Careers, identities and professionalization. A study on doctors about their social representations related to the labor market today and its foreseeable future

This study is in line with the analyses of university and working career in their interaction in relation with conditioning factors. It comprises two central issues: the issue of identity bound to the issue of professionalization within the domain of training and employment. Nowadays, professionalization of the individuals, inside a troubled occupational world, demands the implementation of mechanisms favoring the development of both the individuals and the institution in which they work. All this has an impact at the local, regional and even national levels. Three levels of analysis interplay from a sui generis perspective: macro-meso-micro-macro (Aparicio, 2005; 2007a; 2007b, 2013a, 2014, 2015 b, d – See the Three- Dimensional Spiral of Sense Theory). The aim was to be aware of the doctors’ representations regarding the value of such degree under the present “degree devaluation”, and its impact on the professional future as well as on the core issues of the labor market which need urgent measures with a view to a belter interaction between the two systems. The methodology used was quanti-qualitative (semi-structured questionnaires, interviews, and hierarchical evocations). The population consisted of doctors (2005-2012) from the National University of Cuyo, in Argentina. The results helped us understand the nucleus of such representations and the peripheral aspects by career and institution, thus revealing professional and disciplinary identities. The professional identities show the situated needs in terms of professionalization within the different contexts and, particularly, within the labor market.

Silent citizens: on silence and silencing in journalism

Constructivist approaches to journalism, which have dominated the field for most of the second half of the 20th century, underline how selection and ranking processes produce representations and interpretations of social reality. Theoretical perspectives such as agenda-setting or framing have been pointing to the ways production of news messages are shaped and issues are defined. Research inspired by these contributions does however seem to keep in an area of relative shade not so much what is said and published but what is not selected: the unsaid, the withheld, the untold of journalism. The reality that remains in silence, for not being noticed or for being silenced, is the reverse of the coin of what is made visible. In this paper, it is suggested that this situation opens up the debate to a relatively unknown continent, which could contribute to the larger discussion on the current crisis in journalism. It is our contention that ‘the untold’ might be at the confluence of different levels: the journalistic agenda-setting by news sources; the deterioration of working conditions of journalists, compromising the investigation; and the social capital asymmetries from important segments of the population, hampering the public word (speech?) and the right to communicate. In order to build a comprehensive picture of the potentialities and contradictions of journalism from the unsaid side, we would put forward the outline of a typology of journalism's silences, with particular emphasis on some aspects of "discursive discrimination" (Boréus, 2006), on the one hand, and on citizen silence in the process of journalistic production, on the other hand.