Catalan Journal of Communication & Cultural Studies - Volume 10, Issue 1, 2018

This article provides useful insights on the perception of TRT 6 (TRT Kurdî) by Turkey’s Kurdish community regarding TV broadcast in mother tongue. The research environment of the study is Kurdish citizens who live in both south-east and west regions of Turkey. TRT 6 is a sub-channel of state TV (Turkish Radio and Television Corporation) and mainly broadcasts in the Kurmanci dialect of the Kurdish language. The results of the study show the fact that those who define themselves primarily as Kurdish – as opposed to Muslim – reject TRT 6 (and especially criticize its news coverage), and Kurds who see themselves primarily as Sunni Muslims watch it with pleasure, implying that the channel serves as a tool in ‘Turkifying’ the Kurds of Turkey through a common religious identity.

This study analysed coverage of the Iraq War during 2003–04 in the only Colombian national newspaper during the time, El Tiempo, to establish how the attributes of this conflict, as represented through this medium, were perceived by its audience. We conducted a thematic analysis of 500 news items and 71 letters to the editor (LTE) to establish the polarity of these texts. Findings showed that the negative tone of the coverage seemed related to a strong negative reaction from the public. This supports the first level of influence from agenda-setting theory, since the Iraq War was an important issue for journalists and the public alike. There is also evidence of a second level of influence with regards to the issues reported being considered negative. LTE were gauged in terms of how they criticized coverage of the war, with the particular finding that journalistic professionalism was questioned following bias accusations about the qualifications of the parties at war. Overall, the wider perspective on public concerns offered by this study could help guide journalistic coverage of the Colombian post-conflict phase.

The process of hybridization has pervaded all fields of human communication; journalism and activism are no exceptions. An example is the graphic project Los vagabundos de la chatarra, an editorial undertaking that comprises observations, drawings, data, a map, a video and accounts of the people who gathered and sold scrap metal for a living on the edges of Barcelona during the economic crisis that started in 2007. This exploration is conducted and communicated in an extremely hybrid manner: it visualizes data on a map, it strives for social change, it is journalistic and it has a comic design face. Relying on media literature and critical data studies, discourse analysis and qualitative interviewing, this article examines the multifaceted shapes that activism and journalism are taking in complex times and explores the potential for subversion that such formats offer. The findings suggest that activists and journalists around the world are embarking on unapologetic hybridization, crossing lines between journalism, campaigning and art.

By focusing on the emergence and development of journalistic conventions and professional routines it is possible to understand the prominent role of journalism in the social construction of meaning. In this article, we theoretically examine journalism as a special field of discursive production. The field of journalism presents more than the facts it gathers and reports. The institutionalized retelling of events is a very distinct way to put meaning on them. We suggest journalism is a historically and culturally bounded discourse whose performative nature is at the core of its moral authority and social credibility. In addition, the performative discourse of journalism invites us to extend the concept to include, for example, the conventions of style and form. The historical transformations journalism took may, thus, be looked at as efforts in the battle for performative discourse involved in the process of a mimetic (re)construction of the social world.

The media employ a shared cultural knowledge between sender and receiver to build media representations effectively. These representations, apparently innocuous, shape the audience’s perception and appraisal of the Other, which is constructed as an opposition to the Self. In our research, we draw attention to a Spanish television news story that describes the increase of foreign participants at the San Fermín running of the bulls in Pamplona, Spain, and also highlights the still minority participation by women. Through data from focus group discussions, we investigate age differences in the interpretation of gender and nationality stereotypes to examine how the media construction of this news story generates an intersectional othering. In our investigation, this othering process places women and foreigners outside the norm of this social identity built around the running of the bulls. Our research also identifies a significant generation gap in audience interpretation of the news story.

Internet Technologies for Empowerment and Participation (TEP) have fostered spontaneous bottom-up movements that have allowed young minorities to advocate for initiatives for improving their communities. The most recent theories confirm the emergence of an empowered citizenry thanks to the technology they are using for the common good. Within these positive visions for Internet activism, there is a position that stands out that affirms that there is a gender difference in the use of these technologies; compared to men, ‘young women use the Internet in a way that contributes to social well-being’. A paradigmatic example of this use is the young blogger Malala Yousafzai, who was awarded with the Nobel Peace Prize. Using the case study method, this article explores six paradigmatic examples that illustrate the new ways women are empowering themselves through the Internet.

The purpose of this article is to emphasize autonomous and separatist regions in the nation branding and public diplomacy communication literature, and to highlight how promoting culture can convey soft power. In particular, the short article illuminates the practical aspects of branding: especially the visual element that has received limited attention in prior public diplomacy studies. Examples from government websites of Catalonia, the Basque Country and Scotland are used to illustrate the concepts. The examples counter concerns that nation branding homogenizes global cultures. In fact, emphases on cultures convey distinctive identities. The three regions’ soft power is also generated by communicating ideals such as innovativeness, collaboration, social justice and government transparency. As the Catalan crisis indicated, branding is vital to both international and domestic audiences to achieve public diplomacy goals.

This article approaches the television career of Pau Freixas, screenwriter, director and producer of the series Polseres vermelles (2012–13), Cites (2013–16) and Sé quién eres (2017). The television works of Pau Freixas epitomise three recent changes experienced in the creation of television fiction. First, the international emergence of the showrunner, a key characteristic of the American TV industry, that has expanded globally as a symbol of creative autonomy. Second, Pau Freixas’ career marks an ongoing tendency on contemporary Spanish TV: many directors began their career in cinema but have ended up working in television, making him a rara avis as a showrunner-director. Last, he has developed the most important part of his career in the Catalan public television channel, TV3, where he matured as a storyteller in a way that, in the context of contemporary television, has facilitated remarkable international success for his works.

This article tries to take the case of the Tianjin explosions, which happened in 2015, as an example to address two questions. First, what are the features of the online microblog, as distinct from traditional media, in the context of contemporary China? Second, what is the role of new media (represented by the microblog), in forming the green public sphere in China? In the case of the Tianjin explosions, the first report was from a microblogger, minutes after the explosions. However, the traditional media did not report any news of the fire until four hours later, and subsequent related news was greatly regulated and manufactured by the central controlling agency. This delayed response and continued diversion of the incident invoked outrage among the public, who were kept updated by active microbloggers. From this brief research, it can be concluded that as netizen numbers grow and more agencies are added to netizens’ voices, the microblog obviously has become the indispensable new media platform in China, although it is still dismissed as an unreliable and valueless source by government officials. It indeed contributes to the formation of the green public sphere somehow, but the development of the green public sphere in China is still in its infancy.

Posmemoria de la Guerra Civil y el Franquismo: Narrativas Audiovisuales y Producciones Culturales En El Siglo Xxi, Laia Quílez Esteve and José Carlos Rueda Laffond (eds) (2017) Granada: Editorial Comares, 256 pp., ISBN: 9788490454947, p/bk, 21€

Retrotopía, Zygmunt Bauman (2017) Barcelona: Paidós, 172 pp., ISBN: 9788449333224, p/bk 15.95€

Masculinidades Disidentes, Rafael M. Mérida Jiménez (ed.) (2016) Barcelona: Editorial Icaria, 256 pp., ISBN: 9788498887327, p/bk, 20€

Productos Transmediáticos e Imaginario Cultural: Arqueología Transmedia, Patricia Trapero Llobera and María Isabel Escalas Ruíz (eds) (2017) Palma: Ediciones UIB, 216 pp., ISBN: 978-84-8384-349-9, p/bk, 19€