Diachronic study of the evolution of the forms, contexts and technologies of communication throughout history and in different socio-cultural spheres. The research group starts from the idea that man is a symbolic being, who builds a dense fabric of mediations to organise his coexistence, his ways of relating to others and to the outside world.

Since the invention of writing and through successive techniques and means of communication, human beings have constructed, given expression to, sent and received culture. Some authors, with a certain authority - such as the anthropologist Jack Goody, for example - even affirm that it is relevant to complete the study of the forms and modes of production with that of the forms and modes of communication in order, by relating societies, culture and communication, to ascertain the concrete texture that mediations take on, the relationship of these with social difference, with the construction of different forms of power, with the formulation of identities, with the expressions of conflict, with the constitution of dominant or subordinate ideologies, with the weaving and unweaving of political, cultural and economic hegemony or with the appearance of institutions built to generate imagined communities.

Our group considers that from writing to electronic and digital devices, communication plays a decisive role in history and is omnipresent, but we emphasise the study of mass media, because they are the ones that have accompanied the evolution of the contemporary world and, in this sense, the construction of contemporary history and the history of the present time. The study of the mass media - press, radio, television, cinema, cybermedia - is, always in the diachronic, social and cultural perspective mentioned above, a central objective of the group. This study focuses mainly on the production, distribution and consumption of communication and information. Production is not only concerned with the specific means of communication in charge of disseminating messages, but also and previously with its institutional configuration -whether private or public-, its structure as a productive entity, the materiality of the issuer as such (its economic nature, the social, professional, labour relations, etc., on which it is based, etc.). The study of production also involves understanding the configuration of messages, relating the quality of the sender to what he/she emits and in this sense contextualising the messages and the wefts of meaning that they construct. Distribution deals with the dissemination of messages and the technical formulation of those elements that make it possible. The study of consumption deals with the social and individual reception of messages, the forms of impact of communication and the socio-cultural effects of information. It is a research concern with the dynamic, culturally and historically determined reception that humans make of the symbolic mediations to which they are subjected by degree or through explicit or subtle forms of coercion.

The research group assumes a relational perspective between communication and culture. But not only in the classical sense, according to which communication takes place in a cultural milieu of which it is a product and expression: culture communicates. We also assume another perspective according to which communication modifies culture. In this sense, the relationship between communication and culture is open, does not respond to a predetermined pattern and is intimately linked to the social actors, to the unfolding of their interests and to the actions leading to the maintenance, reform or rupture of the status quo. Aware that the notion of communication is highly transversal and that it can affect several disciplines, rather than seeing this issue as an element of paralysis in its study, we note it in terms of an interdisciplinary opportunity.

Partners

• Antonio Laguna Platero - Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha.
• José Luis Valhondo Crego - Universidad de Extremadura.

Work team

• Manuel Barrero Martínez - Universidad de Sevilla.

• Television programming and broadcasting activities
• Publishing of newspapers
• Motion picture and video production activities
• Radio broadcasting