Jordi de San Eugenio Vela

La dimensión comunicativa del paisaje: Una propuesta teórica y aplicada

The fusion of knowledge, the interrelationship of disciplines and, finally, the interaction of learning fields, provide new challenges for an auto denominated global society. The contemporary value of landscape, linked to the patent commodification of culture, the commercial construction of identities, the triumph of inauthenticity, of the induced representation or the economy of symbolism, open up great prospects for studying the symbolic value of landscape. The rapprochement of geographical praxis to the study of space intangibles, linked to the discovery of emotional geographies, besides the growing interest of communication a science for the territorial discourse, allow us to envisage a communicative study of landscape based on a fusion of geography and communicational knowledge. The balancing of the variables: geography, landscape, emotion and communication, enables to progress towards analysing the emotionalisation of space to discern its intangible value, which emerges from the application of different communication techniques.

The relationship between place branding and environmental communication: The symbolic management of places through the use of brands

This article aims to demonstrate the way in which global contemporary society manages the meaning of place through the use of brands, which, as we understand it, leads to a coming together of place branding and environmental communication; this occurs primarily through a cognitive, humanistic and rhetorical interpretation of the transformational process that converts geographical space into a brand. Furthermore, the article will outline some of the possibilities for analysing the phenomenological dimension of place branding (human–environment relationships) from the perspective of the multidimensional nature of the subjective experience of places.

The communicative dimension of landscape: A theoretical and applied proposal

The fusion of knowledge, the interrelationship of disciplines and, finally, the interaction of learning fields, provides new challenges for an auto denominated global society. The contemporary value of landscape, linked to the patent commodification of culture, the commercial construction of identities, the triumph of inauthenticity, of the induced representation or the economy of symbolism, open up great prospects for studying the symbolic value of landscape. The rapprochement of geographical praxis to the study of space intangibles, linked to the discovery of emotional geographies, besides the growing interest of communicational sciences on the territorial discourse, allow us to envisage a communicative study of landscape based on a fusion of geographical and communicational knowledge. The balancing of the variables: geography, landscape, emotion and communication, enables the progress towards analysing the emotionalisation of space to discern its intangible value, which emerges from the application of different communication techniques.

Visual landscape as a key element of place branding

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to propose an initial, exploratory and tentative theoretical construct related to the current consumption of landscape as a key symbolic and physical element in territorial representation and evocation, and for the deployment of place branding strategy. It constructs a line of argument to support what shall be referred to as “landscape branding”, that is, the paradigmatic role of landscape in place branding. It is, therefore, of interest to define the value of landscape as a social and cultural construction, which is why the paper awards importance to the specific analysis of their capacity for visual and/or aesthetic evocation within the context of a general branding strategy for geographical spaces. Design/methodology/approach To develop a sufficient proposal for sustaining “a theory of landscape branding”, the paper deploys a meta-analysis, that is, an extensive review and interpretation of the literature related to visual landscape and place branding, to propose a tentative initial approach to landscape-infused place branding theory. Findings The relationship existing between landscape images and texts and their possible situating and subsequent interpreting within the context of the political, cultural and economic logics of contemporary society give rise to a renewed analytical framework for cultural geographies (Wylie, 2007). At this point, place branding becomes a recurring argument for the consumption of carefully staged places, representing, to use Scott’s terms (2014), the arrival of a cognitive-cultural capitalism characteristic of post-Fordism. Practical implications From a practical perspective, the landscape branding approach provides several benefits. First of all, regardless of the fact that many commentators have argued that logos, slogans and advertising campaigns are relatively ineffective in place branding, practitioners still seem to be focussed on these visual design and advertising tools. The landscape branding approach facilitates an identity-focussed perspective that reconfirms the importance of linking reality with perception and hence reinforces the need to link place branding to policy-making, infrastructure and events. Social implications Landscapes’ imageability facilitates visual storytelling and the creation of attractive symbolic actions (e.g. outdoor events/arts in attractive landscape and augmented reality or landscaping itself). This is the type of imaginative content that people easily share in social media. And, of course, landscape branding reiterated the importance of experience. If policymakers and publics alike understand this considerable symbolic value of landscape, it might convince them to preserve it and, hence, contribute to sustainability and quality of life. Originality/value The novelty lies not in the familiar use of visual landscape resources to promote places, but in the carefully orchestrated construction of gazes, angles, representations, narratives and interpretations characteristic of geographic space, which somehow hijack the spontaneous gaze to take it to a certain place. Everything is perfectly premeditated. According to this, the visual landscape represents a critical point as a way of seeing the essence of places through a place branding strategy. In this sense, that place branding which finds in visual landscape a definitive argument for the projection of aspirational places imposes a new “way of seeing” places and landscape based on a highly visual story with which to make a particular place desirable, not only for tourism promotion purposes but also with the intention of capturing talent, infrastructures and investment, among other objectives.

