Better and more profitable media

By Blanca de Lizaur, PhD, MA, BA, Content specialist.

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Redimensionador de tamaño de fuente

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Redimensionador de tamaño de fuente

Agendas políticas económicas e ideológicas

© Alekss
Specialized For media people

THE WAY OUR BRAIN WORKS, AND HUMAN EXPRESSION. Implications for Literature, Media and research

In light of numerous scientific studies, and also as a result of the challenges faced in the area of artificial intelligence, today it is possible to understand and describe in great detail how our brains work.

According to some current ideological trends, we create our image of reality. However, it is not an unreal, intentionally skewed vision imposed from without, but rather one that has been validated and consolidated by our experiences, created by combining an infinite number of schemas, facts and perceptions that together constitute our mental “puzzle” of the world we live in –an image filled with distortions, gaps and flaws, true; but even more so with accurate assessments, since otherwise it would be impossible for us to survive–.

Our brains, furthermore, work in modules, using specific mechanisms, transforming our perceptions into symbols, and in turn into behaviours.
This explains why human languages are the way the are, and why literature builds stories the way it does; as well as why both language and literature really influence us, and we them, with all the advantages and dangers this entails.

The inevitability of both good and bad uses of human expression and their impact on us, explains why we have a specific mental module, innate, having the mission of detecting lies, traps and falsehoods, since they threaten making efficient decisions regarding survival.
Since we have this module, people who lie end up having no credibility, as tends to happen in the media, institutions, civil and cultural authorities, and individuals in a cyclical manner throughout history.

Later in this article we will discuss in greater detail the fascinating characteristics of brain function which are relevant to linguistic and literary studies; and the clear advantages studying Humanities and Neuroscience (non-ideologically speaking) provide for our survival.

© Ewa Walicka
For media people Para: Magazine

In reply to a reader’s letter: TVyNovelas’ print-runs, and when to invest in media companies

When we invest our money, we logically expect the best possible return. And particularly on the long run, as we don’t want to keep moving our assets from one place to another.

Investing in media is no different to investing in other fields:
First we must look for companies geared to serve their customers’ needs (perceived by their consumers as customer-oriented).
Secondly, we need to make sure that company-dynamics are healthy-enough; and that its operations, costs, prices, and revenues are sustainable.
Only then should we opt for a media company, no matter how many articles we’ve read in regards to media investments as “recession-proof”…

This letter explains why…

Robert Phillips, Edelman CEO. Interview in regards to the World Trust Survey 2012
Multimedia For media people Para: Videos

No transaction without TRUST; no trust without evidence of VALUES –But WHOSE values…?

A quick review of recent news from around the world, confirms the 2012 Edelman Barometer’s conclusions (25 countries, 30,000 persons surveyed), in regards to the remarkable loss of trust, respect and credibility, experienced by major institutions in the last few years –a crisis deep enough to negatively affect their maneuverability, and to obstruct their proper and efficient operation.
Let’s consider the case of communications media: A 40% credibility rating in countries like the USA and Europe, where people traditionally trusted their primary media companies, amounts to nothing, regardless of whether other institutions are faring worse.

In this article, including both the Edelman Barometer video and the above-mentioned information corroborating its claims, we present our analysis of how trust was lost and can be recovered. …As long as the stakeholders allow the establishment of some limits to agendas –…for their own benefit!
Not doing this would kill the Digital Society in which we have invested so much, before it can even operate to its full potential.

Specialized For media people Para:

WHEN EVEN THE MOST COURAGEOUS CRY…

During the last decades, literary and media studies have merged, and enriched themselves with tools originally belonging to other disciplines: Anthropology, Sociology, Psychology, Political Sciences, Musicology, and many others…
Out of their colaboration, in fact, a new discipline was born ─that of Cultural Studies, which builds upon the seminal idea, * that every cultural product and element, responds to a certain social need, and reflects ─in a certain way, too, our social reality.*

Under this multidisciplinarian umbrella, the careful and experienced analysis of popular fiction ─like that of Pedro Infante’s movies in Mexico, offers us a privileged channel to unveiling and understanding our deeper reality ─our “true reality”, as Carlos Bousoño would say.
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The present paper illustrates the point, better than a thick volume of theoretical frameworks.

SOCIALNOMICS ™, La revolución de las redes sociales
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SOCIALNOMICS ™, the social-media revolution -an exercise for TUNING UP OUR ABILITIES AS EXPERT READERS

An intense, vertiginous, hallucinating, …and absolutely partial video about social networks.
After reviewing what the digital age is bringing to our lives, the authors conclude triumphantly that the modelling force behind this revolution is people. They call it: Socialnomics (TM).
However, and through their own acceptance, it is not the people but consumption of those who are “connected”, which is presently modeling the digital society.
If consumption drives the internet, then, agendas model internet contents -not people. That is: If we keep in mind that people who do not buy or who choose not to buy, who are not connected or who choose not to be connected, are citizens, too, and worthy of their civil rights and our respect, as well.
In other words: People are not in command in the internet (and therefore in the new society that is being built upon it), any more -or any less, than in other media in our days.
Furthermore: We dare to conclude that presently, Socialnomics (TM) implies the substitution of ideals and ideologies we had grown to take into account, for the raw mercantilization of every aspect of our lives.
Only if we realize that this is going on, will we be able to really create a digital society that is good for every human being, that takes everyone –connected or not, into account.

But this video permits us to exercise our reading abilities, in order to go deeper and further than where its authors took us. And this is its true virtue.

