is based on a real, recognisable but disfigured subject (Cabrera, 2009).

Like it or not, the above is a popular, generalised from of making culture through screens. What is more one has to add that the new aesthetics of the visuals, produced, exchanged and consumed in them, carry ludic elements. The playfulness in current cultural products is notable, making them in the eyes of many “light” or frivolous productions, something that in the very least is debatable (Piscitelli, 2009).

In synthesis, while before the teaching of communication focused on the subjects specific to reception in the communicative process and emphasised the development of critical abilities or of analytical thought for the appropriation and perception of media references, today education will also have to emphasise critical abilities but from the perspective of production and transmission. And analytical thought more as prospective thought, where the analysis anticipates, more than it follows on from a media product. Both examples point

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to new directions for edu-communication in a world inhabited by both digital migrants and natives (Prensky, 2001). But above all will have to contribute to promoting creativity and skills that are suitable for exploration, dialogue and argumentation, as well as convergent, collective, ethical and supportive production.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

– Castells, Manuel (1996). La sociedad red. La era de la información. Vol. 1. Madrid: Alianza Editorial.

– Cabrera, José (2009). Convergencia: tecnologías del contacto en Aguilar, Miguel; Nivón Eduardo; Portal, María y Winocur, Rosalía (Coords.), Pensar lo contemporáneo: de la cultura situada a la convergencia tecnológica. Barcelona: Anthropos Editorial, 263-276.

– Dorcé, André (2009). Televisión e Internet: ¿Convergencia intermedial con un solo sentido? en Aguilar, Miguel; Nivón Eduardo; Portal, María y Winocur, Rosalía (Coords.), Pensar lo contemporáneo: de la cultura situada a la convergencia tecnológica. Barcelona: Anthropos Editorial, 297-310.

– García Matilla, Agustín (2003). Una televisión para la educación. La utopía posible. Barcelona: – Gedisa, Colección Comunicación Educativa.Gardner, Howard (2004). Frames of mind. The theory of multiple intelligences. USA: Colophon Books.

– Gitlin, Todd (2004). Media unlimited. New York: Owl Books– Giddens, Anthony (1996). In defence of sociology. Cambridge: Polity Press.– Hall, Stuart (1980). Encoding/Decoding in Paul Morris and Sue Thornton (eds.), Media Studies: A Reader. Washington Square, NK: University Press, 51-61.Hoechsmann, Michael y Low, Bronwen (2007). Reading youth writing. New York: Peter Lang.

– Jensen, Klaus B. (2005). Who do you think we are? A content analysis of websites as participatory resources for politics, business and civil society, en K.B. Jensen (Ed.) Interface:// Culture. Copenhagen: NORDICOM.

– Jensen, Klaus B. (2007). “La política de la interactividad: potencial y problemas de los sitios web como recursos de participación”, en J. C. Lozano (Coord). Diálogos, Forum Internacional de las Culturas. Monterrey: International Forum for Cultures.

– Lull, James (2008). Los placeres activos de expresas y comunicar en Revista Comunicar Audiencias y pantallas en América, No. 30, Vol. XV, Época II. España: Grupo Comunicar.– Martín-Barbero, Jesús (1987). De los medios a las Mediaciones. Barcelona: Gustavo Gili.– Martín-Barbero, Jesús (2004). La educación desde la comunicación. Buenos Aires: Norma.– Martín-Barbero, Jesús (2008).Pistas para entre-ver los medios y mediaciones en Revista Anthropos No. 219. España: Editorial Anthropos, 43-48. – Orozco, Guillermo (1998). La televisión entra al aula. México: SNTE.– Orozco, Guillermo (2001). Televisión, audiencias y educación. Norma: Buenos Aires.– Orozco, Guillermo (2006). “La telenovela en México: ¿de una expresión cultural a un simple

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producto para la mercadotecnia?”, en Comunicación y Sociedad, Núm. 6, Nueva época, 11-36.– Orozco, Guillermo (2008). Los videojuegos más allá del entretenimiento. Su dimensión socioeducativa. Ponencia presentada en el marco del I Coloquio Internacional y II Nacional de Pensamiento Educativo y Comunicación. Colombia: Universidad Tecnológica de Pereira. (28 September)

– Orozco, Guillermo; Hernández, Francisco y Huizar, Alejandro (2009). El creciente mercadeo de la ficción y sus estrellas en Anuario 2009, La ficción televisiva en Iberoamérica: narrativas, formatos y publicidad. Barcelona: OETI.

– Piscitelli, Alejandro (2009). Nativos digitales. Dieta cognitiva, inteligencia colectiva y arquitecturas de la participación. Argentina: Santillana, Colección Aula XXI.

– Prensky, Marc (2001). Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants en The Horizon, Vol. 9 No. 5, England: MCB University Press.

– Sierra, Francisco (2005). Políticas de comunicación y educación, Crítica y desarrollo de la sociedad del conocimiento. Barcelona: Gedisa, Colección Comunicación Educativa.

– UNESCO (2007). Currículo de formación del educador en medios y alfabetización comunicativa. Organización de las Naciones Unidas (ONU).

– Vilches, Lorenzo (2001). La migración digital. Barcelona: Gedisa.– Williams, Raymond (1981). Cultura. Sociología de la comunicación y del arte. Barcelona: Paidós

– Winocur, Rosalía (2008). El móvil artefacto ritual para controlar la incertidumbre en Revista electrónica Alambre No. 1 (published online: www.alambre.com.ar)

– Winocur, Rosalía (2009). La convergencia digital como experiencia existencial en la vida de los jóvenes en Aguilar, Miguel; Nivón Eduardo; Portal, María y Winocur, Rosalía (Coords.), Pensar lo contemporáneo: de la cultura situada a la convergencia tecnológica. Barcelona: Anthropos Editorial, 249-262.

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219

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There is so much music in the world that one could reasonably think that music, like language and maybe religion is a specific trait of the human species. The essential physiological and cognitive processes that give birth to musical composition and execution could be genetically inherited and could therefore be found in all humans. If we understand these processes, among others, it could give us proof that man is the most notable and able creature that the majority of societies have ever permitted.

John Blacking, How musical is Man?

Establishing auto-poeisis as an epistemological option beyond that of cellular life, that operates within the nervous system and fundamentals of human communication, is clearly fruitful.

Humberto Maturana: De Máquinas y Seres Vivos, autopoiesis de la organización de lo vivo.

(English edition “Autopoiesis: the organization of the living,”)

Listening to the contributions about the valuing and devaluing of technological games in education we can’t wallow in the total acceptance of the dexterities that these can develop, in children and young

POETICS OR POIESIS, HOW TO EDUCATE?

Víctor Fuenmayor

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people, without evaluating their contents. Just as we can’t fall into their total negation based on the negative effects that some specialists (psychologists and sociologists) have investigated. We have to get an educational grasp on these technological games: some kind of value, that we teachers and communicators, can use to focus on the problem of how to educate, while also asking ourselves if this value is in accord with human nature.

One of these values has been obtained thanks to the insistence of many contemporary thinkers on considering actualisation, from the psychogenetic, socio-genetic and phylogenetic point of view, with the old Hellenic term: poiesis as a way of conceptualising the biological, psychological and socio-anthropological organisation of the human processes that need to be considered in education. Poiesis is an ancient concept that contemporary science has recuperated: biologists are heading towards the auto-poiesis of the human being, sociologists towards underlying cultural-poietics that determine the education of cultures, ethologists in communication, ethnoscenologists and anthropologists towards the laws of art by which cultural and human communication is organised. This auto-poiesis fits into the preoccupation with finding a mode of educating that enables and improves us– such as is desired by the musicologist John Blacking and many other contemporary thinkers – and necessarily has to stem from the recognition of a poetic organisation of the biological material common to the human species, beyond that of any particular piece or specific kind of music, or of any other kind of form of art. It’s about laws of poetics that lie deeper than art in the organisation of human nature. The artistic games in education enter within a ludic pedagogy and into the process of humanisation in accord with the nature of the species, but we have to ask ourselves, here in this specific case about the artistry of video games in our contemporary times. We can say that it is a most human component, even though not all humans express themselves as an artist or a poet, it is suggested, and it is the hypothesis of many thinkers –that as human beings we all possess a poetic organisation in our creativity, that is the same as self-creation. We create and self-create through poetic games that encompass phases of the corporal, preverbal and verbal organisation of games.

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1. Life between the biological and the poetic It was hard to come up with a title that didn’t sound either romantic or utopian to conceptualise what for many contemporary authors implies modes of educating in accord with the vital and natural poetics of human life, that must also impregnate education: human beings are creative and poetic, self-creators and auto-poietic. And if this agrees with a truth that comes from the sciences we have to ask ourselves, how can one begin to develop the auto-poietic games of humans. Is it through the unconscious, multi-sensorial and preverbal image of the body? Through the primary organisation of visual thought prior to language or through the secondary organisation of verbal games? To postulate a biological matrix of human poetics, for the development of these languages in education, presupposes another set of questions concerning how to include the human body in modes of teaching. How much do we think with our body and what would this imply in ways of educating with video games? Amongst the ideas developed by the French ethologist Boris Cyrulnik, in “The gesture and the word”, there are two ways, that we could suggest, in which human communication differs from that of other species: pointing to an object with a finger as an indication of a uniquely human mental organisation that precedes the phonation of signs of language and then the sense of play, like jugar in Spanish or jouer in French, that contain as well as the sense of childlike playfulness, the sense of acting out or putting oneself in the role of another to represent him or her.

Another matter would be the question of the game as a vital necessity for the species’ generally creative morphology, related to universal physiological processes, such as breathing or motor coordination, that have been developed in specialised adaptations in turn prompting the question. What limits do human beings have, given their biological constitution for the cultural development of videogames? We still don’t have a decisive answer in educational practice, just isolated attempts around the words creativity, the development of skills and technological dexterity, pedagogic strategy, pleasure of learning, without even entering into the meaning that these technological games have. One always tends to leave contents aside, even though implicitly they should correspond with the development of aesthetics, ethics or

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poetics that unite human beings. What limits can we establish within videogames as a mode of education? I think we must propose some basic limits for technological aesthetics and a further limit on the contents, even if they are only implied in the narratives, myths or stories, in order for them to be considered within educational methods.

In this limit, I accept, the use of the word poetics that echoing many of the authors cited. The word was somewhat hidden, in a thread of the fabric of contemporary thought, but its originality lies in that the use of the word differs from its strictly literary usage and it has taken on a greater significance in the sciences, where it has come to mean the conceptualisation of the human process of creation. One hears of biologists talking of the auto-poietic organisation of life (Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela), of cultural-poietic programmes that determine structures of learning (Iuri Lotman) from the culturologists; and even though they don’t cite this word, it is implied, in the contemporary theories of authors who maintain that artistic processes develop cognitive processes that nourish multiple intelligences (Howard Gardner) or suggest that there are trans-cultural principals of art, common to various cultures (Eugenio Barba).

I evoke a common thread among our contemporaries, who use this word in the sense of a poetic that is common and essential to human nature, from where I am led to the hypothesis that in order to develop through education the natural potential of the human species, the education itself has to gravitate toward this poetic condition of the individual, of culture and of the species.

This poiesis at the heart of how we need to educate, leads me to the antique meaning of poetics, as defined by the Dictionary of Authorities in one of its definitions: Also used to name the work or treatise in which rules and precepts are indicated for the better perfection of Poetic works. If the human being is poetic and is construed out of a process of auto-poiesis, education must integrate general or shared educational poetics in the meaning of texts or of rules, for the optimum perfection of the human being; not unlike the care taken in the construction of a real work of art. We should approach videogames from a poetic or artistic conception that is implicit in the technological aesthetics of videogames, so that these can be used as educational tools if and when their aesthetic

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values justify their integration as educational tools for subjects whose biological, cultural and anthropological organisation is poetic or auto-poietic

2. For an educational poiesis amongst our contemporaries The currents of contemporary thought consider the problem of educational change in a world where ways of thinking need to change, not just within the programmes and content of school curricula but in a much wider spectrum. – A first change would be a change in paradigm. If at one time this paradigm was the model of science, ours is moving towards the trans-disciplinary knowledge of the poetic in humans, who’s common creative focus seems to be found closer to artistic processes than to the rational processes of science. The arts must be understood by the sciences as biological processes or the satisfaction of vital needs, that is to say a necessity for the maintenance and development of life. – This paradigm concerns educating from the approach, not of scientific rationality but a poetic rationality in thought, for the optimum development of the singularity of the individual in his way of life, in expressing himself, loving or thinking, in knowing the texts of cultures as writings or codes of a cultural-poietic programme. The techniques of learning must correspond with culture; as well as building trans-cultural bridges between cultures, even the most closed ones. Just as in the arts, education must be oriented towards shared artistic principles that are identifiable in works and productions, as the reflection of the poetic human condition. A condition that can reunite the singularity of individuals with trans-cultural artistic principles or values that are shared by diverse cultures, that in turn can be postulated as human principles. – The principles of the poetic paradigm of how to educate could in short be an accentuated interest in integrating artistic, scientific and educational processes with life. The type of communication that they propose is implicative, that is to say, integrating within the educative act, the implication of the subject’s body and languages, as well as forms of expression, artistic processes and knowledge, and of cognitive and concrete forms of the arts and the development of knowledge.

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I will take this word poiesis that encapsulates as much the sense of creativity (used so commonly in contemporary pedagogies) as the concept of a poetic ability or poiesis, used by the authors previously mentioned. Reminiscent of the Helenics, the connotation would reveal the desire to reunite body-mind, as in that culture, where poiesis comprised the creative triad: kinesis, poiesos, aestesis, as actions, creations and sentiments expressed. This concept is being dealt with from distinct positions or contemporary sciences (biology, semiology, anthropology) and it must orientate modes of education towards the poetic creation of the subject, towards knowledge and the understanding of intuitive and subconscious processes and reasoning. Recognising, to put it one way or another, the division between the functions of the two hemispheres of the brain, of the cultural determination of learning, affection or love on human organisation and the processes of education and elaboration of knowledge. In all these approaches we find common ideas or coincidences in the recognition of principles that must help to overcome the faults and errors of the fractured knowledge of a single science with proposals that integrate the sciences in an interdisciplinary or trans-disciplinary action, to educate in way that corresponds with the human complexity. I think I see, despite the different approaches among the authors’ proposals, a unifying thread: a search for a poetic or general meaning that at one time was assumed by philosophy or semiology. We are with these authors, on the cusp of a semio-philosophic theory for a bio-poetic proposal integral to an education based on the human sciences that would comprise of: – An education in accord with the bio-poiesis in the auto-poiesis of biological living systems (Humberto Maturana and others), – The underling cultural-poietic programmes that organise education in all cultures (Iuri Lotman and Eugenio Barba) – Anthro-poiesis, the common principles within human evolution stemming from the consideration of artistic languages in the origin, evolution and transformation of the species (Ethnomusicology of John Blacking y Ethnoscenology of Jean-Marie Pradier, Jean Duvignaud and other authors).

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Is it possible that the recognition of this inherently human ability for poiesis, through these scientific routes, forms the impulse for the creation of an education requiring a complex pedagogy? That demands a didactic for this new knowledge that rides between the integrated sciences and the arts, between the arts and the human sciences, that seeks a third space in future thought, or, to become concerned with an awareness of life itself, true human life. These intents look to comprehend what is human in the dark and poetic side of artistic understanding as much as in the blinding clarity of the abstractions of the sciences.

We can’t defend or blindly condemn videogames within education without locating the essential poetic value implied in these scientific theories, biological ones as much as those of cultural communication, and looking self-critically at an educational crisis that also encompasses the crisis in the teaching of the arts.

