Abstract

This article presents the preliminary results of an investigation on the meaning of television in the daily life of children, which corresponds to a study carried out on with boys and girls of a medium socio-economic level from Santiago of Chile. The diverse uses and senses that children assign to television are explored. In addition, the way in which they use and appropriate television programming is also analyzed. Along the same lines, it is relevant to go on studying in depth the concrete and symbolic presence of television in the conformation of children’s identity processes and in the mediation that television exerts in children’s relationships with their friends, their classmates, their siblings and their parents.

Abstract

For the first time in industrialised culture, over fifty percent of the population possesses the ability to privatise whatever environment they might be in through the use of a dedicated MP3 player or through a mobile phone with MP3 capabilities. The consumption of technologically mediated sound in the 20th and 21st centuries represents an increasingly significant mode of ‘being-in-theworld’ in which the ‘self’ claims a mobile and auditory territory for itself through a specific form of ‘sensory gating’ permitting the user to screen out unwanted sounds through the creation of their own seductive soundscape. The untrammelled pleasures of creating a privatised mobile soundworld resonates through urban and cultural theory posing a set of interrelated theoretical problems relating to both our relation to the spaces we move through. the nature and meaning of public and private space., the potential for urban aestheticisation, urban retreat and withdrawalIn this paper I discuss the use of Apple iPod in terms of its use as a technological support system of users. The paper draws upon the Internet responses of over one thousand iPod users worldwide between 2004 and 2005. The paper investigates the specific nature of auditory mediation that use entails. It argues that iPod use can usefully be interpreted as a form of pleasurable toxicity within which the ‘total mediated’ world of users lies a dream of unmediated experience - of direct access to the world and one’s emotions.

Abstract

This article examines President Donald Trump’s treatment on Twitter towards the US media during his first six months in office, from January 20 to July 20, 2017. Based on a content analysis of the tweets published in the account @realDonaldTrump, we study the mentions to the media and their tone, and the presence and use of keywords related to the media. In addition, we analyze Trump’s treatment of the press in relation to political control and the role of journalism as watchdog of democracy. As main conclusions it is noted that Trump, in a very simplistic way, praises those media that treat him positively and criticizes those that –in his view- portrait him negatively, which are often dubbed as fake news. Through this process, Trump avoids the mediator role of the media and rejects the watchdog role that democratic systems have attributed to them.

Abstract

In recent years there has been a debate about the emerging professional profiles and skills required in journalism. However, it sometimes goes unnoticed that the basic function of mediation between the facts and the readers in journalism is still valid, although it must be adapted to rapid technological advances and sociocultural changes. We explore how the vocation of service and the coordinating role of journalism for certain communities requires professional skills adapted to the technological context, but not blinded by the fascination of technical transformations. Ethics and responsibility must be the core values in the exercise of journalism. We propose some teaching methods to incorporate into the university curriculum.

Abstract

Research with children and adolescents shows that teachers are one of the agents from whom they receive mediation of their media use. However, little is known about teachers’ mediation practice. This study aims to approximate teachers’ practice with the concept of mediation by, firstly, systematizing a set of curricular media-related competences into the goals of maximizing opportunities and minimizing risks in youngsters’ media behavior. Then, teachers’ professional and personal characteristics are tested for associations with the mediation of risks and opportunities of students’ media use. Data collected in a survey with 315 teachers in Germany were analyzed. Results of regression analysis show that most factors predicted both opportunities and risks in a similar way. Teachers are more engaged in maximizing opportunities and minimizing risks when they use information and communication technologies (ICT) more frequently, consider the respective competences important, engage in collaboration with colleagues, do not teach STEM subjects, and do not work in a Gymnasium. Having received ICT-related training was a significant predictor only of mediation of opportunities, while age was a significant predictor only of mediation of risks. Implications of the findings and how the concept of mediation can contribute to the development of teachers as media educators are discussed.