Communications Theory

EDITORIAL
Zachary A. Casey: Sustaining and (Re)Creating Hope

ARTICLES
Ninnie Andersson: Teacher’s Conceptions of Quality in Dance Education Expressed through Grade Conferences

Chetan Sinha: Post-formalist Explanation of Academic Achievement: Exploring the Contribution of John Ogbu and Joe Kincheloe

Dragana Pavlović Breneselović, Živka Krnjaja: Discourses on Gender in Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) Setting: Equal in Being Discriminated

Effie Maclellan: Agents Pedagogical: Bootstrapping Reflexive Practice through the Psychological Resources of Self-agency

Carol Thompson, Michael Kleine: Using Literature to Explore Interpersonal Theory: Representation of Rhetorical Objectification and Oppression

REVIEWS
Bühler-Niederberger, Doris: Lebensphase Kindheit. Theoretische Ansätze, Akteure und Handlungsräume.
Wyness, Michael: Childhood and Society
(Anna Fangmeyer)

This dissertation seeks to create a vision for virtuality culture through a theoretical expansion of Walter Ong’s literacy and orality culture model. It investigates the ubiquitous and multimodal nature of the virtuality cultural phenomenon that is mediated by contemporary technology and not explained by pre-existing cultural conventions. Through examining the theoretical underpinnings of orality and literacy culture, the dissertation explores the cultural shift that is just beginning to restructure human consciousness through the ways that society is connecting, exploring and communicating. Further, this dissertation examines the contrasts between virtuality culture features and those related to traditional literacy and orality types, including the gap between the theory of secondary orality and virtuality culture. This dissertation also proposes three ways that contemporary technology creates human presence related to virtuality culture. Finally, this dissertation describes the broad implications for the evolution of virtuality culture in areas such as education, technology, literacy, philosophy, politics, linguistics, ethics,
history, the arts and cultural studies. Copyright 2014

Building on Tony Bennett’s (1995) understanding of a museum as a
“civic laboratory,” this study advances this framework by researching a museum
space in a virtual world. It shows that an online museum can be understood as a
“placeless” space of a “civic laboratory” by analyzing visitor research
methodologies that are utilized online. Through comparison of traditional
museum-visitor research tools and methods with the ones that online museum
spaces employ, this article seeks to demonstrate that the online museum
environment is equipped with a plethora of tools that make it a laboratory-type
research setting where visitor studies are conducted. The analysis reveals that the
historical development of online museum-audience research has gone through
methodological stages similar to those of traditional visitor research.

Así como en la cultura hispano-americana surgió con una idea de la promisión, el pensamiento en la comunicación, ha tratado de impulsar una práctica libre y liberada, una comunicación utópica que comprenda de manera más compleja las formas de relación social, lo mismo en la interacción mediática, que en la vida cotidiana; en la práctica política, que en la generación de espacios, redes y formas que respondan a las necesidades integrales de los actores comunicativos. Así como Cerutti critica la idea de una utopía fuera de la historia, una razón trascendente que quiera ir más allá de lo histórico, sin tomar en consideración lo circunstancial, el reto del pensamiento comunicacional es justamente conciliar las necesidades urgentes con la idea de un pensamiento que vaya más allá de la imitación o repetición a modelos, enfoques y teorías acuñadas en Europa o EE.UU.; le queda pendiente (como a muchos campos de las ciencias sociales y humanidades) un diálogo con otros espacios y latitudes (como África, Asia…) y también no ceder a lo que Sousa Santos ha llamado “razón doliente” y que en comunicación tiene la permanente tentación por decantar en la práctica, en la razón instrumental del ejercicio de la comunicación.

This paper is a celebration of Maturana as an artist, who, in his writing, has brought forth a model, or perhaps it can be called a social ideal, in which people coexist in love, mutual respect and honesty, a form of coexistence from which social responsibility ought to arise spontaneously. Maturana, by openly inviting reflection upon the condition of humanity, on the nature of humanness, and, in his critique of the concept of metadesign, our addiction to technology, becomes an artist. In his own
words, he becomes a poet of daily life. It is in this role that Maturana has provoked an exploration to begin into the possibilities of extending the application of his biology of cognition, and his insights into the phenomena of technology and art, to understanding and resolving the problems created by
our apparent inability to regulate the development of technology.

