Antonio Pineda

‘Follow the closing of the campaign on streaming’: The use of Twitter by Spanish political parties during the 2014 European elections

The results of the elections to the European Parliament of 25 May 2014 marked a before and an after for Spanish politics. This influential European campaign took place at a moment when Internet use was well established as a tool, with political parties and candidates actively using social media. This article aims to research whether Spanish parties are using Twitter to develop interactive communication, or simply for broadcasting messages. Thus, the Twitter activity of various political parties during the 2014 European campaign is content-analysed. Results indicate that activity seems to depend on ideology, that parties are revealed to be committed to unidirectional communication/broadcasting, and that debate on Twitter is fundamentally between the politicians themselves. On a theoretical level, our data are in line with the idea that the normalisation hypothesis tends to prevail.

‘I believe they felt attacked’. Discursive representation and construction of interculturality in Spanish news television:

This article discusses the representation of interculturality in the media. Interculturality, the interaction between two different cultures, has taken on greater importance in the social and human sciences. However, in the field of media communications the representation of interculturality has not received much attention. Thus, we are interested in analysing the media representation of interculturality in Spanish television news. We analyse the discursive construction of interculturality in news programs, and we go into depth as to how the conflictual kind of interculturality is represented. To achieve this, critical discourse analysis is used, applying the concepts of lexicalisation, propositional structures, topics, polarisation and focus. Results indicate that in public and private stations alike, interculturality is shown as a polarised interaction between a dominant in-group and a minority out-group, and it is defined by the status quo. However, Spanish television portrays a conflictual interculturality that is not limited to disagreement.

Individualism in Western advertising: A comparative study of Spanish and US newspaper advertisements

Following an extended tradition in cross-cultural research about individualism and collectivism as defining features of national cultures, this article aims to go in depth by taking into account the implications of these complex concepts. Under the premise that advertising is a product that reflects cultural values, this article focuses on a comparative content analysis of newspaper advertisements from the United States and Spain, two presumably different Western countries as far as the individualism–collectivism continuum is concerned. The conclusions obtained challenge some theoretical assumptions regarding this topic. The evolution of Spanish society as mirrored by advertising is discussed as well.

Algunas implicaciones de la teoría de la Economía Política de la Comunicación para la investigación de la propaganda

Este articulo tiene el objetivo de reflexionar sobre las aportaciones que puede realizar la teoria de la Economia Politica de la Comunicacion a la investigacion de la comunicacion propagandistica. Sostenemos que la posibilidad de cooperacion entre estos dos ambitos de estudio de la comunicacion descansa sobre vinculaciones conceptuales profundas relativas a conceptos como el poder y la ideologia. Otro factor relevante al respecto es la consideracion de los medios de comunicacion como herramientas de poder. La aplicacion de la Economia Politica de la Comunicacion tiene tambien consecuencias potenciales para el estudio empirico de la propaganda. Tales implicaciones potenciales pueden ser especialmente fructiferas en el ambito de la investigacion de la propaganda en la comunicacion y la cultura de masas. Sin embargo, si entendemos teoricamente la propaganda como un fenomeno universal y transhistorico, las ideas de la Economia Politica de la Comunicacion encuentran limitaciones a la hora de ser aplicadas. La cuestion de si todo mensaje puede entenderse como propaganda es otro problema teorico resultado de la aplicacion de algunas concepciones deterministas de la Economia Politica de la Comunicacio

The Social Construction of Intercultural Communication: A Delphi Study

ABSTRACT Through the Delphi method, we draw on experts in the field of interculturalism – and on our own previous Critical Discourse Analysis-based research – to critically examine media accounts of intercultural communication in Spain. We argue that understanding how the media portray intercultural communication from the point of view of experts is a vital research task, since the media and experts are key social actors who reproduce existing cultural meanings and who can also transform discourses and beliefs. We present a typology of media representations – conflictive interculturalism, possible interculturalism and unresolved interculturalism – and demonstrate how experts’ responses can be contextualised within this typology. Our findings also suggest, first, that multiculturalism does not necessarily translate into greater intercultural communication, and second, that television constructs intercultural interaction from a stance of lack of equality in diversity, resulting in an impossible encounter marked by violence or the ‘carnivalesque’. Finally we propose some measures to foster intercultural exchange in multicultural societies.

Sexualidad, género, religión e interculturalidad en los relatos informativos civilizatorios y culturales de las televisiones españolas

Este articulo es producto del proyecto de Investigacion titulado “Analisis de los relatos audiovisuales sobre civilizaciones y culturas. Representaciones e interpretaciones de los relatos informativos de la television” referencia CSO2011-23786, financiado por el Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovacion de Espana.