Da partilha à acção colectiva dos cidadãos: O contributo dos Novos Media no apelo à dádiva de medula óssea

O contributo das redes sociais na luta contra o cancro tem sido conhecida, especialmente, pelo sucesso de movimentos de cidadãos com o objectivo de sensibilizar a sociedade portuguesa para a dádiva de medula óssea. Este tipo de campanhas solidárias, com o apoio dos Novos Media, foi um fenómeno iniciado em 2009 e tem vindo a desenvolver-se, sobretudo, no Facebook. Desde então, novos movimentos têm aparecido regularmente nesta rede social e ajudado a um aumento significativo do registo de dadores. Interessa-nos perceber como se desenvolvem este tipo de campanhas e que factores, contribuíram para o seu sucesso, procurando averiguar não só o poder da Web 2.0, mas também questões sobre a comunicação, a imagem e os media. O sucesso destes movimentos vai muito além da simples presença no Facebook. A análise global do sistema de comunicação é fundamental para compreender o diferente nível de sucesso atingido por cada movimento. No presente artigo, fazemos uma análise comparativa entre os principais movimentos de cidadãos, ocorridos entre 2009 e 2011, que comprova as supracitadas hipóteses.

Do silêncio à acção.

From silence to action: silence taken as a foundational action that allows creative processes. It is a blankness that precedes the moment of creation but also stands for a search for perfection, the un-representable, the Sublime. The ‘art moment’ is that what is created from such emptiness, in the vertiginous abyss from nowhere to action. We will work this complex process of understanding if an action precedes the silence or if the silence precedes the action. Analyzing art process, considering its phases, from the tension between either to create or not to create will be related with the potency refereed by Agamben regarding Bartleby: starting with blankness, with the invisibility of potency, when communication is urgent. When “the blues” are called into participation, when the melancholic state installs the potency of the work both to grow or be doubted, of to do or not to do, how do we read agency? Is silence the action? Should the action rest in silence? What to do? Remain in the state of pure potency or prove the impossibility to create form? Nowadays, the pensive image counters the logic of the narrative action. On the one hand, the image extends the action on the other hand suspends any given presumption. The artistic process carries on, in its poetic freedom, a search without the enslavement of representational forms.

A Travel Optimization System for Academic Environments

Carpooling initiated in America in the 1970s due to the oil crisis. However, over the past years, carpooling has increased significantly across the world. Some countries have created a High Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) lane to encourage commuters not to travel alone. In additional, carpool websites has been developed to facilitate the connection between the commuters, making it possible to create a compatible match in a faster and efficient manner. This project focuses on carpooling, especially in an academic environment since younger people are more likely to choose carpool. Initially, an intense research was made to examine carpool studies that occurred all over the world, following with a research of higher education institutes that use carpooling as a transportation mode. Most websites created carpools by targeting people from a specific country. These commuters have different origins and destinations making it more complicated to create compatible matches. The objective of this project is to develop a system helping teachers and students from an academic environment to create carpool matches. This objective makes it easier to create carpools because these students and teachers have the same destination. During the research, it was essential to explore, as many as possible, existing carpool websites that are available across the world. After this analysis, several sketches were made to develop the layout and structure of the web application that’s being implemented throughout the project. Once the layout was established, the development of the web application was initiated. This project had its ups and downs but it accomplished all the necessary requirements. This project can be accessed on the link: http://ipcacarpool.somee.com. Once the website was up and running, a web-based survey was developed to study the reasons that motivate people to consider carpooling as an alternative to driving alone. To develop this survey was used a tool called Survey Planet. This survey contained 408 respondents, which 391 are students and 17 are teachers. This study concludes that a majority of the respondents don’t carpool, however they will consider carpooling if there was a dedicated parking space. A majority of the respondents that carpool initiated less than a year ago, indicating that this mean of transportation is recent.