Comunicación y cambio social en España: el impacto del 15M, cinco años después

En este artículo introductorio se desarrolla un breve resumen de la situación actual del campo de la Comunicación para el Desarrollo y el Cambio social en España, tanto en su vertiente práctica como académica. Este resumen sirve para contextualizar los diferentes artículos que componen el presente monográfico de Obets. En él recogemos una selección de 12 artículos, predominantemente dedicados a la descripción y análisis de los resultados de una serie de estudios de caso, cuyo objeto se sitúa con frecuencia tras la estela del 15M. Pero también se incluyen otros actores pertenecientes a la sociedad civil estructurada, como los que actúan en el ámbito educativo. Igualmente, se incluyen aportaciones desde escenarios latinoamericanos y estudios conceptuales y teóricos, como los que sirven de apertura y cierre del volumen.

Open business intelligence: on the importance of data quality awareness in user-friendly data mining

Citizens demand more and more data for making decisions in their daily life. Therefore, mechanisms that allow citizens to understand and analyze linked open data (LOD) in a user-friendly manner are highly required. To this aim, the concept of Open Business Intelligence (OpenBI) is introduced in this position paper. OpenBI facilitates non-expert users to (i) analyze and visualize LOD, thus generating actionable information by means of reporting, OLAP analysis, dashboards or data mining; and to (ii) share the new acquired information as LOD to be reused by anyone. One of the most challenging issues of OpenBI is related to data mining, since non-experts (as citizens) need guidance during preprocessing and application of mining algorithms due to the complexity of the mining process and the low quality of the data sources. This is even worst when dealing with LOD, not only because of the different kind of links among data, but also because of its high dimensionality. As a consequence, in this position paper we advocate that data mining for OpenBI requires data quality-aware mechanisms for guiding non-expert users in obtaining and sharing the most reliable knowledge from the available LOD.

The Vetlatori Dance: "Little Angels go to Heaven"

This paper discusses the vetlatori dance performed on the occasion of a baptised infant's death in the Valencia region of Spain until about fifty years ago. Analyses of historical sources that emphasise the noble spirituality of the vetlatori dance are shown to be based on romantic views of traditional culture and emotions related to the loss of an infant, rather than on authentic information. Ethnographic and ethnomusicological data are presented to illustrate that the music and dances performed during the vetlatori dance were meant for entertainment rather than for spiritual impact. Recourse is also had to oral sources, particularly interviews carried out in the 1960s and 1980s with former infant wake participants who experienced the vetlatori dance, and who confirmed the popular nature of the music, song, and dances that were performed. Analysis of written sources and of the choreographic and musical characteristics of the dance also shows that the kind of music performed was typical of festive celebration in the Valencia region. Functional outcomes for such wakes are also proposed.