3. The current educational crisis regarding education.Let us consider the present general or broader situation, as described by one of the authors who paradoxically, also discusses the teaching of the arts: There is a general and long lasting crisis in teaching and formation (….) The techniques for the transmission of knowledge today are: audiovisual, computer aided, tele-teaching, with the constant presence of the mass media rather than the personalised, face to face teaching of a teacher or the reference of a book (…) What has also changed is what is to be transmitted, the content of knowledge, with the currently well established predominance of certain technical disciplines, with a direct professional outcome, over

“the humanities”, the disappearance of a harmoniously organised system of knowledge, the irreversible invasion of computers, the rapid renovation of knowledge and the need to stay up to date in order to keep up with the rhythm of change. In all countries the authorities seek to form a qualified workforce susceptible to finding employment. This utilitarianism doesn’t displease potential students (nor their parents) who are looking to not become

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the future unemployed.1 The risk that we are running educationally, in following the sirens call for economy driven learning, for utilitarianism and for technical and social efficiency, is that the arts will fall into the ordinary and banal reality of a devastating acculturation. The poetics of how to educate in order to curb these excesses needs to start questioning this educational utilitarianism, by starting to comprehend the relation between processes of the arts and artistic, educational and human models. It becomes necessary, in space like here at OETI, to not negate the integration of computer and audiovisual technologies but to reflect, and make communicators and educators reflect, by listening to the poetic aspect of educating, that all these contemporary thinkers refer to, where culture and the arts organise a way of educating in harmony with the values of the implicit ability for poetics in each and every individual and in all culture. Along side the well known proposal of complex thought or pedagogy of complexity, in which artists and those of mixed-race, with their open mentality, establish an ethical link of understanding between cultures2, I must mention other current complex educational trends that deal with artistic potential, but that echo the creative experiences of the last century: by educating through art (Herbert Read), in accordance with the development of multiple intelligences (Howard Gardner), through the situation (Gisèle Barret), through expression or creation (J.P. Guilford, J.K. Lagemann, E.P. Torrance and others), by amplifying the creative or poetic processes in all branches of knowledge. To recognise, in the face of this educational crisis, that there are responses as valid as those that we have been discovering of the ability for poetics or artistry and that in some way involved with the complexities of educating in accord with the implicit values that we all posses as humans. We could resume this dilemma of how to educate poietically by elaborating other questions:

1. How can one educate in tune with the biological organisation of the auto-poiesis of living systems? 2. How does one educate in tune with the cultural-poietic

1 Yves Michaux, 1993, Enseigner l’art? p. 142 Edgar Morin, Seven Complex lessons for Education in the Future, 2001, p.p. 124-125

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programme that depends on whether it deals with the transmission of cultures of texts or of grammars or of personalising or depersonalising techniques? 3. How to educate according to trans-cultural and human principles with a poetic model? 4. If by definition we are auto-poietic beings, from the biological organisation of living systems to the processes of human evolution, individualisation and culturalization, how can one educate in accord in tune with the nature of human life itself?

4. How to educate through the auto-poiesis of life?.In spite of not being an expert in the material, it is easy to prove that important human biological organising functions refer to the situation of the body in its spatial orientation and temporal rhythmicity, in the anchoring of a subconscious multi-sensory image in the kinaesthetic base of all sensory meanings and the arts. From which stem the intuitive senses of colour, music, rhythm, and narration that are subconscious or pre-verbal forms of learning that we could call procedural memory. The continuous development of each individual, determines his personal resources or faculties after infancy, conforming what Howard Gardner has called multiple intelligences. To these facets of knowledge of the educator – as Edgar Morin calls them – one has to add the intuitive and cognitive knowledge of this very human procedural memory. A child knows how to tell a story, paint, sing, act, rhyme, talk, without understanding any grammar or codes and even without having entered into schooling. He knows these artistic procedures with a pre-verbal or archaic memory that intuitively elaborates texts with forms and meanings, without yet knowing the grammar of the language or the codes of the arts:

This type of learning constitutes a memory without representation and consists of a corporal and mental agility that is not necessarily conscious. It is about a procedural memory in the neurological zone of the neo-cortex that processes a specific type of visual, audio, kinaesthetic information that is moulded by these sensory forms of information. In this way the brain becomes predominantly sensitive to this type of information, that having been perceived

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at a very early stage, allows the brain acquire the capacity to perceive them better than others.3

Education must recognise in this implicitly auto-poietic knowledge of the child, that processes information through pre-verbal neuronal and cerebral structures which facilitate learning and that must be optimally developed to satisfy the expressive and educational needs and that, above all, are necessary for the maintenance of life and development of intelligences. Needs, as vital as affection or love and the arts form part of a peripheral and essential vital biology, but are as essential as sex or reproduction for the maintenance of life. This recognition of a symbolic poetics that is prior to language must form part of the bio-literacy programmes of how we educate. To recognise these expressive and vital needs calls to our attention everything that art can bring to forms of educating and living, in expressing all that is human from this symbolic and pre-verbal precedence that prepares our access to semantic memory, that is so linguistically centred that it can banish creative processes to latency or obscurity. Many authors refer to the biology of these processes of knowledge and the processing of information in accord with the cerebral hemispheres; the two memories; one procedural and the other semantic (Boris Cyrulnik); the theories of the biological origins of human evolution through the arts (ethno-musicology of John Blacking or the etnoscenology of Jean-Marie Pradier and many other authors). The biological theory of the auto-poietic organisation of life in the theory of the Chilean doctor and biologist Humberto Maturana and the theories of symbolisation and cerebral ordering before the predominance of language (Sigmund Freud, Mircea Eliade). All these thinkers make us think about the problem of education, some through therapy, based on the processes of symbolic organisation prior to the significant predominance of language, that are the root of artistic creation, for myths, rituals and the sciences. Education that has traditionally always been spoken and written through reason, consciousness and language, rarely recognises this symbolic support of

3 Boris Cyrulnik, 2004, El amor que cura,

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education, these intuitive intelligences, the procedural memory of the arts. Educationa must open up to this non-semantic memory, developing it with more complex processes of kinaesthetic symbolism the senses, in accord with the multisensoriality of the brain and the thought processes that latently accompany us throughout out life. This procedural memory forms part of cognitive processes for the elaboration of knowledge in the most concrete, determining or creative phases of the organisation of the human being. Some authors grant the same cognitive value to artists and scientists. This is the direction that Howard Gardner suggests for education in his theory of multiple intelligences.

When I began to think of the meaning of the word “development”, I asked myself what was the optimum development. I convinced myself that the specialists in this field must pay a lot of attention to the aptitudes and capacities of painters, writers, musicians, dancers and other artists. Stimulated (rather than intimidated) by the perspective of amplifying the definition of knowledge, I thought it was legitimate to consider that the capacities of artists’ were as cognitive as those that my colleagues in cognitive psycholog y attributed to mathematicians and scientists.4

If ways of educating are preoccupied with the optimum development of the human being, we can’t discard either the semantic memory or the procedural memory, nor can we separate the educational model from artistic models. How can one place this third space, between this memorable human dichotomy, between the latent subconscious and manifestly linguistic? Here we can ask ourselves what the predominant values should be for educating; if the optimisation can be achieved efficiently through an educational model based on the auto-poiesis of human nature or on a model imposed for other reasons, and we need to ask ourselves, why the scientific, socio-economic, political or technological model has become predominant in education. To educate the human being optimally and in accord with his biological organisation, the auto-poiesis of living

4 Howard Gardner, La inteligencia reformulada. Las inteligencias múltiples en el siglo XXI

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systems, would optimise the development of all types of intelligence that are so necessary for human diversity and so capable of creatively resolving many of life’s problems. In an individual sense or culturally in our contemporary society it is about the need to reinforce, through education, identities, that, as Edgar Morin would say are: individual, cultural and planetary. The closest that we have for an education for life, encompassing within this wide-ranging terminology even the organic or biological, are the arts, languages that are closer to the singularity of the individual and to the bio-sico-social necessities that are expressed in culture. The answer to the question of how to educate in tune with life would be the use of all the senses, of all the artistic languages and of all forms of intelligence, as biological-poeisis is only partially explored by the traditional visual-auditory or eminently verbal methods of education. However, we must also look self-critically at the danger of a technological triumphalism that leads to the massification of the individual and the loss of traditional forms of transmitting culture. How can technologies affect education? One answer would be the poetic value, that in turn is dependent on the prudent dosage and poietic-human use of these technologies, of the just equilibrium between indifferent technologies and the different latent poiesis of the individual and of cultures, without these screens ever clouding the poetics of the identities that must resist in order to survive in the face of the danger or threat of their loss, paradoxically taking on the critics and technological triumphalism.

5. How to educate in accord with cultural-poietic programming?How do humans enter culture? How does culture enter into the human? To redirect this problematic towards the problem of an educational semiosis, raises the question of how one transposes all the texts that make up a culture into a corpus that can be taught. The answer of Juri Lotman makes one think that culture is both inside and outside, with an internal-external corporality, that permits the teachable from an impossible place and places the human interior beside the exterior culture, the imprecise semiotic limits of which are the limits between

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the body of culture and the culture of bodies that share the same education. It would be about focusing on it semiologically, based on the theory of the entry of a biological body into a process of cultural semiosis, as the Estonian culturologist Juri Lotman would call it. We enter into a culture thanks to an educational model the teachings of which are implied in the cultural structure. To educate is to enter into the cultural space or semiosphere that the author defines as one that possesses the distinctive traits that are attributed to a closed space. Only from within the space is it possible to carry out communicative processes and the production of new information (…) The semiosphere is the semiotic space outside of which the very existence of semiosis is impossible5. The semiosphere, according to the thesis of the author who invents this concept from the term biosphere of V.I.Vernadski (used also in Edgar Morin’s book) is not isolated but situated between the biosphere and the noosphere, the spheres of life and rationality. The semiosphere would be an abstract and mediating concept, like language or like corporality (talking is not just the tongue, just as corporality is not just the body), but each realisation of the semiosphere is irregular and is connected to a continuous semiotic of the diverse types of text and levels of organisation that circulate in culture. Ways of approaching the question of how to educate concern what Lotman has called the “Problem of teaching culture as the typological characterisation of culture” in one of the chapters of his book On the semiosphere. We can see his reasoning regarding methods of education:

The examination of culture as a language and of all the texts of this language naturally raises the question of education. If culture is the sum of nonhereditary information, then the question of how to introduce this information to man and human collectives is not an idle one6.

The interest of Lotman’s text resides in metaphorically associating a

5 “Acerca de la semiosfera”, 1991, in Criterios, Nº 306 Iuri Lotman, 1998, La semiosfera, II, p. 121

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cultural space that is always closed, with the body contained by the skin and the filters of transmitting-receiving organs of communication. These closures or boundaries are marked but permeable divisions, just as the spaces between the points of a line represents its limits. Communication is made possible through the porous skin and sensory organs that cover bodies and through the frontiers of cultures that permit communication, through the filters that translate or exchange exterior information; customs, interpreters or monetary exchanges between countries and cultures. The semiotic closure is necessary for the internal circulation of interconnected texts that conform a culture but the semiotic space permits an exchange with other spaces through the frontier filters or translations that allow communication with semiotic texts or ones that aren’t semiotic but could be. The passing of texts from culture or the semiosphere to the biosphere of the body can happen through teaching, from the learning of the texts of the culture itself or through the rules and grammar with which these texts have been construed.

5.1. The transmission of culture by texts or grammar Juri Lotman resumes educational methods in two main systems (textual and grammatical) according to the typologies of the cultures that he describes as resembling the learning of a language.

The first is practiced in the teaching of a native tongue and with the second language at an early age. In this case, no rules are introduced into the consciousness of the learner: they are substituted by texts. The child retains numerous uses and on the base of these learns to generate texts independently.The second case is presented when certain rules are introduced into the learner’s consciousness, on the base of which he can generate texts independently7.

Lotman establishes expressly that one must not confuse the teaching of culture in its structure with the structure of a natural language:

7 ibid, p. 124-125

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So that whether the principle is “a collection of texts” or “a collection of rules” becomes a latent cultural-poietic programme that exercises a huge influence on all material that is subsequently introduced into the consciousness of the community.8

If from a biological point of view, as in the formulation of the Chilean Humberto Maturana auto-poiesis is a biological organisation, one observes its cultural level correspondingly defined as a programme of cultural-poiesis. Not unlike the programmed unity of the subject that is poetically self-constructed, culture also contains mechanisms of self-creation or construction or reconstruction according to its own poetics.One of the observations that seems interesting to establish is in reference to the situation of the teacher or educator in the typology offered by Lotman:

The culture of texts doesn’t have the tendency to segregate on a separate meta-level the rules of its formation. It doesn’t tend to self-descriptions. However if rules are introduced they are held in less esteem than the texts (…) The idea is clearly developed that fidelity to the teacher is more important than fidelity to the doctrine9

I would like to remind you of the reference I made to Yves Michaux about the crisis of education where the crisis is characterised by the presence of the techniques more than of the face to face and personalised teaching of a teacher or the reference to a book.. Technology, depersonalisation and the absence of books means that we could consider, according to this, the contemporary educational crisis as if it was the grammaticalization of technology, that assimilates the learning of grammatical rules to the use of technical programmes, without people or texts, to the extent that it is without meaning and without identities. Here we can place the unity of the individual and of culture, but also the move towards a “state of self-consciousness”, when culture segregates self-modelling texts and introduces in its own memory a

8 Ibid9 Ibid, p. 125

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conception of itself. It is precisely in this state, above all, that the unity of culture10 arises. If we identify the unity of our culture in the use of computers or technologies as a society of knowledge without people, we fall into what Michaux has called depersonalising education (this word also appears with Eugenio Barba in referring to one of the techniques used for transmission). We are educating with this transformation from the cultural transmission of the grammar of the arts that has predominated in the West for centuries (grammar of languages, rhetoric of texts, and academic rules for the learning of the arts) to a grammar of technologies. We must think of a determining cultural structure that changes without changes, that transforms itself without being structurally transformed. It adapts a cultural structure for the transmission of grammars to other more contemporary techniques, with the grammaticalization of technologies. The theory of Lotman is interesting in that it doesn’t formulate partial semiotics but integral or global semiologies at the socio-anthropological level of cultures. It establishes as evidenced in the previous example, a way of understanding what is the semiotic mechanism that introduces the individual into his/her culture. The educational system is not something external but is situated on the internal-external frontier of culture that is at once concrete and perceived, a structure of rules that is constantly transmitted:

For culture, that is not just potential information locked into one system or another, but also real information, extracted from it by one or other historically given community, the structure of the consciousness that receives texts and the repertoire of the functional uses of those texts doesn’t represent something external. They would constitute one of the features of its internal organisation. For this, the mechanism for introducing the system in the collective consciousness, the mechanism of “teaching”, will not be external to culture.11

We are in the dilemma of contemporary culture. The contemporary arts are transmitted with a personalised learning in

10 Ibid, p. 12711 Ibid, p. 127

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contact with texts, however the educational use of technology tends towards a depersonalised learning of the grammar used in these technologies. Contrary to the learning of language and to forms of procedural memory, we are in a sort of educational neurosis, betwixt textual or grammatical methods of teaching. With contemporary arts being through the personalised transmission of texts, contemporary teaching methods are through the depersonalised transmission of technological grammars. The use of the dynamics of creativity, through intuitive cognitive procedures, as in the contemporary arts, is the same concept as learning a language by texts and art through procedural memory. This educational and intuitive route has made thinkers reflect about the subconscious or non-formulated grammars that articulate culture, above all in its corporal practices. Certain authors have called subconscious grammars the actions and non-verbal behaviour in a culture that is organised like a choreography or dance of life, with syntaxes that organising situations through chain reactions. The metaphorical concepts used by these authors in their investigation of culture, are artistic forms that declare a law or principle. In the form of a cultural communication based on the invisibility of the artistic code that articulates its orchestral communication, a cultural score, dance or choreography of life, evidencing once more with these terms the cultural auto-poiesis and reaffirming the social auto-poiesis that Lotman baptises with the name, cultural-poiésis. The method for educating, according to auto-poiesis that is seemingly so individual, here runs into a cultural-poietic programme that all culture contains in the structure of its everyday and extraordinary aesthetic.

5.2. The transmission of culture with personalising and depersonalising techniques?To educate by teaching codified rules or grammar before producing texts or to educate with texts, where one learns the rules, indicates the depersonalising or personalising approach to techniques for transmission.

