Observatorio (OBS*)

Uses of democratic theory in media and communication studies

It is commonly accepted that different theories of democracy imply different normative frameworks for evaluating media performance. However, it has also been argued that media and communication researchers engagement with broader political theories remains underdeveloped and dependent on a narrow range of sources. The aim of this article is to map out in a basic quantitative fashion how different models of democracy are employed in media and communication studies. Some broad theoretical trends and omissions in the current academic debate on media and democracy are identified by analyzing central theorists, trends and patterns in the theoretical resources employed in academic journal articles within the field. This is done by analysing the keywords and names that appear in the Communication & Mass Media Complete (CMMC) database from 1990 to 2011.

Roberto Rossellini's contribution to critical discourse on Italian Neorealism

Entre las corrientes estéticas que se han sucedido desde los inicios del cine hasta hoy, el neorrealismo italiano ha sido una de la que más esfuerzos ha dedicado a recuperar esa aspiración primera del arte fílmico que consiste en representar la realidad. A propósito de Roma città aperta, la película de Roberto Rossellini que en 1945 inauguró la escuela neorrealista, Ángel Quintana ha explicado que su intención fue recuperar la vocación original del cine, es decir, el momento mágico en el que los espectadores se sorprendieron al ver en una pantalla el movimiento de las hojas de los árboles. Si bien este movimiento de la posguerra italiana carece de un corpus teórico convencional, la defensa a ultranza del neorrealismo por parte del crítico francés André Bazin ha pasado a la historia como la visión canónica de esta corriente. El objetivo de este artículo consiste en describir la poética neorrealista desde la perspectiva artística de Rossellini, quizá el director más emblemático de esta tendencia cinematográfica. A través de sus declaraciones en conferencias y entrevistas, que huyen de lo especulativo en beneficio de lo expresivo, y a la luz de su denominada trilogía neorrealista -Roma, città aperta, Paisà y Germania, anno zero-, se pretende ahondar en su enfoque sobre el neorrealismo.

Italian neorealism is a film movement characterized by his effort to represent reality. Roma, città aperta is the film that opened the italian neorealism in 1945. Ángel Quintana has said that Roma, città aperta attempts to recover the original vocation of cinema, namely, ir attempts to recover that magic moment when viewers were surprised to see the movement of the leaves of the trees on a screen. This italian post-war movement lacks a conventional theoretical corpus. However, the defense of neorealism by the critic André Bazin has passed into history as the canonical vision of this movement. The aim of this article is to describe the neorealist poetics from the artistic perspective of Roberto Rossellini, who is the most emblematic film director of italian neorealism. The goal is to deepen the vision of this type of film movement, from the viewpoint of his neorelist trilogy Roma, città aperta, Paisà and Germania, anno zero.

O ecrã da (hiper) televisão: novos olhares a partir das emissões dedicadas ao Euro 2012 na TV portuguesa

Dando continuidade a uma série de estudos já realizados no âmbito do projecto de investigação em que se insere, o presente trabalho questiona a evolução do ecrã televisivo como dispositivo supostamente convergente. Contrariando uma tendência discursiva dominante, quer na esfera dos media quer na própria produção académica sobre o medium televisivo, clarificam-se aqui alguns dos desenvolvimentos teóricos mais significativos, resultantes dos anos de trabalho que este projecto de investigação já tem. Propõe-se, pois, uma distinção conceptual entre o ecrã prometido pela cultura da convergência, que designamos como ecrã convergente, e o ecrã verdadeiramente resiliente da instituição-televisão, o ecrã centrípeto, que ainda obedece aos princípios de sequência e fluxo enunciados por Raymond Williams nos anos 1970.

In line with the previous research that we developed inside the project were taking part for some years now, the work were presenting questions the evolution of the televisive screen as a supposedly convergent apparatus. It means a questioning that argues against the ongoing dominant discourse on television (both in the media as in the academic sphere). We then intend to bring to light some of the main conceptual theoretical distinctions that where emerging from our previous articles and reflections. What we propose is a distinction between the screen as promised by the convergence culture, one we designate the convergent screen, and the screen we actually see enduring in our TV sets, a resilient screen representing the TV-institution: a centripetous screen that still follows the same principles of sequence and flow as generically theorized by Raymond Williams in the 1970s.

