The audiovisual sector is immersed in a time of profound changes and transformations that are affecting technology, regulation, content and consumption. Within this process, television is undoubtedly the medium that is being most altered, to the point that at this point there are reasonable doubts as to whether it will be able to maintain its traditional position of privilege. This does not mean that the main players in the television system are resigned to the new situation. On the contrary, they are reacting and trying to adapt to a new situation in which economic and social conditions will never be the same as before.
Fundamentally, these changes are causing an exponential growth in the television offer. If we take the Spanish State as a reference, these changes have become more evident since the definitive implementation of Digital Terrestrial Television (DTT) in 2010. At that date, the offer went from an offer centred on 7 or 8 free-to-air channels (depending on the territory) to being able to choose from almost 60, once all the channels had been activated. To the resulting figure, however, we must add the existing cable, satellite, ADSL, as well as the so-called "new screens", in reference to television via mobile phones or the network itself via IP. In short, an enormously competitive panorama, with multiple supports, which is changing audiovisual consumption. In this sense, the fragmentation of audiences is an obvious fact. Measured figures since 2008 have shown the progressive loss of audience share of the generalist channels, which are now struggling to achieve a 15% audience share, while years ago they were far exceeding these results. A trend that seems to have no brake if we pay attention to the constant migration of the younger population towards alternative screens (Internet, videogames, mobiles).
Despite the palpable increase in the offer, which is much more specialised and diversified, general national channels and regional and local television still account for the majority of television consumption. These data may be an indicator of how society perceives change and how these changes are slower than some would like. It is difficult to believe, therefore, that people will abandon the television set as the main distributor of audiovisual information and entertainment content in the medium or short term. What is more, since 2007, which was the record year for television consumption in Spain, with an average of 223 minutes per person, or, in other words, each person spending 3.7 hours a day in front of the television, television consumption, although on a downward trend, has stabilised. This data suggests that an increase in supply does not necessarily mean a decrease in television consumption, but rather that this circumstance is having the opposite effect.
This raises many questions about the future role of television, especially if it is considered a public service like any other. This would mean maintaining audiovisual content that is free and accessible to all, of proven quality, financially transparent and ideologically pluralistic, with particular attention to the cultural and linguistic diversity of the inhabitants living in its area of coverage. These areas of interest are the focus of the reflections of the CONTD (Contenidos para la Televisión Digital) Research Group at the Universitat de València, of which we form part, and which form the central part of the CONTD Conferences (www.uv.es/contd) that have been held here for the last VI editions. The aim of these meetings is, together with other researchers and professionals, to debate the future of the audiovisual sector and to share these concerns with the university community and society as a whole.
The research group in Public Opinión and Elections aims at analyzing, studying and finding solutions to all issues and questions related to electoral processes and/or the measurement and monitoring of public opinion, applying the most advanced quantitative techniques.
The most relevant research fields of the group include (but are not limited to) the following: the generation of electoral predictions, inference of individual voting behavior, analysis of polls and surveys, the search of new methodological approaches to improve (reducing costs) the quality of sampling methods, semantic analysis of opinions and monitoring of the internet sentiment, the study of the consequences of non-response and of the biases introduced during the whole inference process, the solution to the gaps in the databases, the integration and pooling of local and global information to obtain multilevel responses, and the development of statistcal theory and methodology.
The approach used in the research group in Public Opinión and Elections is open, not being limited by any particular methodological tendency, and makes extensive use of whatever sources of information. Thus, we use classical and Bayesian techniques, we apply from simple linear regression models to complex approaches based on neural networks, wavelets or auto-binomial models, we use the spatial and/or temporal component of the data explicitly, we perform simulation via Markov chain Monte Carlo or directly by Monte Carlo methods, and we introduce in our models survey data, reported election results, news reports, internet messages and/or official statistics.
The members of the group are open to working with other research groups, companies and institutions and encourage interested parties to contact us in order to explore possible avenues of collaboration.
The concept of “language variation” is key for the study of the evolution of languages and of social, professional and educational communicative systems. Social, cultural, health, economic, technological and educational transformations are developed, conveyed and reflected through their linguistic and communicative manifestations. The aim of the group is to study the progress that current society is undergoing through the analysis of the essential linguistic variables that are involved and interact in human communication. These variables depend on the profiles of speakers (e.g. idiolectal, dialectal variation, according to gender, age, social status, level of education, etc.) and on the uses they make of language according to the interpersonal identities they adopt (i.e. register variation), the codes they use to communicate (i.e. variation of mode), the different textual platforms they use (i.e. variation of discursive genre) and the different persuasive strategies with which they convey their intention and image (i.e. stylistic variation). The analysis of these variables requires approaching the study of communication at different scales, from its macro and hyper discursive aspect (e.g. interrelation between the variables that interact in business or academic communication, or the complexity of multimodal communication of social media and digital platforms) and also of its micro discursive components (e.g. variation of phonetic, morphological, lexical and syntactic units). As highlighted by experts in language variation (Bayley, 2013; Chambers and Schilling, 2018), in order to address comprehensive and innovative studies in this field, it is necessary to keep up to date the methodology needed to define and classify the categories, criteria and parameters essential to understand and analyse these variables and their interrelation.
Some of these have been extensively studied (e.g. dialectal variation) and others are currently being studied (e.g. variation of discursive genre), but there are still many ambiguous and controversial aspects of other relevant variables, such as those involved in communicative register variation. This type of interpersonal and contextual variation covers the whole spectrum of human interaction, from that which takes place in the most sophisticated and conventional contexts to that which takes place in the most intimate and familiar settings. There are different degrees of dependence and interrelation between various registers in the same communicative act, which has posed a difficult challenge for experts, particularly when it comes to accessing real data and compiling large and representative corpora. Moreover, throughout history, its study has been approached from many different perspectives, including heterogeneous, ambiguous and confusing variables that have generated controversy within this field of research. This theoretical heterogeneity and methodological complexity have hindered the development of in-depth and wide-ranging studies on this language variety, which could effectively transfer their results to society and the labour market, offering practical methods and tools for understanding, learning and mastering it. There are other variables in a similar situation (e.g. idiolectal variation, stylistic variation, genolects, chronolects, etc.).
With the aim of contributing to the advancement of this field, the main objectives of the SILVAGroup are the following:
- To delve into the fundamental categories, criteria and parameters for the study and analysis of language variation, and the factors involved in its current behaviour in the English language and other majority languages, such as Spanish and German.
- To investigate language variation from a comprehensive pragmatic approach, highlighting its interpersonal and multimodal dimensions in its fluctuation throughout everyday communication from public to private settings.
- To work from emerging technologies, corpus linguistics and other multidisciplinary fields of human communication, contrasting advances and results between languages.
- To design methodologies for the study of language variation, useful in the search and detection of distinctive features that shed light on definition and typology of its parameters of analysis, and also practical for learning and mastering them, especially at a social and professional level.
- To participate in platforms and projects for the dissemination of research, especially in international conferences and impact publications, in order to encourage further study of RV and to publicise the results of the group’s activity.
- To constitute a national and international support platform for research in this field and for its dissemination.
The group’s research activity will be structured from the IULMA, based at the Universitat de València, to which most of the members of the group belong, and is made up of a multidisciplinary team of both young and experienced researchers from the UV, UPV and UA.
All the members of the group share the essential research lines for the study of RV: language variation, corpus linguistics and contrastive linguistics. The group also has experts in other relevant research lines. This multidisciplinary nature provides this team with the advantage of approaching language variation from different but complementary areas of knowledge and research lines, allowing an innovative depth and perspective and results that can really bring a significant advance in the field.