The theories of transmission of the culturologist Juri Lotman, correspond with the transmission of personalising or depersonalising

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techniques of the theatrical anthropologist Eugenio Barba. For this author the passage of body techniques from the everyday to the extraordinary concern the learning of the body-mind relationship. In his typology there are two techniques that are poles apart, that can be amplified towards criteria of conscious and subconscious, codified or not-formulated, North and South Pole – as he himself suggests like non-geographical concepts -

About the first pole, Barba states:The actor of the North Pole is apparently less free. He models his scenic behaviour according to a set of tried and tested rules that define a style or codified genre. This code of physical or vocal action, fixed in a peculiar and detailed artificiality (be it ballet or one of the Asian theatrical forms, modern dance, the Opera or mime) is susceptible to evolution and innovation. In principle, however, every actor who has chosen this type of theatre has to adapt, and begin his depersonalising learning process. He accepts a model of theatrical persona that is established by tradition.12

I think this scenic reference can be compared to the problem of transmission in the classic art of the West. In reference to transmission on the South Pole, it appears in opposition to the first and can be extended to traditional societies or to contemporary artistic practices:

The actor in the South Pole doesn’t pertain to a genre of spectacle characterised by a detailed stylistic code. There is no repertoire of strict rules that have to be respected. He himself has to construct the rules on which he leans. He begins a learning process through the innate gifts of his personality. (…) The actor of the South Pole is apparently freer but encounters greater difficulties in developing in an articulated and continuous manner the quality of his scenic craftsmanship.13

If the actor of the South Pole relies on the innate gifts of his personality it is an education through personalised techniques within the

12 Eugenio Barba, 1992, La canoa de papel. Antropología teatral, p. 3113 ibid

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learning process, as he himself must construct the rules that will support him, from the texts executed without any knowledge of its codification, its grammatical or written formulation. As far as the actor of the North Pole is concerned, he is educated in a depersonalising way, so that he can enter into the model of the stage persona. If we relate these two Poles more specifically. The classic codes of the traditional arts of the West are depersonalising. It is considered that there is an absolute technique that must be recognised as such before one can express oneself in this art. Contrary to this, the arts of other have virtuoso expressions, with an implicit or unexplained code, as yet unformulated, and in contemporary arts an improvisation through which the artist discovers his persona and constructs his own technique and codes of conduct. This type of culture, textual or based on the transmission of texts, is found in traditional societies that are often illiterate but also in the origin of contemporary western arts which to renew their languages, above all the pictorial languages (Gauguin, Picasso, Matisse and others), take the aesthetic model of distant cultures from the knowledge of texts of these cultures (Africa, America, Asia, Oceania). What we indicate in these two models of educating or transmission of techniques can be translated into methods of educating that are in tune with artistic expressions, situated between the rules and transgressions of contemporary aesthetics. Academicism will always appear to adhere to grammatical formulae, to the concept of “technique”. The contemporary arts like current pedagogies appear to seek a style through the practices themselves or their execution; where experimentation, the transgression of codes, chance or improvisation will act as creative models to suit the style of a singular or personal expression. The fact of including the individual singularity within an understanding of reality, places the balance of creative or artistic education lean more towards the personalising techniques of the textual cultures than the depersonalising grammatical cultures, to contemporary expressions more than to the classics. Amongst all these authors, scientists or artists, it would seem that symbolic thinking is stronger than formal discourse, than the accepted rules or already formulated grammars. In trying to orient contemporary

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education towards more expressive symbolic methods, that still comprehend the non-verbal or pre-verbal, as in the contemporary arts, reveals a preoccupation with looking for aspects of reality – the deepest ones – that aren’t revealed with other types of understanding.

6. Teaching as an art or an art for teaching The question of how to educate can shift to how to teach? That contains in itself in some underlying form something that corresponds to these reflections about the artistic processes, that comes closer to comprehending this poetic nature of the individual, of cultures and of humanity, whose modalities can follow the functions of art teaching. Can art be taught? Can one learn through art? First of all I would say that it is not about art schools in the form that they exist academically. I’m talking more about the space for possible processes that are difficult to teach, where one can teach the techniques that are not separated from this human poeisis, where learning reaffirms the ability for life poetics, depending on the artistic potential. We could extend the same to any other non-artistic training and for this I echo Yves Michaux’s proposal: teaching art ultimately has no other meaning under this concept, not an exceptional question at all: it would simply be one more variant among others for “how to teach today”.14

In transferring these methods of teaching art to any other training he proposes that there are three essential actions: to learn, to practice and to produce (instead of to create, in the already well worn sense)

These three aspects work for numerous disciplines and also for the visual arts and arts in general. In the case of music one learns to play an instrument, in this sense one learns the techniques of the instrument. One can also practice this instrument for pleasure or to earn a living. Ultimately one can become creative or productive with this instrument inventing a new way of playing or producing new works for this instrument. (…) Mathematics can be seen the same way: one learns to do mathematics by studying the principles and trying to resolve exercises; one can practice it for pleasure,

14 Yves Michaux, (1993), Enseigner l’art?, p. 12

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as Paul Valery did every morning or to earn a living by doing financial statistics; eventually one can produce new theories if one has the ability.15.

In this new perspective, it is not a fragmentary theory that can respond to the question of how to educate. It is more that the complex and inherent poetic ability of man opens up the range of possibilities to enable us understand that the individual, cultures, and the species, are in origin poetic. Poetic beings who have not known or been able to fulfil this commitment to join the inherent poetry of their own nature with an educational activity that enables it to face up to the barbaric and pragmatic realities of the fragmented sciences, the divisive politics and crisis economies that have diverted the human being from his own poetic nature in other directions and for other ends. We are left with an ideal of an educational dream to be realised through an extended awareness of the art of life and to educate in life with art. In all these authors, scientists or artists it would seem that symbolic thought is stronger than formal discourse, than the accepted rules or already formulated grammars. In trying to orientate contemporary education towards these more expressive forms of symbolising, reveals a preoccupation that seeks aspects of reality – the most profound ones – that aren’t revealed with other types of understanding. I don’t see any other possible solution than these interpersonal, intercultural and trans-disciplinary bridges, where the arts are in advance of all forms of education. When scientific thought takes the available artistic model and can comply with the demands of investigating this complexity that we recognise in all that is human, a form of educating can emerge to construct a new knowledge or new understanding for education in the future, one that our time needs. All educators need to be conscious of this change – just as Edgar Morin says – it is not programmatic but paradigmatic. A more controversial and paradoxical fact of this proposal is that art schools themselves have fallen into the current educational crisis. The definition of competencies in art degree courses must contain this angle of human ability for poetics in order to resist the intent to define the arts with business criteria. It would be more human to proclaim the contrary thesis, although it would seem

15 Yves Michaux, Ibid, p. 16-17

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a utopia: just think: a new poetic model for the economy and not the economy defining artistic and educational competencies, that would take as its argument the economic crisis rather than the educational one. 7. By way of a conclusion.How to educate? If the law of life is poetic, even in biological levels of organisation, we have to face up to a commitment to educate without standardizing, without massifying or making it technological to the extreme that we forget that a concrete poetic is realised in life. Recognising that the same force organises the singular individual, the texts of different cultures and society itself. In the theories of our contemporaries, one can comprehend an internal, necessary and free organisation, that is to say, the poetic ideal of democracy; when you discover an art in its subconscious grammar, an orchestral or choreographic composition in its acts, or a first melodic song or music in the voice that speaks, a narrative in its history, a theatrical piece in a scene from life. Mixing amidst all these polyphonies of social expression would also include understanding the meaning of happiness. How to facilitate this process that makes us all singular and unique with our own poetry, capable of being so different and yet so similar, to the underlying poetics that unite the individual, culture and humanity. It may be part of a utopia, a dream, a timely and necessary reaction that warns us about the educational crisis of our times and opens our eyes to methods of education taken from the model of humanity itself, it is just the artists that express and defend it as it also comes from the mouths of scientists who are trying to think with the whole body, mind and heart. To find a method of educating that explores the poiesis, that is the make up of all human being and that maintains the most profound sense of life and culture will be the main challenge for the future in education and life..

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

– BATESON, HALL, BIRDWHISTELL, GOFFMAN, WATZALAVICK y otros, La nueva comunicación. Editorial Kairós, Barcelona 1994.

– CYRULNIK, Boris, El amor que nos cura. Gedisa, Barcelona, 2004.– GARDNER, Howard, La inteligencia reformulada. Las inteligencias múltiples en el siglo XXI. Paidós, Barcelona, 2001.

– GUILFORD, J. P., SINGER, Jerome, WALLACH, Michael, TORRANCE, – E. Paul, Creatividad y educación. Paidós, Barcelona, 1994.– HALL, Edward T., Más allá de la cultura. Editorial Gustavo Gili, Barcelona, 1978.– LOTMAN, Iuri, La semiosfera. Ediciones Cátedra, Madrid, 1998.– MATURANA, Humberto, La realidad ¿objetiva o construida?. Fundamentos biológicos del conocimiento. Anthropos, Barcelona, 2001.

– MICHAUX, Yves, Enseigner l’art?. Editions Jacqueline Chambon, París, 1993.– MORIN, Edgar, Los siete saberes necesarios para la educación del futuro. Paidós, Barcelona, 2001.

– PRADIER, Jean-Marie, DUVIGNAUD, Jean, ROUGET, Gilbert y otros, La scène et la terre. Questions d’etno-scénologie. Maison de cultures du monde, París 1996.

– TORRANCE, E. Paul, DAVIS A. Gary, y otros, Estrategias para la creatividad. Paidós,

Barcelona, 1992.

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Today television is almost a routine that daily occupies hours of our lives. Different studies demonstrate the persuasive power of television, images that come from “the box” often reach the screens of our brain in the form of messages, feelings, vocabulary, violence…and have an effect on our daily life. Our school is conscious of the importance of this subject and is one of the centres that is constantly working to teach the reading and writing of images. Every time I end a TV elective, I ask my students: “Has it changed how you see television?” A large majority say yes, that they now they watch it differently because they have learnt to construct the audiovisual language and are more critical when watching programmes or films. The result of this project is that there are an increasing number of teachers who are inspired to use a camera and more students who want to carry on studying audiovisual communication in further education. Throughout these years the objective has always been the same, to create a space for television in our school, where all the students understand the audiovisual language and the students who are curious about the medium can express their ideas with images, learn to understand the audiovisual language, discover the job of the reporter, become familiar with on-line editing tools and be critical observers of audiovisual media.

IMTV, SOMETHING MORE THAN JUST TV.

Nicolás Torres

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This project was born 14 years ago in the Coop. Institució Montserrat of Barcelona school. The school made a clear declaration of intent to teach students the audiovisual language, adding value to teaching at the school and as a feature that would differentiate it from the rest of the schools in the neighbourhood.

In order to develop this task the school carried out various actions: – Economic, investing in the purchase of all the necessary material to be able to work with 20 students an hour. At the moment we have at our disposal two editing classrooms and equipment for five camera-crew. – Curricular, promoting audiovisual electives within the student curriculum, three electives in first grade (animation and manipulation), 2nd (the reporters) and 3rd (fiction). Currently we also have within the branch of computer studies, 4th grade students working with video as a communication tool. – The centre’s project, in which teachers develop audiovisual productions, from nursery through to secondary school, filming excursions and school events. In one course there can be 30 audiovisual productions of ALL SORTS. – External collaborative projects with Projecte Grimm, the LMI of the University of Barcelona and with Apple.

Audiovisual electives.Television as a subject doesn’t exist in any obligatory form, but our centre offers within the optional electives 2-3 television courses.

– In the first year of ESO (Obligatory Secondary Education), the magic of images, a journey through the history of cinema from optical games up until the first montages and animations. The students experience their first introduction to audiovisual language through the making of films and simple montages. – In the second year of ESO we work around the news and reporting. The students come into contact with the world of journalism and find out how the news is produced. During this course they are in

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charge of recording and editing all the activities from Christmas through to Saint George’s day. – In the third year of ESO we work on fiction, the students develop different ideas that they have to develop in fictional form. Most of the students participate afterwards in the series Taquilla Oberta (Open Locker).

The IMTV Channel It is a project that arose 10 years ago in our centre. It is made up of secondary school students who want to explore the audiovisual language in more depth, developing their own productions, from school reportages to their own productions. They make more than 20 productions a year and their videos have won numerous national and international prizes. In its database there are more than 80 videos of all types. The team is made up of 30 students from different courses who, having taken the television credits, feel motivated to explore in more depth the audiovisual language or who want to direct their future professional career in this direction, be it as a technician or as a journalist. This team has been functioning for 10 years and they are the school’s reporters or help the teachers to make videos about specific subjects. The students realise all the audiovisual production, from the initial idea to the placing of the videos in RSS format within the IMTV portal on Itunes. The productions are realised in groups that work on different proposals at the same time, at the moment we are working on a TV series for Internet, Taquilla Oberta. The pieces are made at school, mostly in their midday break. They define themselves as “A group of students where everyone learns from each other, even the teacher”. It seems to me to be the best definition and motivation to take this project further. Each year we edit a DVD with more than 20 annual reportages and we have been selected or invited to festivals everywhere: Cinema Jove in Valencia, Camera Zizanio (Greece), Young Reporters ( Japan), Videotivoli (Finland), Youki (Austria)... “It is now four years since we began to participate in the reportages and projects of the IMTV team. From our point of view this team, made up of students of all ages, is a space where everyone is

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teacher and student, and as such the fruits of the labour and endeavours of all, young or old, are excellent. Since we have worked with video and seen that behind a film there are so many hours of effort we have learnt to observe everything with fresh eyes: valuing at all times the dedication that lies behind things, the illusion with which they are made, their aim … On the other hand we are proud to be at a school that offers the opportunity to participate in this kind of activity, with a teacher who voluntarily dedicates so many hours to teach us and allow us the luxury of being able to make videos where we are the main protagonists, to participate in so many competitions and that our videos have been considered almost professional. Finally we want to say that all the hours that the IMTV team has spent together, be it in competitions, in trips or working has allowed us to create very special bonds of friendship, as much with each other as with the teacher. We are very proud of the Imtv team. We won’t forget everything that we have learnt.”

Elena Padró and Anna Miret Fourth year ESO students.

Objectives and benefits of the project. This project groups together diverse objectives.

– That students and teachers, working together, become involved in the creation of educational contents in a straightforward and easy manner. – To promote the interdisciplinary learning of students, using different technologies. – To promote teamwork, not just in one course but throughout the educational process, developing a group project where students from different courses and teachers of different areas can work together. – The creation of the Podcasts stimulates: investigation, writing, an expanded vocabulary, effective discourse, problem solving, precision with time and creativity. – Fomenting an attention to detail, self-esteem and motivation

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around school and learning, a very important aspect given the characteristics of the student body in secondary school. – To become familiar with the audiovisual language as a medium of expression to which we dedicate many hours and that transmits values that are not always positive in education. Through their own productions it is possible to learn how this language is constructed and to become active and critical observers of audiovisual programmes in the future – To facilitate ongoing training and assessment in the making of radio, television and podast programmes for teachers of this level at the centre, through the centre’s ICT department.

Taquilla oberta, a parallel life?

WHAT IS TAqUILLA OBERTA (OPEN LOCkER)?Taquilla oberta is a video series, in podcast format for the Internet, made by a group of adolescents at our school, where we deal with the subjects that preoccupy us most about adolescence and with which we can identify. It is aimed at an adolescent public. This series is made by 35 students, from the Institució Montserrat school, aged between 12 and 16. The group is coordinated by a teacher and in this project we are in charge of the scripts, the ideas, the interpretation, the production, the music as well as the editing. We’ve been working on it for 4 years and during this time have made 10 episodes and our intention is to carry on working for one more year. What we are trying to do is show the world from our point of view, to the extent that many of the stories that we explain have happened to us or we have seen happen to people around us, so we try to make fairly realistic fiction. The series is set in a school, due to the fact that we have no budget the sets had to be located in our surroundings, such as the school, which is where we did nearly all the filming of the series. We think that Taquilla Oberta has united us as a group, as working with a group of approximately 35 people is not easy. That said we managed quite well.

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Some of us also think that the possibility of giving birth to the project Taquilla Oberta is a great opportunity for all of us, as we have total freedom to make a project that we really like, learning things that before we saw as impossible. It is an opportunity to enter into the world of television, to see how fiction is constructed, to learn the audiovisual language and see that things are not so easy in this world.

WHERE DID THE IDEA COME FROM?The idea of making the series arose when a small group of students involved in IMTV (the school’s television crew) had the opportunity to attend a shoot of a Catalan television series Ventdelplà (Wind of the Plain). While we were waiting for the person who was to show us round the set, we had the idea, why didn’t we make our own series, with the commitment of all involved to begin in the first year and to end in the fourth year of ESO. We began by choosing a name for the series and after many proposals we ended up deciding that it would be called Taquilla Oberta. Others decided to compose the opening theme tune for the programme with a music programme. In the beginning we were eight students but the number hasn’t stopped growing since we began. We knew that we wanted to make a series, but we didn’t know what it could be about. After discussions we all agreed that the series had to be set within the school environment, as it would be our filmset for this television experience. That was how we decided on the theme of the series.It took us a while to get going, given that we didn’t have any kind of television experience. We had the hope of bringing out an episode every month, but the reality was another. Currently we record an episode every two months, and we have made nine episodes.

HOW DO WE ORGANISE OURSELVES?