© Satori13
For everybody Para: Magazine

THE MYSTERIOUS CASE OF THE MISSING SPECTATOR has little to do with the Digital Revolution

The Digital Revolution (i.e.: the proliferation of the internet, personal computers, mobile/portable devices, etc.) is currently being blamed for the dramatic sales fall that traditional and electronic media are experiencing. This article, originally published in 1994, witnesses to the unfairness of this myth: The Internet was officially born in 1993, only one year before this article was written, and its reach in Mexico was still scarce at that time; yet media had already been losing sales and audiences steadily –for years in some cases, and for decades in others.

The fact is so evident that few –if any, of the media products’ sales recorded here (including a couple of national newspapers), ever recuperated their previous audiences, and many have disappeared altogether:

Contrary to professionally-generated mainstream-media contents, those internet’s contents that have been generated by the general audience (think of FaceBook, Twitter, YouTube, blogs, e-mail chains and attachments, and the like), are majoritarianly “clean” (amiable in regards to the general audiences’ values, ideas and beliefs). And people are consuming them massively, close to the verge of addiction.

Society cannot possibly deliver mass media a more conclusive message, or put its case in a stronger way.
What are they waiting for to react accordingly…?

Steven Pinker lo atribuye a la tabla rasa
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Steven Pinker: THE PRESENT FAILURE OF ELITE ART TO ATTRACT US is linked to the blank slate theory.

Steven Pinker, in his book “The blank slate; the modern denial of human nature”, gathers scientific evidence in regards to the fact that all humans are born equal in terms of those traits which are innate to our species.
This renown neurolinguist talks here about what has been discovered to be essentially human, and why this knowledge has irated so many people, despite the fact that it can save arts, media, and the humanities in general.

For everybody Para: Magazine

O, YEE PROUD PRINTED LETTER…!, or How we have come to forget the worth and value of orality and “normality” in the last 100 years.

Like any other schooling system, Modern formal education in the Western world, tends to reproduce in students a certain mindset -a certain frame of mind, therefore privileging a particular type of intelligence –the literate one in this case, over others.
We must not forget that this type of intelligence is not the only one humans can access, however: There are other intellectual abilites which it is also worthwhile to acquire, like those an oral culture appreciates, and which are innate to our species.

If we keep basic concept like this is mind, we will be able to make more accurate assumptions about reality, thus improving the quality of the decisions we make, the worth of our opinions, and their impact in the world.

This article mentions one clear example: How the differences between the oral and the literate mindsets, and their intrinsic biases, reduce the possibility of reaching a durable and fair solution for conflicts as serious as the Chiapas rebellion in Mexico, thus gravely affecting the life of a whole nation. The paradigm shift is another example.
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This is a short version for the general audience, of a very long specialized article that the Revista Digital Universitaria de la UNAM, published in 2002.

© Caraman
For media people Para: Magazine

WHAT HIGHLY EDUCATED PEOPLE READ…, when nobody watches

A brief examination of what highly educated people really read when nobody is watching them, allows us to conclude that it is humanly impossible to refrain from reading popular works –to maintain a “purely highbrow diet” comprised of only elite works.
We put forth the following explanation: Works applauded and esteemed by the elite arts in the last 100 years or so, envision a sordid, bitter, and hopeless world –thus frequently becoming toxic or harmful for their readers’ emotional and general health, as we shall analyse in other articles. A “purely-depressive works” diet would certainly kill its reader.
No wonder most people, and even highly educated ones, tend to prefer popular works, even if they lack the prestige of the “high arts”. What a pity it is, though, that even popular works have been contaminated by the biases that have progressively killed the “high” arts, thus diminishing the spontaneous and joyful pleasure we hope and expect to obtain from them.

For everybody Para: Magazine

NO RETURN ADDRESS? Then how can we tell your message is trustworthy…

Around 1995-6, a new television company started to broadcast its signal to the Mexican audience. Some said it was being transmitted from Miami, but no-one truly knew where the signal was being aired from. Its programming was attractive, and was largely composed by reality based contents –mainly newscasts and documentaries. Its advertising campaign promised to deliver only truth to a country who hungered for it. Despite this, its news programs did not even mention the humongous national demonstration (with simultaneous massive local marches in all main cities), that repudiated the agreements signed by the Mexican delegation at a world population conference. Incongruities like this one happen all the time and in every media –internet included; and the expert reader uses them to filter the information he/she receives in order to discover truth –that is: the true image of reality, despite the many political, ideological and economic agendas which currently shape media contents.
In the time elapsed since this happened, that television channel went bankrupt, was taken over and changed its programming, …but never recuperated the audience it had initially attracted and lost. The audience is smarter than many think…

For audiences Magazine

How to make a movie say WHAT YOU WANT TO

Few times do we talk about what the “message” of a literary work is, even amongst those of us who study literature. Finding out what the message is behind any human expression, however, is fundamental for surviving, as it allows us to filter what we are being told –to separate and retain what serves us, and to prevent us from falling prey to cheaters and liars.
Learning to see through information, allows us to make better use of media, too, without resorting to censorship or limiting our freedom of expression.

Evelyn, the movie (with Pierce Brosnan in the leading role), is a popular work, which was produced to help advance an unpopular political agenda amongst the general audience. The slant, the bias, the way reality was altered in it, in order to promote such agenda, is so great and evident, that it easily serves us to exemplify what a “message” is –what we are talking about; and to show how even a reality-based narration can be manipulated in order to fulfil a given goal.