The continuing popularity and adoption of social media by the general public and the realisation of its potential customer engagement power by business, is highlighting the importance of social media to ongoing business activities and strategies. However, current research that is more focused around the potential power of social media generates little debate of the adoption factors driving public use of social media as a communication medium. Even though businesses have an opportunity to broaden their reach by adding social media to the communication strategic-mix, the dearth of informed discussions relating to theoretical underpinnings associated with the public adaptation of social media as a communication medium fails to clearly inform strategic business decisions regarding adoption decision-making. This research study conducted in the Australian context queries established theoretical frameworks by asking the question; what theoretical foundations do influence the social media adoption by the intended audience of communication?

Departing from systems theory, Marc Amstutz has developed a refined theory of world law. In the course of developing this theory he has, however, reformulated or changed the status of a number of central system theoretical concepts, including the concepts of (co-)evolution, interpenetration and function. At first glance, these changes appear to be relatively inconsequential but at second glance they amount to a radical reformulation of systems theory because the focus is systematically shifted away from system internal processes and towards inter-systemic processes. Although Amstutz departs from a legal perspective, his theory is in fact projecting a mirror image of the wider society. Amstutz has, in other words, not just developed a theory of world law, but rather a central contribution to a novel inter-systemic theory of society as such.

The concept of guilt is seen here as debt beyond repayment. Following Derrida, the gesture of giving is placed in the economy of gift, an aneconomical gift that is not part of the exchange cycle. At the same time, guilt is linked to desire, the desire to give and to be free from guilt. Desire is described as the urge to cross over, to apprehend the non-identical and to give oneself away. In this reinforced crossing, where the improbability of giving conditions the improbability of reaching out, guilt and its impetus are found locked up in claustrophobic self-reference. For this reason, the author consults Kierkegaard and Luhmann whose contributions show that the gesture of giving acquires its relevance not so much on account of its recipient, but precisely because of the absence of such a recipient. The combination of an absent recipient and an absented giver fills the gift with an emptiness that can only be channelled back upon itself, in the autopoietics of guilt. This is exactly the fate of the law, which can deal with the guilty but never with guilt (in the above sense). In its attempt to give away guilt, the law attempts to become other than itself: justice. The improbability of crossing over becomes more obvious than ever.

Abstract
This paper intends to help promote an epistemological turn for reflections dealing with communication theory. It intends to deal with the perspectives and problems that in Latin American literature are rarely approached and taken into account. Many years of empirical research and reflection over communication theory, have failed to expand the field of theoretical concepts towards perspectives that include an ontological perspective approaching the complexities and multidimensionality of the communication processes. The School of "Materialities of Communication" provides a very important approach for reflections over the construction of theory on the field and for the training of students. A tridimensional scheme of communication is presented for its approach as a referenciation process.
Keywords: Ontology, Communication Theories, Materialities of Communication, Referenciation Model.

In the European setting, non-legal and non-political functional systems, such as economy and science, have increasingly substituted their structural couplings with the legal and political systems in the nation state form with couplings to the European Union (EU). A central reason for this is that the couplings to the EU are less tight than the national couplings, thereby granting a higher degree of autonomy to the non-legal and non-political systems. The reason for the reduced tightness of European couplings when compared with national couplings should be found in the internal structure of the EU. Although the EU possess a number of features which gives it a state like character, the EU should rather be understood as a conglomerate which bundles a whole range of rationality forms in a horizontal manner. The central societal contribution and function of the EU’s political system is thus to reduce asymmetric relations between a multiplicity of functional differentiated spheres of society rather than producing substantial unity. Consequently, and in contrast to the political system in the nation state form, the EU does not describe itself as a system which is superior to other functional systems.

This research is intended to prove/disprove hegemonies role in post-Communist states' claim of a discontinuance of Communism/Marxist ideology and political system usage. Though states such as China, Russian, and North Korea claim to be republics, democracies, and any other of the wide array of name trusts to their citizens, it is the author's intent to expose the Communist traits as well as those particular states' use of hegemony to appease their own population.

En este texto aparecido en la revista "Mediaciones Sociales" en 2008, se hace una aplicación del paradigma de la mediación social (M. Martín Serrano) para la comprensión de una práctica comunicativa como es el discurso informativo sobre derechos humanos en la prensa de referencia dominante mexicana. En este trabajo se hace un resumen de los aspectos relevantes de La mediación social, se menciona su importancia para las ciencias sociales y los estudios de comunicación. En las segunda, se hace una explicación de los significados sociales en torno a los derechos humanos (DH) y la importancia que tiene para la formación socio-política mexicana su inserción como discurso público en los medios masivos. Se hace una caracterización desde la socio-semiótica sobre lo que implica el discurso informativo sobre DH. En la última parte se hace una relectura de los DH desde el paradigma de la mediación social; hacemos una relectura para el concepto de algunas operaciones lógicas de mediación en los derechos humanos en tanto práctica y discurso

Eighty per cent of online content produced in 2013 was user generated content (UGC) according to the Digital Down Under report, commissioned by Salesforce.com. The rise of the powerblogger and the content they produce has become a complex multi layered communications problem for both audiences and communications professionals to navigate.

