El tratamiento de la epilepsia en la agenda de los medios para una comunicación afirmativa

La cifra de personas que padecen epilepsia en España alcanza, según últimos datos publicados, los 400.000. Si bien cada año se diagnostican 20.000 casos nuevos en nuestro país, la epilepsia es la gran desconocida de las enfermedades por la sociedad. Las personas afectadas y sus familias conviven con una enfermedad que incapacita, en muchas ocasiones, al paciente en su actividad diaria. Es, en este aspecto, donde la morbilidad que rodea a la epilepsia es casi más perjudicial para los enfermos y familiares que la propia enfermedad que ha sido reconocida por la Organización Mundial de la Salud como “un importante problema de salud pública”. El actual trabajo, a partir del análisis de contenido de 159 noticias aparecidas en diferentes soportes on line, presenta cómo tratan la epilepsia los medios de comunicación y su impacto en la agenda de los públicos, así como los temas y el contexto de las noticias sobre la epilepsia en función de la clasificación de públicos que aportamos y que está basada en la Teoría Situacional de Grunig. El logro de estos objetivos, nos ha permitido conocer el grado de sensibilización de la epilepsia a partir del contenido de las noticias por tipo de público y la necesidad de que los medios de comunicación hagan de prescriptores e influenciadores con los actores políticos, para una comunicación afirmativa.

Technologies for Seduction: The “Espacio Doméstico” VideoArt Center in Blanca [EDOM]

Sustainability, understood in its beginnings as a common horizon for multiple practices and fields of study, has gradually given way to the development of increasingly sophisticated tools, with distinct dominant meanings established for each discipline. Within the field of material technologies for architectural production, sustainability seems to have found its most fertile ground in topics such as recycling, the use of "bio" materials, or energetic efficiency. However, to improve the understanding of the impact of technology on our ways of living, it appears increasingly necessary to move from the deterministic logic of sustainability into the relational domain of ecology, where the use and deployment of technologies can be observed through the multiplicity of its effects and the diversity of actors involved. In this paper we will address the case of the rehabilitation of several traditional houses located in the Murcian town of Blanca to host the “Espacio Doméstico” VideoArt Center (EDOM). In this action the selection and implementation of technologies have been aimed at impacting on diverse aspects including local communities, digital manufacturing, recycling, and policies regarding the rehabilitation of heritage buildings. While the initial approach was to address housing recovery as a heterogeneous accumulation of stories, technologies or material deployments of the domestic, our intervention strategies ascribed to the different technologies the role of mediating with existing elements through the incorporation of the very different visions of sustainability. Thus, we displayed artifacts produced by digitally manufactured methacrylate assembled on IKEA structures, fluorescent power lines supported by insulators on the wall, fluorescent tattoos on walls and ceilings that guide and extend the configuration of existing flooring, esparto furniture and fabrics produced by the esparto women workers’ and village women’s associations, re-appropriations of old furniture through the implementation of new media technologies, etc. If we can see seduction as the process of converting affinities and disagreements into affirmative communication, then the EDOM proposal can be seen as an active seduction process between technologies and users who approach this kind of cultural artifacts. Through these permanently active processes, art technologies will refer the viewer to complex sensory experiences, where a combination of parody, memory and sound pushes the user to the limit of mere comprehension of works of art. This more relational approach to the issue of heritage rehabilitation, technology or art institutions is offered as an area of controversy and debate on the scope of political ecology and its potential impact on the architect’s professional practice.

Communication Architecture Design for Real-Time Networked Control Systems

Networked control over data networks has received increasing attention in recent years. Among many problems in networked control systems (NCSs) is the need to reduce control latency and jitter and to deal with packet dropouts. This paper introduces our recent progress on a queuing communication architecture for real-time NCS applications, and simple strategies for dealing with packet dropouts. Case studies for a middle-scale process or multiple small-scale processes are presented for TCP/IP based real-time NCSs. Variations of network architecture design are modelled, simulated, and analysed for evaluation of control latency and jitter performance. It is shown that a simple bandwidth upgrade or adding hierarchy does not necessarily bring benefits for performance improvement of control latency and jitter. A co-design of network and control is necessary to maximise the real-time control performance of NCSs

Integrated Marketing Communication (IMC): New Discipline with an Old Learning Approach: A Syllabi Analysis

Marketing communications as a discipline has changed significantly in both theory and practice over the past decade. But has our teaching of IMC kept pace with the discipline changes? The purpose of this paper is to explore how far the evolving concepts of IMC are reaching university learners. By doing this, the paper offers an approach to assessing how well marketing curricula are fulfilling their purpose. The course outlines (syllabi) for all IMC courses in 30 universities in Australia and five universities in New Zealand were analyzed. The findings suggest that most of what is taught in the units is not IMC. It is not directed by the key constructs of IMC, nor by the research informing the discipline. Rather, it appears to have evolved little from traditional promotion management units and is close in content and structure to many introductory advertising courses. This paper suggests several possible explanations for this, including: (1) a tacit rejection of IMC as a valid concept; (2) a lack of information about what IMC is and what it is not; and (3) a scarcity of teaching and learning materials that are clearly focused on key constructs and research issues of IMC.