Catalan Journal of Communication & Cultural Studies - Volume 9, Issue 1, 2017

Pain is a complex issue, and often patients feel isolated. Social media are arising as instruments where users find support and spaces to express their pain. This study analyses how two pain institutions – the Spanish Pain Society (SED) and the American Pain Society (APS) – are creating messages and communicating them through Twitter, by examining their profile content and procedures. A comparative analysis was applied to 2474 tweets corresponding to the period running from the inception of the profiles (APS July 2010, SED March 2013) to February 2016. Both profiles manage aspects like targeted audiences and referential content quite well, whereas frequency and engagement with users would need to be improved. Although the two institutions are already using this social media tool, we suggest that both organizations would benefit from developing a social media strategy. Nevertheless, further research is needed in order to understand deeply how pain is communicated via Twitter.

The aim of this study was to observe how journalists manage their time and what are the most time-consuming practices. Empirical data were gathered by using a non-participant observation in a national daily newsroom and two participant observations in a national daily and in a local newspaper newsroom in Estonia. There were two focus group meetings with journalists with less than five years of experience in May 2016 and in September 2016. Results show that journalists with less than five years of experience had trouble with managing their time; for example, they mainly contacted the source via e-mail, which led to stress-induced situations and the usage of questionable sources. Journalists with more than five years of experience had established routines and managed to divide time between different topics simultaneously. They were reluctant to use e-mails and relied mainly on traditional methods: calling or meeting the source.

From Ida Tarbell to Bob Woodward, journalists crusading for truth have bravely defended democracy from the incursions of corruption and undue influence despite being forced to live with the ‘consequences’ of their actions. In Cyprus, the debt of major Cypriot banks and their financial bailout culminated in the banking crisis of March 2013. As expected, the crisis has altered modes of everyday life and the images with which it is depicted, leading most Cypriots to a different notion of reality. This article focuses on the examination of the news items published in the daily newspapers of the highest circulation with different political alignments in March 2013, during which the bailout and austerity measures were negotiated by the Cyprus government, the parliament and the Troica. Based on the concept of investigative journalism, the article particularly examines the model of watchdog journalism and the extent to which this model can be applied to the role performance of the Press in times of crisis. Using framing analysis, this article aims to examine the way(s) in which these negotiations were communicated to the public through the Press. By identifying the specific frames they used, we attempt to investigate the possible relation(s) of the specific representations to the political/ideological orientation of each newspaper. The initial research question for this study is the following: Did the orientation of the newspapers examined steer their coverage of the crisis in general and what is the link (if any) with watchdog journalism?

In a historically controversial moment for Spanish territorial politics, where the traditional regional system of the State and regional politics are constantly fluctuating – especially considering the referenda in the Basque Country and Catalonia –, the films Ocho apellidos vascos (Spanish Affair) directed by Martínez-Lázaro in 2014 and Ocho apellidos catalanes (Spanish Affair 2) in 2015 have become the most successful films in the history of Spanish cinema. In these films, the Andalusian, Basque and Catalan stereotypes are taken to the extreme, breaking down the negative stigma they have acquired by reducing all their possible meanings to a simple gag. Consequently, the overindulgence of these stereotypical representations has proposed their very deactivation as a legitimate category of representation. The study of stereotypes and prejudices reflects an interest in relationships between social groups. Therefore, if intergroup affairs focus their discussions on beliefs that describe actions such as violence, alliance, or negotiation, this means that perceptions, beliefs and attitudes must mediate all intergroup affairs. According to Fredric Jameson, in order for images not to unfold just their own stereotypes and confirm themselves as realities, a considerable distance should be kept between the contents and what they represent. The proposed goal of this study is to analyse both films from a critical discourse analysis (CDA) in relation to the stereotypes categorization defined by Jaakko Lehtonen. The announcement of the end of the armed struggle by the terrorist group ETA and the eccentric political fights in the last Catalan elections have allowed the production and success of these comedies. These films question the sense of the Basque, Catalan and Andalusian stereotypes, the latter being the primary internationally recognized Spanish stereotype, showing the ‘plurinational’ origin of the Spanish State.

This article seeks to investigate the way in which Catalonia Television’s (TV3) Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has helped the company cultivate an image associated with Catalan identity by way of a charity initiative: a telethon known as La Marató (‘The marathon’). In the empirical stage there were 463 interviews with seven stakeholder groups. This stage is important as it is a window into the perceptions of all the groups involved in the company. The most significant results show how La Marató is considered to be a symbol of Catalan identity and how some intangible values (the company’s social capital) impacted the organization’s reputation. In terms of theory, the article proposes that identity should be considered an important intangible asset.

