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

Aprendizaje y desarrollo de habilidades de lecto-escritura

Multimedia For everybody Para: Videos

THE POWER OF SOUND –…by its effects you shall know it; talk by Julian Treasure

In the same way that “no action is without an equal and opposite reaction”, there are no sounds that produce no effects.
And precisely because they generate things inside of us –they change us–, sounds are powerful: Just as they make us happy or well, they make us uncomfortable or ill.
That said, what do we know about them?; what are their effects?
Do we know how to use them, both in our professional lives (for example: as a brand for our product), as well as in our private lives?
Julian Treasure is a professional who creates sounds for marketing and for communications media. And today’s talk (the video) –the first of three–, simply and brilliantly introduces us to the world of sounds. Because “hearing better”, is living better…

For media people Para: Magazine

A test about media, YOU JUST WILL LOVE TO ANSWER!

Once in a while we run across the words “colective aesthetics”, but few can explain to us what they mean in terms anyone can understand. This brief article achieves this seemingly unsurmountable task, through exposing us to a fun and short test no-one “flunks”, no-one fails to answer. Not only does it make us laugh, it also makes us think why in the world we all know these things. If our brains strive innately to learn and retain them, then –somehow, they are necessary for our survival both as individuals and as societies. It naturally follows that those literatures that feed on these elements and keep them alive, constitute a premier social institution, even if our society frequently fails to appreciate it.

© Yuri Arcurs
For media people Para: Magazine

If it is not the readers’ fault, WHOM SHOULD WE BLAME…?

This article analyzes the consumption of cultural works in Mexico, at the end of the XXth century.
In the years elapsed since it was published, however, the number of copies magazines sell -like national papers’ and other media products’ sales, have plummeted.
Several best-selling magazines it mentions, have disappeared from the market; and others are publishing less than a fourth of the copies they did at that time, as a consequence of the very same issues this article analyzed: Creators, producers and distributors of both “high brow” (elite) and “low brow” (popular) works, have alienated themselves from their audiences, and through the continuous opposition to the latters’ values, ideas and beliefs (through both veiled and overt contestation), they have lost their consumers’ trust. And also their money.

In other words: What this article concluded, is still true, including the fact that people -even the younger generations, are reading… –yes, indeed!; but not what some would like them to read.
In the end, this is more positive for society in many senses, than the consumption of media works that would otherwise have corroded even more, the social and cultural tissue of our countries.
What we have observed is the displacement of average audiences, towards works that better reflect the latter’s values, ideas and beliefs, as we should have expected since the beginning: This facilitates the survival of the larger part of the social group and its culture –the part that has been less influenced by media in general, by the way.

Anyone could have foreseen what has happened, from a social-anthropology or systems-theories’ frames of study –we certainly did, and published it all around, while many stared at us in disbelief. Nowadays media fear for their very survival; but the social-body demonstrates a vigour and an intuition, few would have vowed for. It will soon produce new works, away from dominant content agendas, that most of us (but sadly not all), will love.

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 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.