The past few years have seen an explosion in the use of digital media. Industry is making significant investments to deliver digital audio, image, and video information to consumers and customers. A new infrastructure of digital audio, image, and video recorders and players, on-line services, and electronic c:onimerce is rapidly being deployed. At the same time, inajor corporations are converting their audio, image, and video archives to an electronic form. Indjvidual consumers may also soon convert their image archives to digital form thanks to new services that photo development laboratories are expected to offer by the end of 1997.

This essay argues for a movement to converge theoretical communication with poetic communication. The difference is that one mode has a feedback loop while the other does not (communication theory). The inquiry looks at the advent of contemporary cinema practices in Audio-Visual essays as one site grappling with hybrid theoretical/poetic texts.

Ferdinand de Saussure's structural linguistics and Claude Elwood Shannon's information theory can appear to be remote from each other and incommensurate. The former considers the rich interrelationships of signs and meanings, whereas the latter calculates the quantities of signals in bits. When Roman Jakobson considers the communications event, however, structural linguistics is refracted through the technological prism of Shannon's cybernetic theory of communication. Two of Saussure's most important linguistic categories are recast in a way that allows them to be reconciled with, and even advance, information theory. Jakobson's re-interpretation of key Saussurian linguistic categories opens an avenue for the mathematical delineation of meaningful communications as such, and not just signs. Saussure is made to point toward an extension of information theory that would culminate in a logistics of meanings.

Las industrias culturales elaboran una extensa serie de productos que la inmensa mayoría de la población frecuenta y de los que se sirve con  distintos fines en su vida cotidiana. Esos productos contribuyen a configurar lo que se ha dado en denominar cultura popular. A pesar de la extendida, constante e importante presencia de esos productos culturales en nuestro diario vivir, sin embargo, la ciencia de la comunicación no proporciona una debida y cabal explicación al respecto. Lo que en buena medida se debe, en suma, al proceso de institucionalización de este campo del saber, que consagró una orientación dominante y clausuró su objeto de estudio. De aquí que resulte necesario incorporar al estudio de la comunicación otros puntos de vista que nos permitan, primero, reconocer la importancia de estos fenómenos –sin apresurarnos a descalificarlos- y, después, conocerlos en rigor. En particular, aquellos que los contemplen en su adecuado marco cultural, vinculándolos a su vez con el contexto social en el que se producen. Este artículo aboga, pues, porque la ciencia de la comunicación se ocupe con seriedad de los fenómenos de la cultura popular, considerándolos en el marco de las prácticas culturales significativas que mantiene la población en sus vidas cotidianas; y propone al tiempo alguno de los criterios que convendría tomar en consideración al efectuar su estudio.

The objective of this study was to examine the environmentally-informed consumers’ interpretation of green product advertising messages. The increasing awareness of environmental issues and diet related diseases resulting from use of unhealthy products has contributed to the growth of green-conscious consumers. This has prompted businesses to invest in green advertising (Ottman, 2003; Guber, 2003& Karna et al, 2001). Studies by Lee (2013) and Yates (2009) reveal that consumers have difficulty in understanding green label messages. However, the studies were carried out among general consumer populations that did not have special interest in environmental issues and this could explain the difficulty in understanding the messages. Therefore, this study sought to investigate the views of consumers who are experts or students of environmental studies and were presumed to have a good understanding of issues related to green-consciousness so as to establish their interpretation of green advertising messages.
In this study, an exploratory mixed method approach was used. Data was collected through brand mapping, survey, in-depth interviews and focus group discussions. The convergent parallel design of data treatment was used. Results revealed that green messages among the environmentally-informed consumers do not have a clear universal meaning. Green messages were ambiguous and lacked elaboration hence difficult to understand. The study recommends that companies should move away from touting their products as green by mere use of green jargon; and embrace simplicity and clarity in their messages. Stringent regulatory measures need to be put in place to protect consumers against being misled by product manufacturers.
Key words: Green advertising, consumers, green messages