THE IDEASFirst the whole team meets and we talk about the themes that we will deal with in the new episode and the evolution of the characters. Every

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one brings ideas and we decide how the story has to continue. Once we are clear, we divide up the subjects into short sequences, of 1 or 2 minutes so that we can film them in just one day.

HOW DO WE FILM?When recording, we take one or two cameras, the necessary tapes, tripod, boom pole and headphones.

We pick the most suitable scenario for the scene. We have to bear in mind the scene to be recorded as well as the light and sound in that place.

The actors meet at the location, do a rehearsal of the scene, the sound technician watches to ensure that it sounds good and holds the microphone with the boom, the camera thinks about the type of frame and the producer decides if the shot has been recorded correctly or not.

We take different shots: a general one and various close ups of each character.

In a notebook we note down what has been recorded and on which tape. This makes the work much more fluid.

HOW DO WE EDIT? While one group records new sequences, the others upload the material onto a computer and with a simple editing programme edit the shots that have been recorded.

When we have all the sequences of the episode ready, we transfer them to a professional editing programme and a team of 3-4 people decide the order, the effects, the music, the title, the transitions and the credits.

WHAT HAS TAqUILLA OBERTA BROUGHT US?(Feedback from the students themselves.)

Taquilla oberta has been a great experience for all of us; we have learnt, laughed, had a good time, we have become very united as a group and used to working as a team, etc. For this reason we wanted to gather together the opinions of some of the members of the group that made Taquilla Oberta, because at the heart of it we believe that it is really

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important to gather together our experiences, in a podcast that is attached in a cd. All the members of Taquilla agree with the idea that the actual making of the series has brought us many good moments. Many of us are sure that we have learnt a lot about editing, recording, sound and even about acting: “The improvement since the first episode is awesome if we compare it with the following ones; its evident that we have learnt quite a lot”. Thanks to Taquilla we have been able to attend various festivals and a couple of radio programmes. In general having the opportunity to make Taquilla Oberta has been a very positive experience that we will always remember. Some of us plan to carry on studying audiovisual communication, as with this experience we have learnt to understand how an audiovisual fiction is constructed and how our ideas can be transformed into images. A huge amount of expectation about the series has been generated amongst our friends. Each day more students want to participate in some way or another. We know that many people follow it and that some parents or teachers even use this material to talk to adolescents about the subjects that are dealt with in the different episodes. In the end our commitment has become a reality, we began in the first year and we have ended in the fourth. Now we are filming the last episode; in total we will have made 80 minutes of fiction, the length of a feature film. But the story continues with our friends in third year.

IMTV Coop. Institución Montserrat Barcelona

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Xavier Laborda, Regina de Assís, Nicolás Lorite, Francesc Llobet

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Abstract This article gathers together some examples of how the media (press, radio, television and the internet) as driving forces in intercultural dynamization in local, regional, national and international contexts. That make it possible to explore, on the one hand an understanding of the multi-polar study of how immigration is presented in the news and on the other, the effective role of the media as mediators of interpersonal and intergroup relations. In short, to show how the media are linked to the immediate reality, from the double formative and informative angle and through models of investigation-action and applied investigation.

Key WordsImmigration, inter-culturality, information, audiovisual, dynamization, media pedagog y

IntroductionDo the media exert an integrating role or do they incline more towards discriminatory models? Is immigration presented well or badly? Do they approach the migratory reality with quality news criteria or do they continually produce and reproduce sensationalist discourses? These are some of the questions that can be formulated in order to try to explore in greater depth pedagogical models, relative to the discourses disseminated by the communication and news media. Models that are

Informing and training: Towards a pedagogy of the media as a dynamizer of inter-culturality

Nicolás Lorite

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capable of linking a critical and constructive analysis of the media to what they really produce. In order to investigate how the media presents issues and to use this as a support for dynamic intercultural pedagogic models it is necessary to know the reality of life and the reality of the news, from the double perspective of a qualitative and quantitative methodology. It is also necessary to support the investigative approach with a conceptual framework, with as much contrasted evidence as possible, adding to this the perspective of investigation-action. That in this case is provided by the results of the recommendations of the style manuals used by the media, in particular those that have been agreed upon by people from different socio-cultural backgrounds and those in charge of public entities, as well as social, journalistic and educational organisations, all directly or indirectly involved in the production and/or reception of textual and audiovisual discourses surrounding contemporary migratory movements.

Conceptualising how news is presented In the first place it is necessary to know how to go about obtaining objective data from the media without heading towards the easy terrain of personal speculation often related to the subjective and ideological vision of events in the news. One of the ways of doing so is by previously outlining the concept of how the news is presented with the most universal criteria possible. We come close to objectivity if the aforementioned approximation is the result of a wide-ranging socio-communicatory process that considers how reality is mediated by the news. That is to say, if the concept emanates from the sum of; the professional criteria applied during routines of news production with the corresponding ethical and journalistic norms of reference, if there are any, the predominant socio-cultural values of the social actors involved as sources of information as well as the different subjective interpretations of the audiences from the multicultural reception of informative discourses. The aforementioned sum of criteria aims to obtain a concept that is as universal as possible, that makes it possible to extrapolate results and fully homogenise the diverse interpretations that a news reality

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can have16. Above all it is interesting to know what socio-journalistic indicators we use to evaluate how the social reality in general and the migratory in particular is presented in the news, if it is done well or badly. Since the first studies that we carried out at Migracom (Observatory and Group of Investigation of Migration and Communication of the UAB) we consider that immigrants are treated adequately in the communication media when the information is contrasted, with opinions given from all implicated sources and it is born in mind when carrying out the aforementioned objective evaluation, the maximum number of audio, textual and visual viewpoints of the mediated reality. This means that handling the subject of immigrants well does not mean informing from a positive-folkloric position, that is amiable, festive and even paternalistic, but means informing people of any event with the criteria for quality news that emerge from the reconstruction of the reality with the maximum number of contrasting sources of information and of audio and/or visual and textual points of view. While always thinking that the aforementioned mediated reality is conditioned by routines of production and that the reception of the news disseminated is plural and could be interpreted in different ways, according to the subjective and objective perceptions and socio-cultural patterns of reference of the readers and spectators of the communication media17. The concept of how the news is presented has to serve as a support for the application of a method of contrasted research. The most adequate is the scientific method18. Despite its limitations, evidenced from different positions such as the anarchist theory of science (Feyerabend, 1996), the new experimentalism, realism or the inductive theories, it makes it possible to achieve a greater degree of objectivity and to avoid as much as possible personal speculation and depending how, even anti-media visions. We all know how to give our opinion about the contents of the news media, but to contrast these opinions and give them an objective meaning is already much more difficult. As such

16 García Ferrando et al., 199817 Lorite, 2004a18 Chalmers, 1999, p.98-122

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we defend the need to start with a scientific analysis, that is contrasted, as disputable as any other, that bears in mind a theoretical framework and a qualitative and quantitatively experimented methodology, that enable the validation of the aprioristic expositions in the most universal and hypothetical manner.

Applied investigationOne of the fundamental criteria for this investigative process, determined to come close to an objective universality, is that of specifying the pedagogical, social and professional objectives. Above all it is necessary to establish how the investigation interacts with civil society, and more specifically how we use the results to incorporate them in the pedagogy for quality mediated communication and to foment the debate about good practice in different educational and social arenas. All this obliges us to pinpoint the socio-pedagogical functions of our investigative model. This means that in order to articulate a socio-communicative pedagogy, in accord with the most adequate association of the reality of the news with social reality, one has to understand how the media presents the migratory processes by way of investigative/active models that drift towards proposals of applied investigation, in the professional area as much as in the pedagogical, as in the social in general. These investigative models are what we have put into practice at Migracom, since its beginnings in 1995 and 1996, with studies such as Tractament de la immi- gració no comunitària a Catalunya, (Treatment of non-EU immigration in Catalonia) for the Department of Social Services of the Generalitat of Catalonia and the Convention for the Protection of Ethnic Minorities and their Cultures. (signed in 1995 by the Generalitat of Catalonia, the main social communication media and the Association of Journalists of Catalonia). The conclusions of the study were presented on the 15 October 1996 at the headquarters of the Association of Journalists of Catalonia, in Barcelona, where, during an interdisciplinary session the results that had been obtained were debated amongst investigators, journalists, Administration technicians, politicians, teachers and people in charge of

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various immigrant and civil society organisations. The results of a study realised by a group of university researchers were presented during the session, a study that took as a reference the perspective of the scientific model (theoretical framework, objective study, hypothetic exposition, contrasted methodology) but that in parallel pursued the application of these results in the design of the first Style Guide for the Handling of immigration and other ethnic minorities in Spain and one of the first in Europe, designed to make it possible to carry out adequate informative and formative processes for how diversity is presented. Some of the recommendations of the aforementioned manual were aimed at proposing a textual discourse that was more respectful of the emerging diversity, and specifically the pertinent terminology to name immigrants in the news media (Lorite, 2004c). Through the analysis of the content it was possible to observe that some of the immigrants were qualified as illegal. A first exercise consisted in evaluating whether this was an adequate term to describe them. A second exercise tried to find out what where the inclusive and discriminatory socio-political models of this expression. It was necessary to know if this label illegal caused the social exclusion of the other or, if on the contrary, it is the most suitable to foment European citizenship. The style guide of 1996, like later ones (CAC, 2002), recommends that labels like these should not be used except if they are justified by the information offered. One of the reasons for recommending the exclusion of the term is that it considers that nobody is illegal. From the mentioned data and recommendations, a journalistic and investigative/active, periodic and comparative model was applied, in order to observe if the recommendations had any effect. In 2000, four years later, in a comparative study we were able to establish that the effect had been minimal because immigrants were still called illegal. In later studies, carried out in 2002, 2006 and 2007 we have continued to verify that this is still the same. Consequently, all this leads us to think that the media do not respect the recommendations but that maybe this is one of the possible ways of labelling immigrants. In point of fact many politicians have used it during the latest election campaigns of 2008, in France, Italy or Spain.

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qualitative and quantitative MethodologiesTo investigate how the media presents the migratory reality it is necessary to use the convergence of the quantitative and qualitative methodologies. For studies of this type it is important to set out from the quantitative part and then to study in depth the qualitative part. It is always recommendable to work in this way in order to obtain objective data and never the other way round. First one needs to know how many units appear about immigration in the news during a specific period and the issues that they deal with, and from this point select the most noteworthy cases, according to the amount of time dedicated to them in the news. In this way there will an in-depth analysis of the content. This procedure ensures that one isn’t conditioned by suppositions. We often believe that a subject has been important but in reality little time has been dedicated to it. It often happens that we think that the presentation is established according to the subjects that we present immigration less favourably. From the quantitative perspective one also goes deeper into the visual and audio treatment of radio and television. This analysis is carried out from many perspectives that add to the analysis of the content of the messages fundamental concepts used in the audiovisual language within the routines of production of news discourses, such as the principal theories of communication, reception and social activation. The results of the investigation, with the respective framework of alternative proposals, are exposed in different languages and discourses. To circulate knowledge is as important as obtaining or assuming it. It is necessary to articulate a better pedagogy for the transmission of data so that this can be a driving force activating the process. This means that the conclusions are gathered in a textual form but that they are also edited in audio-visual and multi-media formats. It is about an applied method of audiovisual investigation that analyses the audiovisual production with concepts that are specific to the audiovisual language and that end up suggesting proposals for a better presentation of diversity, through audiovisuals presentations (videos for example) and multimedia discourses (interactive use on the internet and through other audiovisual supports such as DVDs).

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This is the investigative model that has been put into practice at Migracom with studies like the Tractament informatiu de la immigració a Espanya19 and with the analysis carried out by the Committee for Audiovisual Diversity of the Catalan Audiovisual Council that studied how television presented the episodes of the border fences of Ceuta and Melilla in 2005 (Bertran et al., 2006). Not just what was broadcast is analysed but examples of alternative productions are also incorporated, making it possible to gain an approximation of the results of the audiovisual analyses of the production routines of radio and television professionals. An important reference is that the aforementioned investigative-active model and applied audiovisual investigation is carried out without losing sight of the continuous socio-media transformations. That is to say it is important that concepts outlined today need to be revised tomorrow. The objective references regarding how the news is presented have to adapt to the new socio-media realities. Each socio-demographic cycle needs new models of investigation into media driven intercultural communication. The new socio-media realities imply new values to reference the processes of interpersonal and intergroup dynamization and the new models of mediated social integration that are articulated by the communication media.

Unit of analysisTo carry out an objective analysis of how the migratory reality is presented in the news it is first necessary to outline the unit of analysis that has to be as homogenous and universal as possible. To do so the unit is designed and specified with quantitative objective parameters, such as time-space. The unit of analysis is called the informative unit. This concept aims to alleviate the deficiencies found when the concept piece of news is used as a unit of analysis. We frequently talk about how the media presents news about immigration, taking as a reference the news without starting with a shared and universal concept. News is not always news and not all pieces of news broadcast by the media are news. This concept is also not the same in the written as in audiovisual media. The

19 Lorite, 2004a, 2007 and 2008

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concept of the informative unit incorporates criteria of newsworthiness and instantaneity specific to strictly current news (Rodrigo, 1989), van Dick, 199020, but also of the limited newsworthiness or lack of it, in the currency and instantaneity of many news items that even days later are still being presented by the media. The informative unit in radio and television is characterised by an objective period of time that is calculated from when it is introduced by the presenter of the programme until when he/she moves onto the next item. They are classified as informative units all the items that deal with subjects linked to the migratory process. In the case of Spain the informative units selected have a direct relation with the subjects such as the arrival, integration, the legislation, health, work etc and those that aren’t directly related with the migratory process, such as acts of delinquency when only the nationality or zone of origin of the immigrants is mentioned. In the different studies carried out we can detect the following typologies for informative units: – News that is strictly current and focused on the moment in time – Isolated news items that follow up on a subject that was current recently or even in the distant past. – Mixed reportages with some new reference and/or data, images or complementary archival information. – Mixed reportages with a central focus, such as for example in the presentation of parliamentary news, that is split into sub-themes, one of which is immigration (in this case, only the time dedicated to immigration is classified). – Other formats, such as mini-reportages or interviews that make it possible to develop in depth some aspect of the social, political, cultural or religious context of the news item.

The informative unit in the press is extracted from a previous subject list that corresponds to as wide a gamut of diversity as possible. The unit is only gathered when the news (feature, story or interview) and the opinion (editorial, article, note, comment, critical review, letter to the editor) fits totally or mostly to the subject that is being

20 Villafañe et al., 1987

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considered and does not proceed from a news agency. That is to say it has to be elaborated by the medium itself, except when it is a Spanish newspaper, in which case, the agency when related will also be included. The objective with this kind of issues is to try to homogenise as much as possible sectors of interest and to give the same and invariable cognomen thereby limiting the inflation of orders in the database and avoiding at the same time the proliferation of synonymous terms that generate noise in the research process, above all with types of conceptual ordering like these.

The importance of the shotAnother feature of informative units in audiovisual media that one has to consider, as much from the quantitative perspective as the qualitative one, is the importance of the visuals and sounds of the shot. The mentioned time-space fragments are interpreted according to different meanings that they are given through the production, transmission and reception of the audio and visual discourses in the press (photography and above all graphic design), radio (voice, music and other sound effects), television and film (the shot, in regard of the space or framing of reality and of the moment or fragment recorded without interruptions by the camera). A first block of meanings of the shots are those that come from habits of audiovisual production, that is to say, from the interpretations that the camera operators, the photo-journalists, the producers, the editors, the journalists and the never ending list of professionals who intervene in the elaboration of the contents that are broadcast. A second block of meanings comes from the montage, specifically the messages that are finally transmitted to the audience. And a third block are the meanings that the receivers themselves apply from their perceptions, associated in general, with their formative, cultural and religious references and a wide selection of subjective and objective ways of interpreting images. Sometimes the meanings produced and transmitted are universal and they impose models of global reception. This happens with the audiovisual language of television news broadcasts. The medium close shot of the programme presenters at their desks, forming what in

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television slang is called the talking head, and the way of using other expressive resources such the voice is similar in any television the world over. The universal reiteration of the same visual composition is related to aspects such as credibility. It seems that these shots are what instil the most credibility in all audiences. Wardrobe, colour and the set are other feature of visual languages that it is necessary to consider. For example the majority of television news presenters wear a suit and tie. It seems that it is the most suitable clothing to create an impression of seriousness, as well as credibility, in their news discourses, regardless of how it is presented. Politicians also use this mise-en-scène: it is strange to see a politician without a tie. The president of Bolivia, Eva Morales doesn’t wear one. He substituted the universal icon with a local one: the knitted indigenous pullover. We have now become accustomed to seeing him like this but at first it was shocking, particularly when he was shown with European politicians who were dressed in the classical, credible way.