A internet em McLuhan, Baudrillard e Habermas

Habermas, Baudrillard e McLuhan representam três das principais linhas científicas de análise global do fenómeno dos media e da sua interacção com a sociedade. No entanto, qualquer dessas análises é anterior à emergência da internet como meio massivo de distribuição de informação, com as manifestações que conhecemos hoje. O objectivo deste trabalho é analisar de que forma a internet actual se inscreve, ou não, nas teses de cada um desses autores, através do mapeamento das suas teses e das dos seus sucessores; e perceber se as características da internet obrigaram à revisão das teses desses autores, pelos próprios ou pelos seus sucessores. Examinaremos, por ordem cronológica, as teses de Marshal McLuhan, Jean Braudrillard e Jürgen Habermas, confrontaremos as teorias de cada um deles com os desafios que hoje lhes coloca a internet e, por fim, procuraremos tirar conclusões sobre se a manifestação social actual da internet obrigou ou não a uma revisão das teses de cada um.

Habermas, Baudrillard and McLuhan represent three of the main scientific approaches to the phenomenon of the interaction between media and society. However all those approaches are prior to the internet as a massive medium for the distribution of information, like we experience it today. The purpose of this article is to analyze if the internet as we know it today can in any way be inscribed within the thesises of each of those authors, mapped out though their own writings or the writings of their successors; and to figure out if the modern development of the internet forced a revision of those authors thesis, either by themselves or by their successors. We will examine, in chronological order, the thesis of Marshal McLuhan, Jean Baudrillard and Jürgen Habermas, we will confront the theories of those authors with the challenges that the internet poses them and we will conclude by checking if the internet has forced a revision of their main theoretical thesises.

The End of the Information Society. Notes for the Configuration of the New Contemporary Public Space: the Society of Devisers

Mass media have often been described as the new public space of the current democratic societies (Ortega, 2003: 61). The increased popularity of New Information and Communication Technologies (NICT) is certainly motivating a change in the paradigm: according to the Society of Devisers, it is linked to the notion of collectiveness, it is demystified and fragmented. That is to say, it is taken out of the journalistic showcases and transformed into something alive, incomplete, accessible and multiple. The new society, fissured and emotionally hyperactive, is crossed by the mirror-neurons. This society of anonymous individuals gives public space triggering bursts of energy and enables, in the multidirectional map of devisers, its own central nervous system, although in close connection with the human body. In the next article of revision, the authors describe some of the characteristics which define the advent of that social emergence.

Cinema and/as Revolution: The New Latin American Cinema

The New Latin American Cinema has been traditionally defined as a political cinema committed to the transformation of the social conditions that characterized Latin America in the 1960s. The notion of revolution has been placed in the core of this movement. Deeply influenced by the Cuban Revolution in 1959 and by several political movements throughout the continent, a group of filmmakers proposed an aesthetic transformation of what they described as a colonized culture. Our aim in this essay is to explain what these filmmakers understood by a cinematographic revolution that could be the condition for a broader political and social transformation. It is not our intention to stand up for the concept of revolution in the New Latin American Cinema, but to try to avoid the stereotypes around this concept and to understand what this notion involved within a particular context.

(Post)-conflict Memories and Identity Narratives in the Documentary Series I Am Africa

During the last century, film and video have become important inspiring documents of collective memory; in this century, they have become an increasingly important source of evidence and historical reflection. This paper aims to analyse the documentary series I Am Africa. Consisting of ten episodes, I Am Africa gives voice to ten citizens - two from each of the Portuguese-speaking African countries: Angola, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, and Sao Tome and Principe - with significant civic involvement in the development of the nations where they were born and currently live. Through thematic analysis of the ten stories, which make up the documentary series, were located the predominant themes in the narratives of those involved. The results of this research show the narrative organization of the ten interviewees in three central themes: the meanings of independence, which involve the representations of the people who have participated in the process of (de)colonization; the perceptions about the cultural and linguistic diversity in their countries; and, finally, the discourses associated with the (re)making of national identities.

O Panóptico de Sauron: Poder e Vigilância no Senhor dos Anéis de J.R.R. Tolkien

Este artigo é dedicado aos Estudos de Vigilância e à sua aplicação à obra de Tolkien, Senhor dos Anéis. Nesta análise, é feita uma introdução histórica aos Estudos de Vigilância, uma contextualização histórica e social do autor, identificando, na narrativa em discussão, reflexos de uma sociedade conturbada e, por fim, um enquadramento teórico e social dos Estudos de Vigilância ao mundo secundário da Terra Média , demonstrando os paralelismos entre as teorias dos irmãos Bentham e Foucault e as relações de poder presentes nesta região do mundo metafísico do imaginário de Tolkien.No final do artigo, são ainda analisadas duas vertentes das teorias do poder, o poder da retórica e a resistência ou contra-poder, também presentes na Terra Média, assumindo, a par das relações de poder, várias representações simbólicas.