Politics and commerce are fundamental activities for the development of a society. This article proposes that the two are interrelated, and the proof of it are the values that are included in their respective discourses. This article describes the axiological relationships of both typologies, through a rhetorical root analysis model designed to identify values. To exemplify these relationships, we will examine the spots of election cycles in Spain for 2008, 2011 and 2015. With this information, a values map will be drawn, and the function of the persuasive process in mass communication will be defined through a new construct called the Axiological Conversion Thesis (ACT). This article may be of interest to the fields of economics and politics, as it attempts to identify links between the public and the private, and concludes that according to contemporary audio-visual messages, commercial product brands and political parties have more points in common than differences.

Books about video games have become common in the Catalan and Spanish ambits. In this text, I present a first approach at them, distinguishing non-scholar enthusiast books and academic books, through the texts in their back covers, flaps and websites, and compare the main ideas in both types. It is my view that books are being used for negotiating their role of video games in culture, and the tensions between fans and scholars are made visible in them. My hypothesis, which could be tested in a further research, is that enthusiast books are celebrations of love for fans seeking cultural legitimacy, whereas academic books are attempts to make sense of games as culture and as in culture. I defend that the medium of print is a very valuable means not only to gather critical data on video games culture and the perspectives of fans, but also to transfer ludoliteracy skills to society.

Prensky’s concept of the ‘digital native’ received many criticisms, fundamentally as it was considered too optimistic, but also determinist and reductionist: knowing the age of a person does not determine the digital practices they may perform, nor their behaviour. In our previous research young people obtained very low scores in all media literacy dimensions except technology, demonstrating the need for comprehensive media literacy and contradicting the myth of digital native. It was shown that they had technical and production skills but were lacking in others of equal importance such as aesthetics. Young people do not conceive their lives on and offline separately; for them everything is a continuation of personal, social or academic life. Therefore, why not introduce into higher education the technologies with which they spend most time, that is, mobile devices? Tablets and mobile devices are their personal interaction and social connection spaces. Including them in classrooms may therefore be useful in removing the barriers that separate the personal from the collective, the rational and the emotional, learning and entertainment, the classroom and everyday life outside it. As mobile devices are considered cultural tools that are transforming sociocultural practices and structures in all spheres of life university must naturally form part of this consideration. Including mobile devices in higher education could be innovative and efficient if full advantage is taken of the optimum features of new technologies and new communication practices: creativity and participation, teamwork, continuous learning and open and online collaboration, multimedia and multimodal communication, interaction and the search for implication and motivation. The aim of our R&D&I project ‘media competences of citizens in emerging digital media in university environments’ (2016−18), is to compare how mobile devices (tablets, smartphones, etc.) are used by young people outside the academic arena as opposed to how they are used inside university, with a view to detecting innovative teaching/learning practices that may then be advocated and disseminated within higher education.

The aim of this article is to describe a training programme intended to ensure the quality of standard Catalan in broadcast advertising. Initiated in 2007, the programme offered working or aspiring broadcasters training in the linguistic and oral performance skills necessary to carry out their job in fully proficient standard Catalan. Promotion, organization and instruction of the programme was shared between a local university and a public media corporation, and in the three years that it was offered a total of 83 students were certified by the programme. It served to significantly increase the pool of broadcasters with full professional proficiency in standard Catalan and laid the foundations for the development of a professional sector characterized by its use of high-quality specialized and standardized language. It can thus be seen as forming part of the extension of language knowledge and use phase in the process of standardizing a minority language.

MOTHERHOOD IN THE MEDIA. INFANTICIDE, JOURNALISM AND THE DIGITAL AGE, BARBARA BARNETT (2016) New York: Routledge, Series: Routledge Research in Cultural and Media Studies, 84, 224 pp., ISBN: 9781138889170, h/bk, ₤90.00, e/bk, ₤24.49

THE MEDIA SYNDROME, DAVID L. ALTHEIDE (2016) New York and London: Routledge, 233 pp., ISBN: 9781629581477, h/bk, ₤90.00, p/bk, ₤22.99

SOCIAL MEDIA IN MEDICINE, MARGARET S. CHISOLM (ED.) (2016) London and New York: Routledge, 96 pp., ISBN: 9781138665385, h/bk, ₤90.00

LA COMUNICACIÓN DE LOS DESTINOS TURÍSTICOS Y SUS MARCAS A TRAVÉS DE LOS MEDIOS SOCIALES, ASSUMPCIÓ HUERTAS (ED.) (2016) Tarragona: Universitat Rovira i Virgili, 93 pp., ISBN: 978-84-608-8771-3, ebk, free of charge