Different arenas and mediaHow immigration is presented varies according to the media (printed press, radio, television, internet) and even the social context (local, regional, national or international). Locally, Migracom elaborated in 2002 the study. Tractament mediàtic de la immigració, processos de dinamització intercultural i comunicació local21+, commissioned by the Barcelona Provincial Council, with the objective of detecting the role of the local media in the dynamization of local citizenship amongst those of diverse cultural origins. The study was carried out from the triple perspective of production, emission and reception. The production was analysed from a selection of local media (press, radio and television) and internet (the web-pages used by the town council and the consultations made by the immigrant population) and from personal interviews and round table meetings with those responsible for them, journalists, technicians and politicians, carried out in line with the criteria of

21 The representation of immigration in the media, process that energise and promote intercul-tural and local communication

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qualitative methodologies (recording, transcription, codification and typological analysis of the results) and through audiovisual investigation (recording with a video-camera the daily habits of the local medium of communication and portraits of those interviewed). The emission was analysed from a selection of the contents of local media and for reception a range of the sociological typologies of potential users of the local media were interviewed, in accord with the demographic data available and bearing in mind variables such as: sex, age, place of birth, place of residence, native or immigrant population, rural or urban residence, and whether it was central or peripheral. The results of the investigation were made public in a plenary session that took place on the 1 October 2002, that people of different origins and professional and social involvement with immigration from the local area participated in. Once again the investigative-active model and that of applied investigation were put into practice. In the follow some of the conclusions221 that were presented and contrasted in the aforementioned session are collected together in order to resituate and optimise the local media’s role as intercultural dynamizers. A first general conclusion of the analysis was that it is hard for the local media to act as go-betweens between the diverse local reality and the municipal and communicative policies for this diversity. They don’t develop their task of intercultural dynamization that in theory they should put into practice. This obeys a series of socio-communicatory problems that we will go on to synthesise. An important problem is that of the processes of production. The local media follow professional patterns that are identical to the media in general. They have taken on the standard professional model of the mass media. This carries with it the application of classical production routines, beginning with the use of the agendas by those who are responsible for the news. These agendas are the first thing they consult each day to decide on the possible issues in the local area that need to be considered. But it has been established that they are too monochrome, that is to say, they prioritise the institutional rather than the social. They connect with local politicians, but very little with local organisations and even less with the citizens themselves.

22 1 See http://www.diba.es/cerc/interaccio2002/cursgen/docu12cg.htm [accés: 1.3.2009].

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Another important problem is that the local media don’t have access to style guides that are designed specifically for their communicative and news peculiarities. It is normal that it will be the same communicator who decides on the hoof what is the best way to present something. So a good or bad presentation is the result in general of the construction of the discourse by journalists who are overloaded and pressed for time. What is more, the local media tend to offer news about positive issues in the city (the opening of new infrastructures, the town festival, sporting activities, etc). In these news items citizens of different cultures may appear, but the presentation of everybody sympathetically impedes a more in depth exploration of the real social dynamics. It doesn’t educate about the real cultural diversity, but about a model local society. In general, the social models used as references are mainly that of the local, traditional culture. This consequently leads to rethinking what are the local models of integration that need dynamization. The dynamics of the daily consumption of local media are also relevant. One observes that they don’t differ greatly from the general media. Watching local television or listening to local radio or reading the municipal bulletin or any other medium of the vicinity is a daily act that is purely receptive and free. This brings us to establish the homogeneity and standardisation of messages in all the media, and also of how we receive them, regardless from where they are broadcasted. So that one sees how the local media primarily assume a mechanical, receptive function that removes them from their origins as active and participative socio-cultural driving forces. Very few of those interviewed proposed any improvements to local media, and the majority seemed to conform with what there was. It is this very conformity that is manifested by the media in the broader sense. This passive attitude is motivated by some programming and content that in no way feeds the critical spirit of the receivers, it doesn’t invite them to develop processes of interpersonal dynamization and even less intercultural and active ones. The local media admit the participation of people of diverse geographical and cultural origins but the form of soliciting this participation is as unidirectional as those of the mass media. At no point does the receiver have the possibility of interacting directly with

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the audiences as a broadcaster. One can also observe that the processes of intercultural dynamization of the local media are intra-cultural. The contents are discussed with close family and afterwards with old friends. Family and friends are often of the same cultural identity. So we find that the local media don’t develop processes of intercultural dynamization. The question is how to do it, in order to carry out this stated dynamic activation. Various measures were articulated regarding the processes used in the production of the discourses.

- Information: The structure of the news, the subjects dealt with and the way that they are presented in areas of local emission-reception that are different from general areas, need to be revised.

- Agendas: it is necessary to know what are the ideal agendas for journalists and communicators to use to get closer to the local cultural diversity.

- Guides: the local media need to have at their disposal style guides, adapted to the socio-cultural and socio-communicational peculiarities of each local area, so that they can present cultural diversity in an adequate manner.

- Professionalizing: the local medium has to effect a transition from current professional standards to a new phase in which the professionalism connects more with the local social reality. It is about recuperating models that interact with the inhabitants. The journalist has to be sociologist, anthropologist, informer and formulator of reality all at the same time.

- Audiences: it is evident that the local media have to have as many qualitative and quantitative references for their audiences as possible. It is necessary to adjust their contents to the real public and not to a supposed target audience. It is advisable that these references be obtained from variables such as geographical origins of the citizens in order to be able to work on criteria that drive intercultural processes.

How immigration is presented in the news in Spain.Another example that we want to highlight is the study of 2007 about how immigration is presented in the news in Spain, destined for the

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General Direction for the Integration of Immigrants, of the Ministry of Employment and Immigration. The analysis of the discourse in the news, emitted by the press, radio and television, was carried out from the double perspective of a qualitative-quantitative methodology232. Through the quantitative analysis we can obtain the amount of time that the evening news and the state and regional news respectively, dedicated to immigration on the radio and television, the form in which the issues, general and specific were presented and the weight that all this has on the news in general, specifically in the main sections: national, international, society, economic and sport. From the qualitative perspective we can study, amongst other aspects, the use of immigrant news sources, how the media approach race and the denomination of immigration. It is also interesting to discover if they talk about the sociological contexts they observe, for example, the covering of the news of the cayucos from the immigrants’ countries of origin. From a visual perspective one has to bear in mind the value of shots, such as the images of wounded or dead immigrants. A textual analysis reveals some of the criteria considered such as the verbs habitually used to qualify the arrival of immigrants.

23 2 The media studied were the following. On the teleivision: TVE (Telediario 2, 21.00h, cada dia), Tele 5 (Informativos Tele 5, 21.00h, cada dia), Antena 3 (Noticias 2, 21.00h, cada dia), Cuatro (Noticias Cuatro 2, 21.00h, cada dia), La Sexta (La Sexta Noticias, 20.00h, cada dia), Canal Sur (Andalusia, Canal Sur Noticias 2, 20.30h, cada dia), TV3 (TN vespre, 21.00h, cada dia), TVG (Galícia, Telexornal 2, 20.25h, cada dia), Tele Madrid (Madrid, Telenoticias 2, 20.30h, cada dia), ETB-2 (País Basc, Teleberri 2, 20.58 h, cada dia), Canal 9 (Valèn- cia, Notícies 9 2a edició, 21.00h, cada dia). Noticiaris de ràdio: RNE (20 Horas, 20.00h, de di-lluns a divendres), COPE (La Linterna, 20.00h, de dilluns a divendres), SER (Hora 20, 20.00h, de dilluns a divendres), Onda Cero (La Brújula, 20.00h, de dilluns a divendres). Premsa escrita d’àmbit estatal: El País, El Mundo, ABC, La Razón. Andalusia: ABC Sevilla, Ideal Granada, El País (ed. Andalusia), El Mundo (ed. Andalusia), Sur. Canàries: Canarias 7, La Provincia (Las Palmas). Catalunya: Avui, El País (ed. Catalunya), El Periódico de Catalunya, El Mundo (ed. catalana), La Vanguardia. Galícia: Faro de Vigo, La voz de Galícia. Madrid: El País (ed. Madrid), El Mundo (ed. Madrid), ABC (ed. Madrid). País Basc: El Correo Español (Àlaba, Guipúscoa i Biscaia), El Diario Vasco. València: Levante, Las Provincias, ABC (ed. València), El País (ed. València), El Mundo (ed. València). Metro: Metro Barcelona, Metro Madrid, Metro Sevilla, Metro Valencia, Metro A Coruña. 20 Minutos: 20 Minutos Barcelona, 20 Minutos Ma-drid, 20 Minutos Sevilla, 20 Minutos Valencia, 20 Minutos A Coruña. Qué!: Qué! Bilbao, Qué! Madrid, Qué! Sevilla, Qué! Barcelona, Qué! Valencia, Qué! A Coruña.

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As one is dealing with an investigation-action and applied investigation, the data extracted are aimed at understanding if the news presents the migratory reality in a way that accommodates the suggestions of the style manual (CAC, 2002; and that of the Association of Journalists of Catalonia of 1996) and guides of recommendations (Muraca, 2007), but also aims to suggest alternative textual, sonorous and visual discourses that allow one to show examples of how it is possible to inform and form in an intercultural way the citizenship of different social, geographic and cultural origins. An example of this model of investigation-action and applied investigation, musical in this case, is the one we are carrying out in the previously mentioned study of 2007 into the introductory soundtracks used to present the 14 radio and television news programmes analysed. We came to the conclusion that they represent and aim to communicate similar sentiments. The music is “militarised”, characteristic of central Europe and doesn’t disseminate diverse musical feelings. It is a music that can’t be shared in the same way, by people socialised in European cultural traditions as by those who have been socialised with Arab, Hindu or Latin music. To sum up we can observe that the musical instruments that these soundtracks use and that in turn are carriers of musical structures (melody, rhythm, etc.) belong to a European and Anglo-Saxon tradition, riding on orchestral instruments and hybrid and eclectic, electronic instruments. This particularity in the colour and timbre of the musical theme tunes reinforces even more the homogeneity of the sonorous personality of the news.

The meanings given to musical instruments from their first introduction to our times (in Greek literature specialised in music and its later evolution in the West) directly relate to territorial, racial, geographic, generic and social feelings, etc, and what is even more important for the listener I allege are the sounds of the musical instruments at the service of the audiovisual environments that communicate through culturally shared and defined codes (as if it was a film), as well as the feelings and sensibilities of the cultural imaginary. For example listening to pan pipes evokes a Latin American geography or culture. While on the contrary listening to electric instruments combined with European orchestral

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instruments that are derived from military brass bands (as is the case of music originally used by the media), will evoke in our imagination a sensation of familiarity with our technological, advanced and contemporary Central European culture.24

From this analysis of the music we have produced different musical alternatives, using instruments belonging to immigrants that have come from other countries, such as Morocco and Bolivia, and carried out different pilot experiments looking at the perception of people from different cultures. With the consequence, that they all preferred the current central-European music. That means to say that it is not easy to alter the homogenised discourses of sound. Any new proposal has to arouse more credibility amongst diverse audiences than the current ones and this isn’t easy to instigate and even less to normalise. Another of the issues studied in the cited investigation is the role of immigrants as sources for the news that talks about them. From the data obtained we come to the conclusion that it is often politicians and other official sources that give their opinion about immigration in the news. The style guides recommend, logically, that immigrants be the main source for the news that talks about them. One also has to underline the need to foment the comparison of sources as a more ideal method for quality news, so that what is broadcast is respectful of the diversity, and is able to kindle non-discriminatory intercultural processes. In this study one also observes that the media continue without teaching anything about the migratory reality. They barely inform about the sociological contexts of immigration. Nor do they take an interest in explaining the causes of migratory mobility. Not one medium goes deeper into the causes for the exodus of the cayucos. They don’t formulate, they simple inform of the arrival seen from the viewpoint and in the eyes of the Westerner. However apart form some media sources, such as Cuatro (TV Channel Four, Spain), that produced a series of short reportages on the daily sociological reality of the Senegalese, broadcast in Iñaki Gabilondo’s news bulletin, the rest of the media on location in Senegal limited themselves to informing from certain witness spaces

24 Muraca, 2007, p. 101-102

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that could easily be substituted with a chroma key on set. An important thing that has to be considered in more depth is the euro-centric journalistic vision of us, the Europeans, looking at others, mainly South Americans and Africans. The frontier, between us and the others, is established with issues like the legal situation of the immigrant on European soil. As we have said the media continue to qualify the immigrant as illegal, despite recommendations against this in 1996 from the Catalan College of Journalists. So the euro-centric vision of the journalist of the other is distant. It continues to show the immigrants as far away and principally with long shots. These images impede their personification. They often appear in groups, in passive attitudes and in dramatic situations. This is the case with the typical image of the arrival of a cayuco. The processes of media driven intercultural dynamization by way of an international comparison To this accumulation of theoretical and methodological criteria for the analysis of how the media present migratory processes, always thinking from the double perspective of informating and training, it is necessary to add a final example of media driven processes of intercultural dynamization (MPID). That are studied, by comparing international perspectives, specifically with examples of immigrants from diverse geographic origins resident in two urban areas as different as Porto Alegre (Brazil) and Barcelona (Spain) but similar in that they are preferred destinations for foreigners. In this study, carried out between 2004 and 2007 and destined for the respective Ministries of Education of Brazil and Spain253 a total of 140 immigrants were interviewed, 70 in each place, selected by country of origin, place of residence, age and sex. From their answers it was possible to obtain some references of the role the media play in intercultural dynamization at the new place of arrival.

25 3 «Medios de comunicación e interculturalidad: estudio de las estrategias de mediatización de las migraciones contemporáneas en los contextos brasileños y español y sus repercusiones en la construcción mediática de la Unión Europea y del MERCOSUR».(Media and Intercul-turality: a study of media strategies for presenting contemporary migrations in the context of Brazil and Spain) A Hispano-Brazilian Inter-university Cooperation (ref. PHB2003-0059-PC), granted by a mixed commission of the Ministries of Education of Brazil and Spain.

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As with the presentation of the news, we first must look at the theory. Before analysing the role of the media as driving forces, we must start with a definition of this dynamization. The definition of this dynamization is subjective, like any concept, however it is possible to synthesise as objectively as possible. To do so one has to evaluate the processes of interpersonal and intergroup communication. They can be divided into four classes or levels that are established hierarchically from less to more, according to the degree of difficulty of establishing them in the contexts studied26. The classes or levels are differentiated according to the type of mechanical or active communication, between people or groups. Communication is deemed to be mechanical when the interlocutor (individuals or groups) communicates through existing codes without generating other current communicative responses in the present and/or future, and/or for the individual receivers of the images. The situations of active communication are established consciously, they have a specific purpose, aiming to situate and implicate the interlocutors, individuals or groups, in future communication situations. Each one of these four levels of social communication is subdivided into a finite number of sub-classes or sub-levels. The sub-classes are established, just like the classes, hierarchically, vertically, symmetrically, from minor to major in accord with the degree of difficulty involved in situating them in a given social context. The elements that determine the grading of the sub-classes or sub-levels in each of the four levels previously described determine the different uses of verbal or non-verbal communication in each of the classes or levels.

- Systematically verbal and non-verbal.- Systematically verbal and occasionally non-verbal.- Occasionally systematic verbal and non-verbal.- Systematically just verbal- Only systematically non-verbal- Occasional verbal and non-verbal- Only occasionally verbal- Occasionally non-verbal

26 Lorite, 1992

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It is important to have a few rules for measuring the levels. In probing a specific population we can obtain data about the sub-levels as indicators of the varying levels of communication. We only discover the main communicative tendency, that is to say, that of the sub-levels as isolated variables. It is also worth considering the variables of time and specifically, the evolution of the processes of media driven social dynamization throughout a given time sequence and chronological period. The time sequence established with equidistant moments that separate each observation from the uses of some of the socio-communicatory codes. The chronological periods are the dates of the beginning and the end of the selection. The processes of media driven social dynamization will take place therefore: – In a moment of the time sequence through the simple analysis of sublevels as indicators or variables or for their crossover with other dependent or independent sociological or communicative variables. – Depending on the evolution of the processes of dynamization in the pre-established time sequence in accord with the considered model of invariable arithmetical means and with the socio-statistical model of the multivariable analysis of the processes of dynamizaation. As much in one model as the other we have to find the middle point of the dynamization. When these middle points are united, different paths are established for the dynamization and the curve of the processes of dynamization.