This article is dedicated to Surveillance Studies and their application to Tolkiens literary work, Lord of the Rings. A historical introduction to Surveillance Studies, a historical and social contextualisation of the author, identifying, in the discussed story, the reflections of a troubled society, and, finally, a theoretical and social framework that relates Surveillance Studies to the "secondary world" of Middle Earth are presented in this analysis, demonstrating the parallels between Bentham's and Foucault's theories and the social relations of power in this region of the metaphysical world of Tolkien's imagination.At the end of the article, two aspects of the theories of power are also analysed, those being the power of rhetoric and resistance or counter-power, also present in Middle Earth, assuming, just like power relations, several symbolic representations.

From the in / visibility of representation to the politics of belonging in networks of young associativism in the Luso-Brazilian suburbs

Hip-hop culture in São Paulo (Brazil) and Lisbon (Portugal) is characterized as a social practice that enables greater visibility and assists in identity formation amongst the younger residents of impoverished urban neighbourhoods, often young blacks. Here hip-hop helps to generate new understandings of self, it reduces social stigma, and as such, it provides an effective tool in the fight against racism and other forms of discrimination and exclusion.This work proceeds in a multidisciplinary and transversal way, questioning how young people in São Paulo and Lisbon appropriate hip-hop culture in their collective actions, and inspiring critical reflection on issues of "belonging", "tradition" and "identity". This essay prioritizes identity narratives that are built through a self-reflexivity, which emerges in the clash with the public space. It expounds on the importance of identity narratives in the processes of (re)construction and (re)signification in the composition of social actors identities. Following Latour (2001), this article seeks to demonstrate that traditions are dynamic, that constructions have their own historicity, and, as affirmed by Sansi (2009:142), syncretism is nothing other than history.The methodology used to complete this work included a systematic review of relevant literature from the theoretical and political contribution of Cultural Studies and its focus on the process of cultural significance, present in the contemporary urban scene, which enables the creation of new narratives, not unilinear perspective, but open to different understandings. Young people are using hip-hop culture to reach and teach their communities about social justice and taking action. My aim was to instigate innovative approaches and experimental learning between cultures and ideologies, the hiphop being one of the most powerful tools of democratic practices of political expressiveness.I considered the semi-structured interviews as an ideal instrument given their capacity for facilitating dialogue and learning, and the possibility of also showing the semantic fields in which speech is inserted. I used a recorder to better capture the speech transcription of the interviewees. Interviews were conducted with isolated individuals targeting the individual subject.

A ecrã cultura emergente nas vivências dos jovens portugueses: poderá falar-se de uma geração de ecrãs?

O ritmo elevado da utilização das tecnologias e a apropriação dos media de forma transversal e ubíqua permitiram a propagação de vários termos que se generalizaram, uma vez que também se propagaram os media e as suas potencialidades. Este fenómeno contemporâneo desafia a comunidade científica a observar e a refletir no sentido de compreender os processos sociais e comunicacionais em curso.A referência aos novos media quase não pode ser dissociada da geração que proporcionou a sua utilização massiva. Assim, neste artigo, reflete-se sobre a apropriação dos novos media e, consequentemente, de ecrãs por indivíduos com idades compreendidas entre os 21 e os 45 anos de idade, e a integração dos artefactos tecnológicos nos variados contextos onde passam o seu tempo: na escola, no espaço familiar e nos períodos de lazer.Apresentam-se os resultados obtidos através da aplicação de um inquérito por questionário no ano letivo de 2011/2012 a 30 alunos do 3º ano da licenciatura em Novas Tecnologias da Comunicação, na unidade curricular de Cibercultura, da Universidade de Aveiro.

The high pace of technology usage, and the ubiquitous and transversal appropriation of media, caused the widespread of several concepts. This contemporary phenomenon challenges the scientific community to observe and reflect about the ongoing social and communicational processes.When referencing new media, one can hardly dissociate it from the generation that potentiated their massive use. Thus, this study focus on two main topics: the appropriation of new media and screens by individuals aged between 21 and 27 years old and the integration of technological artifacts in contexts where they spend their time: at school, in the family and in leisure activities.We introduce the results obtained in a survey applied to 30 students of the New Communication Technologies graduation course, at the Cyber culture discipline, at University of Aveiro, in the school year of 2011/2012.