Vol 14, No 27 (2015): July-December

 The purpose of the research is to analyze the current television formats in the transition to digital terrestrial television in the Andean countries, and to identify alternatives for the local television. The research is justified in view of the analog blackout that will occur between 2018 and 2020. The methodology is both qualitative and quantitative; the instruments are content analyses and semi-structured interviews. The results allow concluding that the local production contents are linked to current events. The elements that influence the creation of contents are related to factors of identity, economic resources, human talent and narratives. The hybridization of formats promoting culture is an option for the local stations.

This research offers a reflection on the use of fairy tales as a source for historians, showing thus the approach to the tale of Beauty and the Beast with the concepts of beauty/ugliness and civilization/barbarism.

Thus, the analysis is based on the relation between the cinematographic adaptations and the original tale. It also presents the cinematographic language dichotomy in which Beauty, a civilized character, tries to tame the monster (Beast).

The study is based on the tale written by Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont and it is focused on identifying the characteristics of the aforementioned dualities. After identifying the characteristics, the article presents an analysis of the transformations suffered by the story in the cinematographic adaptations produced in the United States between 1960 and 1991 in order to understand the way in which the society highlights the virtues or the defects in the representations of the characters.

This article presents the results of a research that identified online videos that address the human trafficking issue, its forms and its characteristics with the purpose of using them in informative processes that allow increasing the knowledge on the phenomenon and promoting its prevention among potential victims. As a result, the audiovisual materials are classified and described. It was found that human trafficking related to the sexual exploitation is the most addressed form, which is why it is necessary to broaden the research on and production of materials that inform about the other forms. Finally, criteria are provided to address the human trafficking issue in communicational processes, especially with the purpose of breaking rooted stereotypes about this issue and avoiding informative errors that could lead to revictimization.

Based on several Gadamerian reflections and other contemporary discussions on the aesthetic judgment idea, this article intends to achieve an understanding of taste in the value-assessing exercise of the evaluative and, therefore, critical processes of the design disciplines, understood as an artistic and communicational know-how.

The main objective of this study was to investigate what adolescents consumers vulnerability produces in a virtual environment. A qualitative approach was selected, using documentary research as the method. Data were collected in the virtual environment of Capricho Journal, specifically in Fashion and Beauty sections from January 2013 to June 2014. Research results identified gender, self -concept, socioeconomic condition, lack of knowledge, little experience in consumption, motivation, stigma and discrimination, norms of adolescent sub-culture, excess of information, and the excessive use of Internet as aggravating factors of adolescent consumers vulnerability. The most relevant vulnerability characteristics were: no confidence in terms of self-image, materialism, insecurity, loss of wellbeing, lack of capacity to stand group pressures, confusion and vice in Internet.

This article presents the results of an investigation where environmental justice and communication for social change are used for social change as theoretical concepts. It develops with participatory methodologies in the context of rural areas of Medellin in 2013. Their goal is to identify and classify the perceptions of the social actors involved in the policies. The results found are (i) a wide range of social actors, (ii) a high level of dispersion of actions in all rural territories and (iii) a few local identities in constant change and reconstruction, but always associated with rural life.

The article concludes by highlighting some collective perceptions in response to environmental effects of the model of urban expansion and how social actors in five rural areas of the municipality of Medellín have a legacy of community participation processes with the potentiality to influence local actions in a environmental justice.

This article shows how Internet becomes an important communication tool for reconfiguring the primary social network of the elderly, which is fractured due to the effect of migration.

In the research that generates this article it was possible to confirm that this network is currently divided into the primary natural network, formed by the relatives and friends with whom they share their daily life, and the primary virtual network, which is formed by the migrant relatives.

The paper focuses its interest on presenting the characteristics of the primary virtual network, in which the elderly found themselves impelled to participate in order to satisfy their communicational needs. This network fulfills the function of maintaining, although not expanding, their primary social network.

The results show four aspects: the digital competences developed by the elderly, the structure, the functions, and the bonding attributes of the primary virtual network. For conducting this study, the work of authors such was Cabrera; Castell; Madarriaga, Abello & Sierra; Narváez A.; Soto, Navarro & Sánchez; Tovar & Villarraga was consulted.

It was an ethnographic research with a qualitative approach. Semi-structured interviews were performed. The fundamental theory of Strauss & Corbin (2002) was used for processing the information.

 This article describes a set of representations about native cultures manifested in a sector of the non-indigenous population of Colombia, where shamanism is increasingly mentioned, and where natives are imagined as having a spiritual and alternative wisdom beneficial to western societies. The analysis of these and other ideas reveals similarities with the narratives used to represent other indigenous or ethnic cultures in different latitudes. Those similarities, it is argued, do not come from objective cultural resemblances between ethnic groups; they come from common sociocultural characteristics of the people who construct those representations of the ethnic. These findings support the conclusion that this kind of indigenism is the local manifestation of a globalized ideology centered on the ideals and needs of the modern self.

This study offers an ontological interpretation of one of the phenomenon reported the most by the informative media recently: the disobedience to social norms by people. The article is mainly focused on the cases in which it is assumed that the indifference towards the norms is caused by the condition of the socially privileged. It proposes that the disobedience to norms, more than being a matter of social inequality, is the symptomatology of important fissures in the ontology of the social reality. This article comprises three parts: the first one describes several cases presented by the media as representative regarding the disobedience to social norms, especially those that are interpreted as a matter of abuse of the social privilege; the second part presents a conception of social norms (based on several works conducted by John Austin, Ulises Moulines and Gottlob Frege) and their value for the construction of the social ontology; and the third part describes several essential features of the ontology of the social reality based on the proposal of philosopher John Searle. Finally, the article concludes that the disobedience to social norms undermines the modes of existence of the social reality, and that the cases interpreted by the media as a matter of social inequality require an interpretation that takes into account the structure of the social reality.

This article is focused on the consideration that there are companies that do not know the mechanisms necessary for boosting the dynamism and preserving the knowledge generated in their daily interactions by means of the professional profiles and roles of the people that work for those companies. The study is based on the supposition that these companies, due to being focused on the chains of production, do not aim their attention at the management of the knowledge, allowing it to leak into other sectors. This knowledge leak constitutes an irreparable loss in terms of the human potential and cognitive capital. With the objective of acquiring knowledge on how to improve and develop the professional capability regarding the learning, the information and communication technologies and the communication strategies within a framework of a competitive organization, the project was carried out based on a case study in Universidad de Medellín and its Department of Basic Sciences under a qualitative methodology and using the ethnographic method. The following are several results worth highlighting: 1. If the management necessary for evaluating the performance of the professors does not work adequately, there is a possibility that they feel unmotivated to undergo professional changes; 2. The “Permanencia con Calidad” (Remaining in the post with quality) project shows a process of change accompanied by the development of professional capabilities and a new practice, which is manifested in the way the professors express themselves about their professional role.