A fundamental thing that is clarified at the beginning in this theory is that paths of growing, decreasing and stable dynamization can appear in the four classes or grades. Consequently when we say the programming of the communication media contributes to the dynamization of the surrounding social environment we have to specify not just what we understand as dynamization but also what the level or levels of dynamization are through the communication and when they are established in the time sequence.

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To these criteria, principally quantitative, designed to evaluate the processes of media driven dynamization one has to add others that are eminently qualitative, obtained from the following situations: 1 The predominant and dominant features and sociological structures of the social environment. A selection of average daily typologies. 2 The ideologies or different forms of understanding social structures, cultures, languages and their active and/or mechanical, macro-contextual and/micro-contextual interrelation. 3 The uses and some of the abuses of the term culture. 4 The macro and micro scales of the socio-cultural and linguistic contexts studied.

From this theory a methodology is designed that incorporates suitable questions in the questionnaires so as to obtain the maximum number of possible clues. Before anything it is necessary to know the answers to three general questions: 1 Do the interviewees do things with people from their country of origin? 2 Do they do things with people from the country where they are currently residing (Spain or Brazil)? 3 Have they found out about these activities through the media?

The third question makes it possible to discern two collectives that it is necessary to analyse separately: 1 Those who answer yes that they have found out about the activity through the media. 2 Those who answer no, or don’t answer.

In this case, it is necessary to have the full discourses of those who replied yes. This makes it possible to understand how they narrate the connection between the medium of communication and the realisation of the activity with other people of the place of residence and/or country of origin. This leads us to a few conclusions about the MPID that it is necessary to colour according to the transversal and multivariable analyses. That is to say different socio-communicatory typologies are

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designed according to the following groups of variables and they are cross-referred when the answers are analysed. –Personal details: sex, age, level of education, profession, current employment. –Current residence: place of residence, district, who they live with. –Origins: place of origin, identification with their place of origin, time since they left their country.

Of the collective that answered no or that didn’t answer, it is also necessary to have the same typologies and to have to hand their complete discourses in which they explain their answer. It is also necessary to observe separately the MPID of the collective that answered yes they did do things with people from the country where they currently reside (Spain or Brazil) but who said that they didn’t find out about them through the media. From here one designs the transversal and multivariable framework. So it is necessary to differentiate the discourses of those interviewed who affirm that they communicate with people from their country of origin but not with those in their current place of residence (Barcelona or Port Alegre), and equally to discern, as in the previous case, this for those who state that they don’t make use of the communication media. Another section of answers is aimed at locating the complete discourse of those interviewed when they argue the following: –If in their daily dynamic they have relationships with people in their country of residence. –If these relationship obeys the consumption, use, contents, etc of the media. –If the aforementioned activities and relationships (activity, daily life) have led to any joint action, when the media has been the main instigator of the activity. –If the people with whom they state they realise these activities and/or daily relationships are natives and/or from their country of origin. –If these people are family members (which in this case would be an indicator of continuity in the same socio-cultural circle) or from close

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by (neighbours for example, and in which case it is necessary to observe if they define their identity or socio-cultural details. From this selection and analysis of the complete discourse emerges the structure and thematic and sub-thematic index, never the other way round. Each one of these themes and sub-themes are probed in depth through the analysis of these transversal multi-variables, designed to provide an answer to the question being studied, that in the case of this investigation, was the role of these media in the intercultural dynamization of immigrants and the native population. In the fragments of the following interview, with a woman from Porto Alegre, born in Paraguay, one can read some of the discourses that would be selected to carry out a transversal and multi-variant typological analysis with the discourses of other interviewees. The gathering of these answers allows us to know the levels of communication in which they are situated and regarding the quantity and quality of media driven intercultural dynamization. The interviewee explains that on Brazilian television «quite a lot of things» happen in their country. One of the themes that she is concerned about is the spread of foot-and-mouth. She comments on the medium she uses to keep track of this subject and that the media reception makes it possible to communicate with people from the native population:

Q: This is one of the issues that worries you…how do you keep track of it?A: By television…Q: Do you have any communication that follows on from there?A: Sometimes with my neighbour…She calls me and says have you seen this?Q: Is she from Paraguay?A: No. She is Brazilian. She is…she is my Brazilian mummy so to speak…A second type of answers is conditioned by the role that the medium of communication exercises as a disseminator of local activities that invite participation. In this case the interviewee attends a religious meeting place where they carry out mainly festive activities. She states the medium hasn’t served to carry out this type of interpersonal and intergroup communication that occurs above all with people of the same

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origin:Q: The question is if … you knew about these activities beforehand through a medium of communication or was it simply by word of mouth.A: I find things out through a Chilean friend…A third perspective determines the daily use of the media:A: When I get up the first thing that I do …is put on the television. From where I work out whether it’s going to be a good day…Q: At what time?A: Six-thirty in the morning…which begins with “Campo e Lavoura”(Country and Work), …afterwards comes the news, afterwards comes another and another…it is called Bom Dia Brazil (Good Morning Brazil)…When I go home…I come home and straight away put on the television…I sit down and then say oh my God (laughter) there goes indo….Q: and then the television at the weekend…A: It practically stays switched off, I only put it on at night because I put the radio on during the day. Always Antena Um or the Continental…

Through knowing their media use it is possible to work out if they comment about what they have seen and heard with other people, in order to discover the type of interpersonal and intergroup communication:

A: Well as I said, I have a neighbour who I talk about things with…Q: The mother (Laughter)A: Yes, yes (laughter) the Brazilian mother, I have my real mother back home…Q: But she is somebody who is important in your life…A: Yes, yes.Q: So you call her and…say I saw this on television this morning…A: Exactly. And she says why didn’t you tell me…why didn’t you knock on my door so that I could watch it too…The same as she does sometimes if I’m at home, she knocks on the door and tells me that such and such is happening…be it news from here or other places, or even when it is somebody we know who is on the television…(last Sunday I saw) Dante Ledesma who I think is from Patagonia…(…)

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Q: Sorry?A: Dante Ledesma, a musician who sings in Spanish and as I know that she loves his music…I got up and ran to knock on her door, your singer is on the television…she wrote down the telephone number and said to me you talk Spanish (they try to get in touch with him)…Q: So you called him?A: Yes I called him (laughter)…and she said, now you talk to him, no, no, I’m not going to speak… you speak, I speak..the battery runs out..and she hasn’t tried to call him again …(…)Q: Is he an Argentine singer?A: Argentine yes. He lives here, I think in Canoas…that is close to here.Q: But even though he is here, he still sings in Spanish?A: Yes. But he also sings in Brazilian…Through this discussion, we can observe how a person, born in Paraguay who has emigrated to Brazil, enters into contact with a Brazilian, in relation to something seen on television, the Argentine singer, and how they try make contact with him on the phone. The television produces in this case a process of active intercultural dynamization because it is not limited to the mechanical transmission of the news but activates the desire to connect personally with the singer. Yet in asking whether the medium of communication had provoked the initial communication between them she considers it hadn’t, that it had occurred in the following manner:

[...] ella vivía en un edificio que yo fui a vivir... entonces un día yo llegué y ella me pregunta ¿tú eres nova moradora aquí? Y yo digo, sí soy yo, estou morando aquí... e comecei a perguntar o nome dela e foi assim que eu a fui conhecendo. Mas, foi ela quem começou perguntando se eu era nova moradora no prédio e... foi aquí... mas foi depois, com o tempo, porque as pessoas aquí são bem desconfiadas, não é assim, não são muito de chegar assim.. aí com o tempo ela foi se adaptando e eu me adaptando a ela. Aí... hoje em dia a gente é mãe e filha praticamente. Ou ela está em casa ou eu estou na casa dela...

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ConclusionsThe communication media can propitiate processes of intercultural dynamization, active or mechanical, inclusive or xenophobic, but to understand the socio-media effect it is necessary to study them with a scientific method and within a theoretical framework, with a methodology of comparison and a hypothetical proposition in order to verify it objectively. To be able to evaluate the way immigration is presented in the news we first need to define the concept of that presentation and analyse it from the multiple viewpoints obtained from the production, emission and reception of media discourses that allow us to surpass the type of subjective speculations that are the product of biased views or tunnel vision. It is necessary to do the same with the processes of media driven dynamization. It is necessary to define them beforehand in order to know where we can situate the different levels of communication obtained from the study of sections of the population with different origins. The best way of connecting the theory with practices is through investigative-active models and applied investigation. These make it possible to link an objective analysis of the media with a plural training that respects diversity. It is not enough to analyse the content of the media, one must also show a possible alternative, making use of, if possible the same media languages that have been analysed. It is not just about detecting inadequate content in television it is also necessary to produce discourses suitable for television. It is not enough to criticise the euro-centric gaze of the media, it is also necessary to produce multi-polar discourses that are respectful of diversity, as recommended by the current style guides. It is necessary to learn to look at reality with the eyes and the mind of the immigrants and try to discover what in their eyes is the ideal way of looking; by beginning to present them textually, visually and by sound in the same way that we present ourselves, without forgetting to go even deeper into who we are and who the others are, and above all, if they really feel as if they are immigrants. One of the central objectives of all this is to propitiate educational models that can foment a deep understanding of how the media

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function and from this point, to promote an objective, critical and constructive analysis by civil society and to develop ethical, plural, quality models for communication. One of the main aims is that the media act as driving forces in society for intercultural dynamization.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

– Bertran, E. et al. (2006) “El tractament audiovisual dels fets de la tanca de Ceuta i Melilla: de la visió sensacionalista a la humanitària”. Quaderns del CAC (Barcelona), 23-24, pp.13-36.

– Chalmers, A.F. (1999) ¿Qué es esa cosa llamada ciencia? Madrid, Siglo XXI de España. – Cogo, D.; Lorite, N. (2004) “Incursões metodológicas para o estudo da recepção midiática: O caso das migrações contemporâneas desde as perspectivas européia e latinoamericana”. Ciberlegenda (Río de Janeiro, Universidad Federal Fluminense), nº 14. Disponible en: http://www.uff.br/mestcii/denise2.htm [acceso: 20.11.2008].

– Cogo, D.; Lorite, N. [coord.] (2005) “Mídia, migrações e interculturalidades”. Logos (Río de Janeiro, UERJ), número especial.

– Consejo del Audiovisual de Cataluña [CAC] (2002) “Recomanacions del CAC sobre el tractament informatiu de la immigració”. Quaderns del CAC (Barcelona), 12.

– Feyerabend, P. (1996) Adiós a la razón. Madrid, Tecnos. – García Ferrando, M.; Ibáñez, J.; Alvira, F. (1998) El análisiss de la realidad social. Madrid, Alianza. – Lorite, N. (1992) Dinamización social y radio municipal. Bellaterra, Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona. Departamento de Comunicación Audiovisual y Publicidad (tesis doctoral; director: Emili Prado Pico).

– (2002) “Medios, inmigración y dinamización intercultural: algunas propuestas para la investigación-acción desde el MIGRACOM”, en García Castaño, F.J.; Muriel López, C. [ed.] La inmigración en España: contextos y alternativas. Granada, Laboratorio de Estudios Interculturales, pp. 449-456.

– (2003) “Usages sociaux des NTIC et processus de dynamisation interculturels en Catalogne”, en Lacroix, J. G. y Tremblay, G. [dir.] Bogues. Globalisme et pluralisme. Usages des TIC. Laval, Les Preses de l’Université Laval, pp. 239-252.

– [dir.] (2004a) Tratamiento informativo de la inmigración en España 2002. Madrid, Instituto de Migraciones y Servicios Sociales.

– (2004b) “Cómo miran los medios la inmigración y transmiten la diversidad” Portal de la Comunicación (Bellaterra, Incom), disponible en: http://www.portalcomunicacion.com/dialeg/paper/pdf/130_lorite.pdf [acceso: 20.11.2008].

– (2004c) “Éthique, médias et rôle formateur et informateur des journalistes en Catalogne (Espagne)”, en Brunet, P.; David-Blais, M. [ed.] Valeurs et éthique dans les médias. Approches internacionales. Ottawa, Las Preses de l’Université Laval.

– (2005) “Sobre lo apriorístico y lo verificable en comunicación. Algunas notas sobre

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dinamización intercultural mediatizada desde la perspectiva internacional”, Logos (Río de Janeiro, UERJ), número especial, pp. 14-23.

– (2006a) “La mirada multipolar de la inmigración desde la perspectiva de la investigación audiovisual aplicada”. Media & Jornalismo: Imagens da Diferença (Lisboa, Edições Minerva), nº 8, pp. 79-100

– (2006b) “¿Puede ser científica y objetiva la mirada audiovisual de la realidad migratoria?”, en Lario, M. [coord.] Medios de comunicación e inmigración. Murcia, Programa CAM - Obra Social, pp. 85-96.

– (2007) Tratamiento informativo de la inmigración en España 2006. Madrid, Dirección General de Integración de los Inmigrantes, Secretaría de Estado de Inmigración y Emigración, MTI.

– [dir.] (2008) Tratamiento informativo de la inmigración en España 2007. Madrid, Dirección General de Integración de los Inmigrantes, Secretaría de Estado de Inmigración y Emigración, MTI.

– Muraca, E. (2007) “Análisis de las sintonías musicales del tratamiento informativo de la inmigración en radio y televisión”, en Lorite, 2007, pp. 109-112.

– Rodrigo, M. (1989) La construcción de la noticia. Barcelona, Paidós. – Van Dijk, T. (1990) La noticia como discurso. Barcelona, Paidós. – Villafañe, J.; Bustamante, E.; Prado, E. (1987) Fabricar noticias. Las rutinas productivas en radio y televisión. Barcelona, Mitre.

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281

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The cabaret singer and the comic The question posed by the organisers, “are we all communicators” is clever and astute. It seems to propose a platitude, as how could we not all be communicators. But in reality it promotes a debate about subtle questions. At the same time it invites one to revise what the specialists have said and specifically to consult OETI’s library of periodicals and the Works of Naos publications. And in effect, after going back through these documentary sources one appreciates that communication is related to aspects such as functional literacy, that is to say the mastering of different registers and discursive genres, and in particular digital competency. All refer to the abilities of the person or subject. That takes shape in the figures of the communicator and the orator. Let us use as an example of a communicator the cabaret singer Lola Flores and of an orator the humorist Mark Twain.27

If the communicator is a celebrity, he/she merits the attention and even the devotion of the public. A television production “Lola, la película” (Lola, the film) (Miguel Hermoso, 2007) recreated this social phenomenon. It was the dramatised biography of the Spanish singer

27 The present article picks up on an investigation that participated in the project FFI2009-10424, “Globalización, intercomunicación y lenguas propias en las comunidades lingüísticas medianas”(Globalisation, intercommunication and the languges of linguistic communities), financed by MEC (0FIL).

For charity, moral and mural literature

Xavier Laborda

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Lola Flores (1923-1995).28 Its recent screening on television showed us the example of a copla singer and actress. The advertisement for its broadcasting, enthused about the personality of Lola Flores as “that great woman who captivated the whole of Spain”. How did she achieve this? With “determination and a struggle, with rebellion, fire and passion.” What’s noteworthy in this definition of the communicative capacity of Lola Flores is that it doesn’t mention the artistic dimension. It rightly identifies her domineering personality as the source of her charisma rather than her aesthetic gift. Her talent is fed by ordinary abilities, but expressed in an intense manner and favoured by a Spain of sentimental and populist folklore. Lets at this point leave the case of the cabaret singer. When it is the case of an orator, famous for his creativity, for his gift with the word and scenic presence, we have some admirable figures at our disposal. Here we will use, the aforementioned humorist writer and orator, Mark Twain (Laborda, 2006). It is not easy to highlight an orator with such capacity and who is as well known as Twain who managed to recover from economic penury by doing world tours as an orator. He was an extraordinary orator, literally a one off, who also reflected on the resources of rhetoric and literary creation (Twain 1917).

Those who communicate more and bestIn communication there are other relevant aspects, above and beyond talent and charisma. They aren’t so striking but are of great importance. They go beyond the personal dimension and even belittle the role of celebrities and geniuses. It is about social communication, that is to say, the industries of public awareness and the institutions. The reader can learn more from the documents of the debate, promoted by OETI

28 The film was shown on Antena 3 (15 and 16 September 2009). The technical credits are: Lola, la película. (Lola, the film) Director, Miguel Hermoso.Country: Spain. Year, 2007. Duration, 100 min. Genre biopic, drama. Screenplay, Antonio Onetti. Producer, Antena 3 Films. Released in Spain, 16 March 2007. Cast: Gala Évora (Lola Flores), Ana Fernández (Rosario), José Luis García Pérez (Manolo Caracol), Carlos Hipólito (Arenzana), Antonio Morales (Perico González), David Arnaiz (Carlitos), Alfonso Begara (Antonio González ‘El Pescaílla’), Joaquín Romero (Manolo Solo), Ramón Villegas (Biosca), Kitty Manver (Mari Blanca).

