Vol 16, No 32 (2018): January-June

In this article, we return to the concept of Michel Foucault’s device and we seek to apply it to communication studies. Therefore, we made a bibliographic review of Foucault and his commentators: Agamben, and Deleuze. After that, we compared the contributions of researchers in the field of communication who also use the term “device”, whether based on the Foucauldian approach or on other perspectives. From this journey, our contribution is presented here, in which we seek to align Foucault's perspective to the specificities of the media as an object of study.

The university is an appropriate field to explore the changes that student movements have undergone, and the ways in which they operate communicationally and politically to influence public and private affairs. This study problematizes the practices of political participation and the communication strategies carried out by students to make their demands visible in two Chilean universities and in one Ecuadorian one. It is sought to analyze and compare the processes of planning and implementation of communication actions from the most representative student movements of each university, in order to understand the moment in which the groups are found in terms of legitimacy, mobilization capacity, and incidence. The methodology included semi-structured interviews with members of the groups, and through the critical analysis of discourse, the meeting and disagreement points were established on the categories analyzed. The results indicate that, although certain forms of communication and organizational production that are close to traditional political parties still persist, the almost generalized depoliticization of students has led to the implementation of tactics ranging from individual rather than collective interests, such as clubs and the generation of interests and affects through social networks, among which Facebook is located as the main means of information and interaction.

The development of public sector activities in Colombia, aimed at affecting the peasants' standard of living, is hampered by the lack of credibility of public entities and external staff. However, the lack of confidence in the neighbors' actions is specially surprising. Understanding the issue of distrust becomes a fundamental element in social cohesion processes in Colombia, given the current situation. This article analyzes the feeling of distrust among neighbors of a rural community in the irrigation district of Monquirá (Boyacá, Colombia), and intends to contribute elements for actions aimed at creating social cohesion programs, in scenarios in which the trust in neighborhood communities is sought. The investigation starts from the following question: what is the degree of trust in the members of the same community that assume leadership and representation roles in State entities? To find out, a non-probabilistic sample was carried out, in which an unstandardized instrument, based on the three levels of Kelman's social influence, was applied. The study allowed to understand the behavior of the users of the irrigation district. It was found that the individuals fear that the neighbors will not comply with their commitments, and a fragmentation of the social cohesion is evidenced due to the distrust in the actions of the other.

The objective of this article is to define the importance of hermeneutics as a methodological tool to understand the communication process. To this end, a research strategy that privileges the analytical review of original sources was used, as well as theoretical and empirical methods such as observation, interviews and theoretical triangulation, through the combination of quantitative and qualitative paradigms. As a novel result, the study presents a systematization that, from an interpretive perspective, explains the indispensable role of hermeneutics for understanding the meanings of communication practices, given that it has not been sufficiently addressed by their focus.

The stakeholders, also known as groups of interest, are increasingly important for brand building, especially because of the need to generate differentiated communication on the part of the company, which must demonstrate a solid identity that generates processes for the creation of a correct image and a strong corporate reputation. In this aspect, this article meets a priority need: to know the groups of interest for the creation of brand building strategies, even from current tools such as experiential marketing. For this, a theoretical review of recognized authors in the field of branding, corporate communication, and marketing was carried out through specialized databases: academic texts, research, and scientific articles were taken into account. After having these inputs, relevant topics for the study of the stakeholders and their relationship with the communication of the companies were developed. This allowed for a detailed analysis of the company's intangibles, which contributes to the generation of useful knowledge for the field of branding. The main conclusions revolve around the relevance that stakeholders have in the management of the identity of the brand, with a view to generating a correct image and corporate reputation. This issue is key in the communication of any company, because currently the proper management of intangibles is the key to business success, and a good link with different stakeholders.

This article aims to determine the characteristics of use and impact of WhatsApp in radial processes of analogue stations in Manizales (Colombia). As an instrument for the descriptive and quantitative methodology followed by this research, a sample was formed with 58 participants (directors, producers, and directors) assigned to 45 radio programs of 10 analogue stations in Manizales. A survey with closed and open questions was applied, as well as a semi-structured interview to test the hypothesis. Among the main results it was found that, on a daily basis, 74% of the participants use WhatsApp for production, and 83% use it to interact with the listeners during the program. Interaction by telephone, letters, and email is ousted by interaction through digital social networks, as well as through texts, calls and voice notes in WhatsApp. It is concluded that WhatsApp has already been installed as a working tool in the radio production processes, and that it is beginning to displace the use of the reporter recorder to some extent. In addition to this digital application, social networks transformed the way of producing and performing radio programming, and above all, the way in which listeners participate.

According to the Law of Victims in Colombia (Law 1448 of 2011, and its Regulatory Decree 4633 of the same year), an indigenous community like the Emberá Katío Choromandó of Dabeiba (Antioquia) meets the conditions to be considered as affected by the actors of the armed conflict and, therefore, to be a subject of rights. However, this law remains budding when it aims to offer elements of interculturality that allow its effective appropriation. Faced with this, an accompaniment is proposed to the community of Choromandó in the co-creation of a peace proposal, adapting the Victims' Law to their needs within the framework of agreements with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) in Havana (Cuba). Through a participatory design, in accordance with the conceptual and methodological assumptions both of the research-action-participation of Orlando Fals Borda, and of intercultural communication of Edward Hall, a series of demands that start from the understanding of the Embera worldview is established, which underlies its indissoluble space-time dimension, until the validation of its autonomy, which translates into the preservation of its identity, stemmed from the filiation to the territory. The aspects of interculturality that were significant in the process included the following: Non-verbal communication and paralanguage, the diverse value of space and time (polytopia and polychrome) to understand the interrelations of the settlers (proxemia), and the joint work with the mestizo population to replace the lack of knowledge of the native language, and to enter into the communication practices of a culture without a written language.

Currently, there is a dissociation between the vernacular activity carried out by the student in his social life and the activity of the classroom. Given that in this social life the virtual field is becoming more and more important, the analysis of posts on Facebook and of academic texts of students of the bachelor’s program in Foreign Languages of the Universidad del Valle is proposed. Specifically, we focus on the mechanisms used by the students to introduce a direct textual citation in the case of the academic paper, and a link, an image or a video (when it is not theirs) in the case of the social network. The main objective is to establish a contrast between the citation resources in the scholarly and virtual fields. This qualitative study is descriptive in nature, which allows us to provide a general overview of these students' citation management, and their influence on the construction of disciplinary knowledge. The analysis of the data shows shortcomings in the scholarly management of information and communication technologies (ICT), since it is broadly observed that students appropriate digital content as if it were colloquial speech, without paying attention to its authorship, reliability or provenance, and ignore basic aspects of their reuse in scholarly contexts, such as citation or established scholarly conventions. Finally, it is considered pertinent to describe the resources of the new digital writings, in order to carry out a complete characterization and propose didactic actions to address scholarly writing and its relationship with the internet.