Journalism, transparency and citizen participation: a methodological tool to evaluate information published on municipal websites

ABSTRACT This article analyses the transparency of the websites of Spanish municipals of more than 20,000 inhabitants in 2015 with the aim of verifying whether these sites provide the information necessary so that citizens can be informed, can hold their governments to account and can participate in the democratic process. The methodology is based on 39 indicators grouped into questions about who the political representatives are, how they manage collective resources, how they inform about the management of these resources and what instruments they provide for participation. This study presents answers to the last two questions. The results reveal that city councils are not transparent and act mainly to promote the actions of the government when communicating with the public, that they provide few mechanisms for citizen participation, and that social networks are a unidirectional communication tool little used for accountability. The methodological tool presented here has been shown to be effective and to have had an impact on the municipals analysed here – which improved their information during the various phases of evaluation – and therefore may be of use when applied to other countries and other national and international governmental websites.

La contribución del paisaje visual en la generación de marcas territoriales

El paisaje ha sido y sigue siendo un elemento de primer orden en la representatividad fisica y simbolica del territorio. En los ultimos tiempos, los procesos de promocion de los lugares han experimentado una profesionalizacion de las estrategias de creacion de relatos territoriales habitualmente asociados a imaginarios paisajisticos. Este articulo pretende situar el actual consumo visual de paisajes en el marco de las nuevas estrategias de promocion y/o dinamizacion economica del territorio, que tienen en la generacion de marcas de territorio a uno de sus mas claros ejemplos. Con tal fin, se propondra, mediante una extensa revision critica de la literatura vinculada a paisaje visual y marcas de lugares, una aproximacion tentativa e inicial hacia una ‘nueva’ economia territorial, que tiene en el paisaje visual y en el branding territorial a dos de sus pilares fundamentales. En este marco de consumo simbolico de lugares, se aportaran algunas evidencias preliminares sobre el papel relevante que desempena el paisaje y su capacidad de evocacion simbolica para la generacion de imaginarios geograficos proyectados a traves de marcas asociadas a distintos lugares.

La contribución de las geografías personales en la comunicación estratégica del territorio

A menudo se habla del sesgo perceptivo entre la imagen emitida (como queremos que nos vean) y la imagen percibida (como realmente nos ven). En este sentido, el articulo pretende mostrar las contribuciones teoricas de la geografia subjetiva (de la percepcion, humanistica y emocional) en el proceso de correlacion existente entre la imagen de un destino turistico comunicada o evocada a priori y la experiencia con el lugar percibida in situ . El equilibrio existente entre la “promesa inicial” y la “experiencia final” con el espacio turistico, resulta ser uno de los aspectos mas importantes por considerar en el despliegue de una estrategia de comunicacion turistica. La introspeccion hacia las “geografias de la vivencia personal” pretende explorar la experiencia individual con el lugar desde un punto de vista perceptivo y emocional.