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that has been carried on during the last decade, in this forum of the pedagogical cultures of communication. Returning to the question of the debate that says, “Are we all communicators?” but adapting it to our proposition. It would become, do we all have the same ability to communicate? The answer is no and an explanation is the following. The media of social communication, communicate more and better than individuals. Despite what it seems, this statement is not about trying to compare, nor choose between individuals and corporations. They are two indispensable areas and ones that necessarily go hand in hand. The basis of the argument consists in highlighting the importance of social communication. Brilliant orators are celebrated due to their own merits as communicators and also for the multiplying effect of the industry and institutions. We are referring here to broadcasting media and cultural channels, to discursive genres and electronic applications, to commercial companies and political institutions. We are referring for example to television and literary prizes, to publicity and the Ipod, to Google and town councils. This is the industrial network of resources and genres that really counts. Our interest in institutional communication has led us to compile historic documents from the world around us. We will cite two examples. The first is the corpora “Celebratio et oratio. Celebration and speeches”. It is a catalogue of schedules and festival greetings, edited during the 20th Century, in seventy-five Spanish towns. (Laborda, 2008).29 The second compiles and publishes on the web all the publications produced by the local authority of Sant Cugat del Vallès, between 1976 and 2009.30

Mural communicationHere we want to refer to a unique corpus. They are mural inscriptions at

29 The corpora is published, among other open access websites in the portal Scribd: http://www.scribd.com/people/documents/406519/folder/11354. The corpora is the result of contributions from researchers who have taken the credit of Pragmatics within Linguistics studies at the Uni-versity of Barcelona..30 See the documents: “Butlletins municipals de Sant Cugat, 1976-2009” (www.scribd.com/doc/16366432/Butlletins-Municipals-de-Sant-Cugat-19762009) and “Repertorios de Comu-nicación Local e Institucional” in www.sant-cugat.net/laborda/10comp/repertoris_discur-sos_efímers.pdf >.

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the Casa de Caritat of Barcelona that are conserved in the current Centre for Contemporary Culture of Barcelona (CCCB). We are interested in them because they present a form of institutional communication that combines the technique of epigraphy with the genre of advice or proverb. (Laborda 2004, 2007). Proverbs are sententious enunciations that gather values and popular adages or express moral maxims and proverbial sayings. They share elements of poetry, given the rhythm and rhyme of their verses. They persist in the popular imagination as memorised pieces of advice expressed in a simple vernacular. Some of the forms of diffusion of this subgenre are the oral tradition, literature, graffito or epigraphy, as in the building of the Casa de la Caridad (Almshouse) of Barcelona, that was created in 1802, by order of king Charles IV to act as a hospice and correctional for “badly inclined children”. The proverbs conserved in the patio of the old Casa de la Caridad are inscribed on polychrome tiles, decorated with floral motifs. These inscriptions are to be found on the ground floor of the patio, at the eye-height of visitors and in their time, that of the interns, as it was destined to shelter women. The building was refurbished in 1994 as the Centre for Contemporary Culture of Barcelona (CCCB). The inscriptions of nineteen refrains, written in Catalan and with strong moral overtones, have been conserved. Some come from the popular heritage of Catalan refrains, be it literally such as “ “Fes bé lo temps que viuràs / perquè això t’emportaràs” (“Use carefully the time that you live/ because that is what will go with you”) or else with variations, such as “Fes tu el que puguis fer, / i Déu ajudarà el teu voler” (“Do what you can,/ and God will help you with what you want”), that comes from the refrain “Fes bé i no facis mal, que altra cosa no et cal” (Do well and don’t do bad, as nothing else is needed)

By way of an introduction lets look at some of the sayings:

English translation

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Of the little you have, be happy;for if you want everything you will lose it all,

Men pass like the wind; the truth of God remains eternal

If ever you want to say something bad about somebody, first take a look at yourself

Without a doubt on judgement day, they won’t ask what have we read, but how we have laboured,nor in what way we have talkedbut how we have served God.

It is striking that the texts were composed in Catalan and that they were exhibited in a public institution. It is quite exceptional, if we remember that use of Catalan was prohibited in state administration and the social discredit that came with its use. The administration of the centre on behalf of the Diputación (Provincial Government under the King’s Deputy), its closed regime and adaptation to the language and cultural tradition of the inmates, explains the singular use of Catalan. They are prescriptive rather than descriptive proverbs, because they transmit a value judgement and prescribe laws of social behaviour. The protagonist is always the person, in three specialities: the state of the soul, reasoning and religion. These are then related to moral qualities in a positive way. Apart from arrogance and cynicism, qualities that they try to dissuade, the rest of the subjects are positive and appear to persuade and praise. The refrains are texts of instant literature, given their brevity and the concise way they are expressed they construe a discourse with only a few words. But they are also a literature of sociability and of discursive dependence, as they only communicate from within the heart of a greater discourse. In the mural display of the Casa de Caridad, the visitor has the privilege of contemplating a phenomenon that could be qualified as a literary derangement. Given the intense accumulation of refrains and the

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durability of these texts of instant literature. The visitor contemplates their reading as a spectacle and as an aesthetic pleasure. They are invaded by the impression of passing through a poetic montage. To complete this experience one opens the collection of poems by Joan Margarit (2007) and reads the poem “Casa de Misericòrdia”(House of Mercy). It is an elegy to the Casa de Misericordia, a building beside the Casa de Caridad. At the same time, Margarit proclaims states a poetic manifesto: literature that describes cruelty is an aesthetic experience and a form of personal salvation. Just like the moral refrains, like the mural refrains. The poem is originally written in Catalan.

House of Mercy

The father shot.Or as the judge says, executedThe mother, misery and hunger the petition that somebody writes for him by typewriter the petition that somebody has written by typewriter

Salute the Winner, Second Triumphant Year, Your Excellence I request, leave the childrenin the House of Mercy.

The cold of his following day is a petitionThe orphanages and hospices were hard, but harder still were the elements True charity is frightening.It is like poetry: a good poem,however beautiful it might be, it has to be cruel, There is nothing more. Poetry is now the last house of mercy.

Joan Margarit

Margarit’s poem has a paradoxical and symbolic meaning. It is an elegy to the benevolent institution, as it considers the merit of the

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centre in situations of extreme need. It celebrates as such a positive perspective. One can also contemplate the repertoire of refrains that we have presented in a similar way. The conservative slant doesn’t deny its condition as moral literature. It fulfilled a comprehensible mission in circumstances of neglect. It now has an historic and aesthetic value.

Memory and meaningThe interest in the repertoires of communication is multiple. On the one hand, there is the warning call about the fugacity or loss of documents, be they propaganda leaflets, official announcements or mural inscriptions. In many cases it is ephemera. That is why we think that it is worth conserving and grouping them into repertoires. Later it will be necessary to give them meaning with an internal and comparative study. The great value of these repertoires is in providing a historical perspective that enables us to escape the tyranny of the present and to jog our memory about stereotypes and models of social communication. The repertoires of communication are a source of political and journalistic oratory in the 20th Century. But they are also symbolic scenarios for public action, for the collective identity, political legitimisation and institutional propaganda. The catalogue of proverbs at the Casa de Caridad of Barcelona is a brief and clear display of this idea of communication as the sum of memory and meaning. When we ask about our condition as communicators – “are we all communicators?” – we can think, in the first instance, in the creation of the artist or in the rhetoric of the orator. But not just in this. A light is also cast on a more complex perspective, one that combines ambits of discourse, political institutions, protocol, ideology, popular tradition and the historic perspective.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

– Josep BALLESTER, ed. (1999): Literatura instantània. L’aforisme de la literatura universal al llarg del temps, Barcelona, Edicions 62.

– Guillermo BRUGUÉS Tarrats (1996): Historia de la Casa de la Caridad. Barcelona, 1362-1957, Barcelona, edición de autor, 20002.

– Maria CONCA (1987): Paremiologia, Valencia, Universidad de Valencia.– Xavier LABORDA (2004): “Paremiología y refranes de la Casa de Caridad de Barcelona, desde el punto de vista de la Pragmática”, Lingüística en la red, pp. 1-27, 10-05-04; <www.linred.es/articulos_pdf/LR_articulo_10052004.pdf>.

– (2006): “La oratoria de Mark Twain, en la historia de la elocuencia”, en A. Roldán, R. Escavy, – E. Hernández, J. M. Hernández, M. I. López, (eds.), Caminos actuales de la Historiografía Lingüística, Murcia, Sociedad Española de Historiografía Lingüística, 2006; pp. 885-897.

– (2007): Vídeo “Refranes de la Casa de Caridad”, portal Youtube; <www.youtube.com/watch?v=HWmwb4mzW-E&feature=PlayList&p=588B0208F78D4B68&index=3>.

– (2007): “El silenci, lloc delitós de la tòpica poètica”, Caravansari. Poesía contemporánea en lenguas peninsulares, nº 2 (diciembre de 2007) pp. 84-5.

– (2008): “L’imaginari audiovisual i els seus valors a les noves tecnologies. The audiovisual imaginary and its values: the new technology”, Els treballs del Naos. Works of Naos, nº 10, 2008, pp. 119-148.

– (2008): “Celebratio et oratio. Corpora de discursos epidícticos para el análisis de la comunicación institucional”, Linred, VI, 16-11-08.

– (2009): Vídeo “Poema y silenci”, portal Youtube. <www.youtube.com/watch?v=czPzXk1TxI8&feature=channel_page>.Felipe MALDONADO ed. (1960): Refranero clásico español, Madrid, Taurus, 1987.

– Joan MARGARIT (2007): Casa de Misericòrdia, Proa, 2007.– Anna PARÉS i PUNTAS (1997): Diccionari de refranys català-castellà, castellà-català, Barcelona, Edicions 62.

– Mark TWAIN (1917): Autobiografía; introducción y traducción de Federico Eguilloz; Madrid, Espasa, 2003.

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IntroductionIn this first decade of the 21st Century, at the dawn of the Third Millennium, the integration of media languages into the pedagogical practices of educational institutions, can favour and democratise, in exponential proportions, the constitution of knowledge and values, in a way that has never before been experienced by humanity. What’s more, this integration leads to children, adolescents and young people learning, from a very young age, to work collaboratively, perfecting their investigative activities, broadening and deepening their knowledge of universal culture and science, while developing values that are still indispensable in daily life. In truth, it is a right that has only recently been gained and that therefore must be available to the new generations, as the obligation of the State and all those who are responsible for children, adolescents and young people. To guarantee these new rights the following conditions have to be achieved: – Sufficient resources for schools and universities, to enable the perfection of their proposals and educational models; – Amplification and in depth investigation of the epistemological questions involved in the integration of the media in pedagogical practices; – Well prepared teachers and lecturers, advised and kept up

Education, Culture, Media Languages and Transformation

Regina de Assis

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to date with the new educational paradigms and involved with media languages; – Educational paradigms that sustain pedagogical work in social networks, facilitated by access to the Internet; – Consistent and long lasting public policies, that don’t suffer the interruptions provoked by changes in government and political parties, that are continuously evaluated and divulged by the communication media to society as a whole. These are fairly strong challenges, that all countries are facing and that will be linked to their solutions, to the extent that they define the educational priorities of the Pedagogical Cultures of Communication.

Contemporary panoramas, at the beginning of the Third Millennium and the 21st Century. In this new millennium the human species is going through huge transformations and, in studying them, anthropologists, psychologists, economists and other specialists – amongst whom are educators and communicators – are beginning to characterise the generational groups, with the objective of analysing how the spheres of education and media language interrelate. The North American researchers, Neil Howe and William Strauss ( 2000 ), developed scientific analyses about the cycles of distinct generations in the United States and the impact that the audio-visual, digital and printed languages have on their lives, contributing to the development of new economic, social, educational and cultural systems. As a consequence of these investigations, various concepts were divulged about generations, from the post-war up until our times, that are being adapted to various countries, including Spain and Brazil. From this perspective, people born at the end of the 1930s up until the 1960s, would be the “analogue” generation, who interacted with pre-digital communication media. The following generations, who participated in the surge of new media languages – in particular television and portable computers – offer a fascinating field of analysis and research for all of us who are interested in children, adolescents, and youth, and their education and culture, strongly influenced by audio-visual and digital languages.

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In this block we find “generation X” (born between 1962 and 1977), then “generation Y” (from the end of the 1970s until the beginning of the 1990s), and, finally the “ Google” or “ Web 2.0” , the “multi-task generation” or the “Millennium generation” ( born between 1995 and today). It is obvious that the characteristics of each one of these generations are quite distinct; in their nature, in how they relate to each other and in how they conceive the world. This conceptual formulation refers to the consideration of different situations, such as the fact that Teachers and Lecturers, from Primary through to University Education, as well as Company Bosses, Fathers and Grandparents who still pertain to the analogical generation are – in many cases- still the ones who orientate and control the Y & X generations and indirectly those of the Google/Web 2.0 or Milennium . So we are referring to the interaction of four generations at the beginning of this 21st Century, in a diverse and unequal society in respect of the quality of life and opportunities, such as that of Brazil or of Spain. That’s why even though the proposed parameters for understanding the generational differences and conflicts are opportune, they must, out of necessity be contextualised with the peculiarities and specificities regarding the new human right of access to good quality media languages, in distinct surroundings, on our Planet Earth. One example of this is the result of an investigation Núcleo de Informação e Coordenação do Ponto Br(Nucleus of Information and Coordination of Ponto Br) ( NIC.br), by a branch of the Internet Management Committee of Brazil, of November 2006, which revealed that 66.7% of the Brazilian population (of a total of around 180 million inhabitants in the country) had never accessed the Internet, not even once ( Magazine Carta Capital, issue 22/11/2006).In September 2006, only 11% of Brazilian State Schools had an ICT laboratory with computers available for student use (Nova Escola magazine, September 2006). However at the beginning of 2009, information arrived that, through the National Programme of Technological Education, Proinfo,

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of the Ministry of Education, 356,800 virtual stations will have access to internet, in the State Schools of 5,560 Brazilian municipalities. www.linuxnewmedia.com.br/o_maior_projeto_de_desktops_virtuais_no_mundo_e_no_brasil. As we can see, even though we still live in a context of huge inequalities, the changes, with the intervention of the languages of audio-visual and digital media, occur at a vertiginous speed and on a huge scale. And this in a country like Brazil, in a world, where the interchange of ideas and connections, are increasingly vital. That’s why analysing the relationships between communication media, education, culture and transformation is still a struggle, with little likelihood of any definitive conclusions. But their analysis enables reflections that make it possible to orientate actions, above all in the field of Public Policies, endorsing the rights and obligations of all the protagonists in this vast and demanding context. It would in fact be opportune to define better the characteristics of the previously described protagonists, albeit briefly, in order to open up the field of analysis of our focus of interest.

Education, Culture, Media Language and Transformations between Generations The so called analogical generation was born and lived a long time, under the influence of books, newspapers and magazines, as well as the radio, the telephone and cinema. Their world was organised by slower rhythms in the obtaining of news, “theoretical truths” and religious theories lasted and were contested or substituted with care and rigour while correspondence was by mail, through the postal service and telegrams. At the beginning of the fifties, in more developed countries, like England and the United States, television began its rampage, redefining communication and its impact on culture, identity and consumer habits. In Brazil, these phenomena impact as much on those of higher as those of middle-income families, and on those of lower incomes, to a greater or lesser extent, depending on the possibility of access. The following generation, the unnamed X, a letter that suggests an enigma or the difficulty of being understood, lived its childhood and adolescence in a Brazil only recently liberated from a military regime,

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under which censorship of the media was extremely severe, provoking the reaction of press organisations, artists and intellectuals. Children and adolescents were hugely influenced by television, “colonised” by poor quality American and Japanese TV programmes.31NT Their education was more complacent about discipline, which contributed to generating adults who questioned and broke with traditions and stigmas. Generally, their families were more open to moving in a world that was gradually becoming globalised under the force of the market economy, forcing the growing demand for consumerism. It has been ascertained that this generation, at all economic levels, acts more independently and autonomously, with accentuated self-determination and is more demanding with regard to consumer patterns. Integrating, however, with great ease into the world of digital media languages, as it was the first generation to use electronic games, particularly Atari. In any case, it is generation Y – whose sign is the letter that represents a bifurcation in two directions – one into the past and one into the future – that is the first to be born directly into a world where connections between the virtual networks of the internet, are the principal form of obtaining knowledge and of communicating. According to Neil Howe and William Strauss, these people have more difficulty with rules, hierarchies and legislations and are more interested in results, than in the processes for obtaining them. These human beings are more frequently referred to as “tribes”, but have little social and political consciousness, and even though they are very agile at jumping from one site to another on the internet, and skilled in articulating virtual communities, in general, they are unaware of classical literature, theatre or film. Many of the representatives of the generation Y are parents or guardians and teachers of the Google/Web 2.0, the Millennium or multi/task generation. These children and adolescents for example talk on the mobile phone at the same time as they play on the computer and listen

31 NT Originally described as “enlatados” or “canned”. A Spanish idiom used to describe poor quality TV programmes, an equivalent to the use in English of the reference of ‘canned’ laughter.