Sono molti i tentativi di rispondere a questa domanda dal punto di vista evolutivo o ecologico, partendo per esempio dallo studio dei comportamenti degli animali sociali e dei fenomeni collettivi (swarm, etc.). A questi approcci, di estremo interesse, ne vorremmo affiancare uno differente, basato sulla seguente pecisazione della domanda iniziale: "un modello teorico di organismo vivente puo dirci qualcosa sull’organizzazione e sul funzionamento dei sistemi sociali?". In linea di principio la risposta e affermativa, perche tali sistemi sono costituiti e realizzati da individui biologici. Ma l’irriducibilita dei fenomeni sociali a quelli biologici impone il problema di stabilire in quale modo e in che misura la caratterizzazione del dominio sociale puo appoggiarsi su quella del dominio biologico.

Absfracf-Some extensions that allow new estimating and bounding techniques for certain sequences of random variables controlled by a large deviation principle are given. These results can be thought of as generalizations and extensions of the Chernoff Bound used in communications theory.

Following a Weberian notion of legitimate rule, the ability to govern effectively may not only be conceived in terms of coercion or incentives, but also the willingness of people to recognize actors as legitimate “authorities” in a number of ways. As many scholars have convincingly argued, non-governmental agencies and international bureaucracies play a decisive – and maybe increasing – role in international politics by being recognized as regulative, moral or epistemic authorities. An oft-claimed trend towards a denationalized “multic-centric-world” (James Rosenau) may result, although empirical evidence is incomplete at best.

Building on the work of Pierre Bourdieu and Juergen Habermas, this paper argues that looking at the way actors refer to others as “authorities” during political debates enables us to answer the question to what extent a process of political denationalization is actually taking place. To illustrate the usefulness of such research on the “authority talk,” the paper draws on a text analysis of debates on the humanitarian crisis in Sudan/Darfur taking place in six public fora: two parliamentary chambers (the US House of Representatives and the UK House of Commons), two “new” media outlets (CNN.com and BBC.uk), and two “classic” newspapers (The Guardian and The New York Times). the paper focuses on the humanitarian crisis in Sudan/Darfur.

Given unreliable information in terms of the scale of human suffering and its local context and causes, societies abroad are in desperate need for credible information and interpretations about what it “means to them,” in terms of their own capacities and duties. This is where international and non-state actors become integral parts of various political arenas, as epistemic authorities (“experts”) that compensate for the lack of sufficient factual knowledge held by journalists, politicians and audiences alike. Moreover, the reputation of humanitarian agencies as the moral conscience of the “world” gives their calls for action the impetus of an authoritative definition of responsibilities. By looking at the way actors refer to international and non-state institutions, it is argued, we can research their accumulation of “symbolic power.”

Las actividades profesionales que habitualmente se incluyen bajo la rúbrica “comunicación” comprenden un conjunto de prácticas de distinta índole, que abarcan desde la producción de contenidos hasta la investigación científica. Cada una de esas prácticas profesionales -siempre insertas en marcos institucionales u organizacionales- se guía de forma más o menos explícita por una serie de suposiciones y de creencias, de ideas que en todo caso incluyen, entre otros elementos, una representación simplificada del objeto de esa actividad, esto es, un modelo de la comunicación. Que, en alguna medida, no son sino modos de concretar ciertas formas de pensar la comunicación, en adecuación a las circunstancias del contexto en el que se produce la actividad. Y es que somos sujetos históricos que, en el despliegue de nuestras actividades, no podemos sustraernos del todo a la influencia que sobre nosotros ejercen toda una serie de condiciones –de índole diversa- presentes en el medio en el que hemos de vivir. Entre esas condiciones se incluyen ciertas formas dominantes de concebir y entender lo que hacemos; lo que en el ámbito científico se traduce en la adopción de determinadas filosofías de la ciencia y, por ende, de posturas epistemológicas y metodológicas. Y esas posturas, a su vez, definen la actividad de que se trate, lo que comprende cuestiones como: de qué se ocupa (esto es, su objeto de estudio), cómo ha de abordarse el examen de esos fenómenos e, incluso, con qué fines ha de hacerse, por quiénes y bajo qué condiciones –lo que implica el marco institucional en el que se lleve a cabo.

La reconstrucción en breve del conjunto de los marcos teóricos que han guiado el estudio científico de la comunicación es una tarea compleja y arriesgada