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to music. This generation, since birth, has been irresponsibly “colonised” by marketing and consumerism, with the use sophisticated techniques of investigation to conquer them from a very early age, leading them to heavily influence their parents and other members of the family. According to data obtained from the investigation company Millward Brown in 2007 (www.idgnow.uol.com.br/internet/08/01/2007/idgnoticia.2007-0801.9450867302/.), one can observe that, in Brazil, 45% of the children, between 8 and 14 shared their opinion with their parents about the purchasing of cars, 60% influenced the purchase of mobile telephones and 61% the acquisition of computers. Consequently, the consultants came to the conclusion that 80% of the brands in the marketplace needed to include this public of children and adolescents in their marketing strategies. There is still a lot to discover about this generation, however the consultation by Millward Brown reveals that, in order to win this young public, it is necessary to assume an ethical stance, given that 85% of these children and adolescents reject products that harm the environment. If we bear in mind that in Brazil, the majority of the population has a low purchasing power, and in general, access to a still fairly conventional and reactionary public education system, one could add to the panorama described - regarding the diversity between the various generations – that the inequality of opportunities for quality access to media languages in schools, is a real problem. There is ample scope for analysis offered in this sense in Brazil, as in Spain, when we reflect upon the fact that, even when the poorest children and adolescents have access to radio, television and mobile phones, it is still fairly unlikely that they will have access to other media languages, above all digital ones, in their homes. Media Languages, Education, Culture and Transformation: a Polemical Debate. In analysing the tendencies that deal with the relationship between audio-visual media, digital printing and the ambit of education, theorists and researchers are glaringly imprecise and frequently simplistic. Obviously in this text it is impossible to make a more exhaustive analysis. So I will just make a few brief comments about some of the polemical

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issues in this field. We can begin the analysis with a definition of what the media are – from Marshall McLuhan’s classic, “ the medium is the message”, up until the debate about the media as a language, instrument, tool or support. We must still reflect on the initiatives that have been proposed, for understanding; the relationship between media and education (Assis and Tavares, 2009), (Belloni, 2001), (Fantin, 2006); educomunication (Oliveira, 2001); media literacy (Baccega, 2004), (Canclini, 1996;2007), (Ekström and Tufte, 2007), (Fuenzalida, 2002), (Martin-Barbero, 2001); studies on reception (Orozco, 2002;2005); cultural studies and critical theories (Kellner, 2001), (Leite, 2004); studies on media, culture and infancy (Fantin y Girardello, 2008), ( Jobim, 2000), (Sampaio, 2006), among others.

The media understood as a collection of new languages To be more specific about the debate, we propose that audio-visual, printed and digital media, like other languages; spoken, non-verbal, of the visual arts, music and theatre, among others, are the guests of technological supports but that they configure new forms of expression and human communication, full of opportunities for the building of knowledge and values. Expanding in this way the constant interactions and changes in sense and meaning, between screenwriters, directors, web designers, producers, teachers, lecturers, students, listeners, viewers and internet users. Understood in these terms, the audio-visual media, for example, don’t presuppose an ecstatic and passive spectator, but a human being who reacts with his own interests, affections and feelings as well as gender and cultural, ethnic and socio-economic identity. From this perspective, concepts such as “media literacy”, are highly polemic, given that they can reduce the analysis of the relationship between media and education to a process analogous with decorating the letters of an alphabet in order to learn to read and write, or of learning as purely linear and artificial. On the contrary, what it imposes is a discussion about the epistemologies of knowledge and values, originated by the moving images, the sound effects and their transformation, when the interaction

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is more intense. What is more, the aesthetic, affective and cultural aspects of human perception that influence audio, visual and tactile sensations are not divided up (like the letters of an alphabet or the pixels of animated digital images) in order to be understood, elaborated and memorised. (Manguel, 2008). So just as it is much more difficult to learn to read and write, first decorating the letters of the alphabet to savour later the meaning of narratives, the same happens with the reading of images in movement and various sounds, that aren’t understood as fractional parts, but for their meaning, that is construed through the interaction of what appears on the screens. It is necessary to highlight the fundamental and indispensable role of teachers and lecturers in the provocation, interaction with and production of sense and meaning, through moving images, specific shots, sound and all the other possible forms of dialogue with their students and the media languages. That is why the constitution of knowledge and values is not linear in the sense of “I teach and you learn”, but is dependent on dialogue, in which the integration of multiple languages increasingly involves whoever sees, listens, feels, thinks, reasons, believes and decides. For this what Ana Luiza Smolka ( 2007) proposes, stemming from what Bakhtin calls “ the discursive genres”, makes so much sense. Moving images and sounds, out of necessity presuppose a mediation between the intended “meanings” of those who create and those who watch and listen to them, thus constituting the same or new meanings, but making various genres of discourse, such as those used in schools and universities, possible (Assis y Tavares, 2009).

The political reading of media culture To conclude these reflections we can state that a promising line of analysis is that proposed by Kellner (2001) and by Leite (2004), that seeks to join the Critical Theories of the Frankfurt School to those of British Cultural Studies, to form a multi-perspective concept. Here it is possible to take a step forward, as it would avoid the exaggerated emphasis placed on the analysis of the messages of the media and their reception, by revaluating the production of culture and its political

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economy. In seeking a political reading of media culture, this perspective extends the analysis of people to signify what they hear or listen to, from a historical, political, economical and cultural perspective, which is desirable. It is necessary to invite as many people as possible to look for answers to these great challenges, so that the transformation of human life in this new Millennium, allows schools and universities to offer time and irreplaceable spaces for the systematisation of knowledge and values, that are indispensable in a social democratic and civilian context. All this can occur in specific social and cultural environments, in which social justice and dignity are conditions for the development and permanence of democracy.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

– OBS: Partes de este texto fueron presentadas en el artículo Mídia e Educação, p.119 en el libro: Infância e Consumo: estudos no campo da comunicação, coordinado por Veet Vivarta, Brasilia, DF, ANDI; Instituto Alana, 2009, ISBN: 978-85-99118-18-4.

– ASSIS, Regina de; TAVARES, Marcus Tadeu. Nós da Escola criando mídia e educação. Río de Janeiro: MULTIRIO/RIOMÍDIA, Prefeitura do Rio de Janeiro, 2009, www.multirio.rj.gov.br .

– BACCEGA, Maria Aparecida. Comunicação/Educação: apontamentos para discussão.Comunicação, Mídia e Consumo, Sao Paulo, v.1, núm. 2, 2004.

– BAKHTIN, Mikhail. Estética da criação verbal. Sao Paulo, Martins Fontes, 1992,– BELLONI,Maria Luiza. O que é Mídia/Educação. Campinas, Autores Associados, 2001.– CANCLINI, Néstor Garcia. Consumidores e cidadãos: conflitos culturais da globalização. Río de Janeiro: Editora UFRJ, 1996.

– EKSTRÖM, Karin M.; TUFTE, Birgitte (Ed.). Children, media and consumption, on the front edge. Gotemburgo: Yearbook 2007, The International Clearinghouse on Children, Youth and Media, Nordicom,2007. www.nordicom.gu.se .

– FANTIN, Mônica. Mídia-Educação, conceitos, experiências, diálogos Brasil-Italia. Florianópolis, Cidade Futura, 2006.

– GIRARDELLO, Gilka (Orgs.) Liga, roda, clica, estudos em mídia: cultura e infancia. Campinas, Papirus, 2008.

– FUENZALIDA, Valerio. Televisión abierta y audiencia em América Latina, Buenos Aires, Grupo Editorial Norma, 2002.

– HOWE, Neil; STRAUSS, William. Millenials rising: the next generation. Nueva York, Vintage, 2000.– JOBIM E SOUZA, Solange (Org.) Subjetividade em questão: a infância como crítica da cultura. Río de Janeiro, 7 Letras, 2000.

– KELLNER, Douglas. A Cultura da Mídia. Sao Paulo, Editora da Universidade Sagrado Coração. 2001.

– MANGUEL, Alberto. Lendo imagens: uma história de amor e ódio. São Paulo, Cia. Editora das Letras, 2008.

– MARTIN-BARBERO, Jesús. Dos meios às mediações. 2ª. Ed. Rio de Janeiro, editora da UFRJ, 2001.

– OLIVEIRA, Ismar (Org.) Cadernos de Educomunicação. São Paulo: NCE/ECA/USP, 2001.– OROZCO, Guillermo Gómez. Televisión, audiencias y educación . 2ª. Ed. Colombia: Grupo Editorial Norma. 2005.

– Recepción y Mediaciones 1ª. Ed. Buenos Aires, Grupo Editorial Norma, 2002.– SAMPAIO, Inês Vitorino (Org.) Mídia de Chocolate: estudos sobre a relação infancia, adolescencia e comunicação. Río de Janeiro: E-papers, 2006.

– SMOLKA, Ana Luiza, Comenta Lev. S. Vigotski Imaginação e Criação na Infância, Sao Paulo,

Ática, 2009.

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Annex Anexo Annex

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Comitè d’Honor / Comité de Honor / Honour Committee

Aldees Infantils SOS CatalunyaFrancesc Xavier Martín Burillo, president

Associació de Mestres Rosa SensatIrene Balaguer Felip, presidenta

Caixa TarragonaGabriel Ferraté Pascual, president

Consejo General de la Abogacía EspañolaCarlos Carnicer Díez, president

Consell de l’Audiovisual de CatalunyaRamón Font Bové, president

Escoltes CatalansMarina Gay i Faura, presidenta

European Children’s TelevisionAthina Rikaki, presidenta

Fundació BlanquernaSalvador Pié Ninot, president

Fundación Cultura de PazFederico Mayor Zaragoza, president

Fundació Internacional Olof PalmeAnna Balletbò, presidenta

Fundació La CaixaJaume Lanaspa i Gatnau, director general

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Autor 303

Fundación Germán Sánchez-RuipérezAntonio Basanta Reyes, vice-president executiu, director general

Fundación once

Miguel Carballeda Piñeiro, president

Il·lustre Col·legi d’Advocats de BarcelonaPedro L. Yúfera, degà

Institut d’Estudis Humanístics Miquel Coll AlentornCarme Drópez Ballarín, vice-presidenta consell assessor

Prix Jeunesse InternacionalMaya Götz, directora general

Síndic de GreugesXavier Bonal, adjunt per a la defensa dels drets de la infància

The Open UniversityMartin Bea, Vice-President

United Nations Children’s Foundation (C. Español)Consuelo Crespo Bofill, presidenta

UnescoIrina Bokova, directora general

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Comitè Científic i Tecnològic / Comité Científico y Tecnológico / Scientific and Technological Committee

Academia de las Ciencias y las Artes de Televisión de EspañaManuel Campo Vidal, president

Barcelona TelevisióÀngel Casas, director

Centro de Estudios InternacionalesAntoni Millet i Abbad, director

Children’s Film and Television Foundation Anna Home, cap executiva

Col·legi de Periodistes de CatalunyaJosep Maria Martí, degà

Compañía de Radio Televisión de Galicia Alfonso Sánchez Izquierdo, director general

Corporació Catalana de Mitjans AudiovisualsEnric Marín Otto, president

Drac Màgic Anna Morero, presidenta

Fundació Jaume BofillIsmael Palacín, director

Generalitat de Catalunya, Dept. d’EducacióCarles Martínez Quiroga, Direcció General d’Innovació

Institut Català de les DonesMarta Selva Masoliver, presidenta

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Autor 305

Mitjans. Xarxa d’Educadors i ComunicadorsMontserrat Moix, secretària de la comissió coordinadora

rai Trade Gabriella Tosto, Certificació de qualitat

Teleduca Sara Reñes Cabezas, fundadora

TelemadridSara Tertre Torán, responsable programa serv. Público

Universitat Autònoma de BarcelonaAna Ripoll Aracil, rectora

Universidad Carlos iii José Antonio Moreiro González, degà Facultat d’Humanitats, Comunicació i Documentació

Universidad Complutense Carlos Berzosa, rector

Universitat de BarcelonaDídac Ramírez i Sarrió, rector

Universitat de GironaAnna M. Geli, rectora

Universidad de MálagaEmelina Fernández, professora

Universidad de Santiago de CompostelaMargarita Ledó Andión, catedràtica de comunicació audiovisual

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Universidad de SevillaJoaquín Luque Rodríguez, rector

Universitat de VicAssumpta Fargas i Riera, rectora

Universitat Oberta de CatalunyaImma Tubella Casadevall, rectora

Universitat Politècnica de CatalunyaAntoni Giró i Roca, rector

Universitat Ramon Llull Esther Giménez-Salinas, rectora

Xarxa Catalana Interdisciplinar d’Investigadors sobre els Drets dels Infants i la seva Qualitat de Vida Ferran Casas, coordinador

Xarxa de Televisions LocalsMarc Melillas, director general

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Autor 307

Consell Assessor / Consejo Asesor / Adviser’s Committee

Ricardo BadaEscriptor i periodista. Deutsche Welle (Colònia)

Sebastià SerranoCatedràtic de Lingüística i Semiòtica (Barcelona)

Alejandro Perales AlbertComunicòleg (Madrid)

Josep Maria Benítez i RieraCatedràtic d’Història, PUG (Roma)

Regina de AssisConsultora en Educació i Mitjans (Brasil)

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Amb la col.laboració / Con la colaboración / With the collaboration

Amb el patrocini / Con el patrocinio / With the collaboration

Amb el suport institucional / Con la ayuda institucional / With Institutional support

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Autor 309

Observatori Europeu de la Televisió InfantilObservatorio Europeo de la Televisión InfantilEuropean Observatory on Children’s Television

Nota editorialLa majoria dels treballs aquí publicats corresponen a les ponències i debats que es van expressar durant la celebració de les VIII Jornades de l’Observatori, sota el títol “Les cultures pedagògiques de la comunicació, VIII”. L’Aula Europa, seu de la Representación en Barcelona de la Comisión Europea, va acollir aquests debats que es van celebrar el 20 de novembre de 2009.

Nota editorialLa mayoría de los trabajos aquí publicados corresponde a las ponencias y debates que qe expresaron durante la celebración de las VIII Jornadas del Observatorio, bajo el título “Las culturas pedagógicas de la comunicación, VIII”. El Aula Europa, sede de la Representació de la Comisión Europea en Barcelona, acogió estos debates celebrados el 20 de noviembre de 2009.

Publisher’s noteMost of the works published here correspond to presentations, interventions and debates at the 8th Observatory sessions, dedicated to “The educational cultures of communication, VIII”. These debates were held the 20th of November , 2009 in The European Hall, Representation i n Barcelona of the European Commission .

Francesc Llobet i Dalmases PresidentCristina Tresserres Macaya DirectoraDánae Meroño Castellanos CoordinadoraGualbert Vargas i Gómez Assessor Pedagògic

Els treballs del Naos, n.12/Los Trabajos del Naos, n.12/Works of Naos, n.12Coordinació de la publicació: Dánae Meroño i Cristina TresserresDisseny: Ediciones CPG © 2010, de cada persona autora per la seva col·laboració© 2010, de les fotografies Adam Gregor© 2010, de les traduccions a l’anglès: Jo Milne© 2010, de les traduccions al català i al castellà: T6 Estandard Lingüístic, s.l.

Una iniciativa/Una iniciativa/An initiative© 2010, Associació Comissionat de les Arts Audiovisuals de BarcelonaC/Aragó, 290-292, 5è B. 08009 Barcelona SpainTel. 93 488 19 14 – Fax. 93 488 20 86e-mail: [email protected]òsit legal:

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Works of Naos 2010

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