The influence of cultural selection on strategic communication

Strategic communication is held to be a key process by which organisations respond to environmental uncertainty. In the received view articulated in the literatures of organisational communication and public relations, strategic communication results from collaborative efforts by organisational members to create shared understanding about environmental uncertainty and, as a result of this collective understanding, formulate appropriate communication responses. In this study, I explore how such collaborative efforts towards the development of strategic communication are derived from, and bounded by, culturally shared values and assumptions. Study of the influences of an organisation‟s culture on the formulation of strategic communication is a fundamental conceptual challenge for public relations and, to date, a largely unaddressed area of research. This thesis responds to this challenge by describing a key property of organisational culture – the action of cultural selection (Durham, 1992). I integrate this property of cultural selection to extend and refine the descriptive range of Weick‟s (1969, 1979) classic sociocultural model of organizing. From this integration I propose a new model, the Cultural Selection of Strategic Communication (CSSC). Underpinning the CSSC model is the central proposition that because of the action of cultural selection during organizing processes, the inherently conservative properties of an organisation‟s culture constrain development of effective strategic communication in ways that may be unrelated to the outcomes of “environmental scanning” and other monitoring functions heralded by the public relations literature as central to organisational adaptation. Thus, by examining the development of strategic communication, I describe a central conservative influence on the social ecology of organisations. This research also responds to Butschi and Steyn‟s (2006) call for the development of theory focusing on strategic communication as well as Grunig (2006) and Sriramesh‟s (2007) call for research to further understand the role of culture in public relations practice. In keeping with the explorative and descriptive goals of this study, I employ organisational ethnography to examine the influence of cultural selection on the development of strategic communication. In this methodological approach, I use the technique of progressive contextualisation to compare data from two related but distinct cultural settings. This approach provides a range of descriptive opportunities to permit a deeper understanding of the work of cultural selection. Findings of this study propose that culture, operating as a system of shared and socially transmitted social knowledge, acts through the property of cultural selection to influence decision making, and decrease conceptual variation within a group. The findings support the view that strategic communication, as a cultural product derived from the influence of cultural selection, is an essential feature to understand the social ecology of an organisation.

Representações da sexualidade em produto cultural: percepções e impressões de um filme

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)

O enunciatário da revista VEJA: contribuição para discussões sobre indústria cultural e cultura de massa

This work intends to “test” two theories about mass cultural products – one that understands them as syncretic and plural and another that sees them as homogenizators and aimed to a mixed audience. We chose Veja magazine as the object of this study and tried to understand how its internal sessions bring in their readers, with the goal of verifying whether readers shared characteristics. In the affirmative case, Veja would be directed to a specific reader; otherwise, it would be a syncretic cultural product. This answer should give us basis to reflect upon the opposition between both ways of thinking about mass culture and help us take a stand on this discussion. Obviously, we do not intend to give a definitive answer to the opposition between these two tendencies. The limits of this work are given by the investigated object itself: we intend to verify empirically how Veja, as a cultural product, solves the contradiction that the co-existence of these two opposite theories point about mass society.

MEMÓRIA TELEVISIVA COMO PRODUTO CULTURAL: um estudo de caso das telenovelas no Canal Viva

This research is aimed at studying the television memory, recovered and built by a pay-TV channel, Canal Viva, and the telenovelas from TV Globo displayed by the channel concerned, in order to verify its characteristics as a cultural product and its place in the plot of mediation and social interactions. In order to do so, the following theoretical bases are established, relating them to the concept of memory: culture, identity, imagination, history of TV and the Brazilian telenovelas, television reception (with a focus on mediation) and nostalgia. For this purpose, the methodology, as built-up, is divided into two steps: first, a bibliographic research and then a case study, on which techniques of documentary analysis are applied, guided interviews with representatives from the channel and, finally, a focus group with assiduous viewers of the Canal Viva telenovelas. The goal of this research is to contribute to studies on communication related to television memory, thus affirming its importance in social interactions.

Evaluation of Australian Performing Arts Market 2014-2018: APAM inter-year report 2015

In the awarding of the tender for APAM by the Australia Council to Brisbane Powerhouse for the delivery of the market in 2014-2018, a requirement is that a formal evaluation of the three iterations of APAM be undertaken by the Queensland University of Technology, Creative Industries Faculty, under the leadership of Associate Professor Sandra Gattenhof. The agreed research model delivers reporting on outcomes not only in the year in which APAM is delivered (2014, 2016, 2018) but also in the years between (2015, 2017). This inter-year report focuses on the domestic and international touring outcomes resulting from engagement in the 2014 Market and responds two of the three key research foci for the evaluation that are articulated in the Brisbane Powerhouse Tender (2011) document as: • Evaluation of international market development outcomes through showcasing work to targeted international presenters and agents • Evaluation of national market development outcomes through showcasing work to national presenters and producers. The reporting for mid-year 2015, a non-APAM year, collects data from two key sources – six identified case study productions that have been tracked for eighteen months, and an online survey delivered to all APAM 2014 delegates. This inter-year report is a six month follow-up with delegates and identified case studies companies that track the ongoing progress of market outcomes and levers for ongoing improvement of the APAM delivery model that was tabled in the Year One Report delivered to Brisbane Powerhouse in October 2014.

O discurso da educação de qualidade nas políticas de currículo

Esta pesquisa analisa o discurso de educação de qualidade nas políticas curriculares para a Educação Básica forjadas no Brasil, no período compreendido entre 2003 e 2011, na vigência do governo de Luís Inácio Lula da Silva e no início do governo Dilma Roussef, procurando entender os nexos estabelecidos entre currículo e qualidade. Para tanto, é investigado o contexto de produção dos textos da referida política o Ministério da Educação (MEC), por meio da leitura de cinquenta e sete documentos assinados e/ou encomendados pela Secretaria de Educação Básica (SEB), pelo Conselho Nacional de Educação (CNE) e pelo Instituto Nacional de Estudos e Pesquisas Educacionais (INEP), os quais constituíram um corpus de estudo para esta pesquisa. Tal leitura tem como ferramenta de entrada e organização dos textos o programa computacional WordSmith Tools (versão 5), a partir do qual foi possível focar em significantes identificados como condutores dos sentidos de qualidade. A análise desse corpus de estudo é relacionada ainda aos programas de governo divulgados pelo Partido dos Trabalhadores na ocasião das campanhas eleitorais de 2002, 2006 e 2010, com vistas a uma maior compreensão do contexto político partidário ao qual a política curricular se conecta. A pesquisa se fundamenta na Teoria do Discurso de Ernesto Laclau, articulada às teorias do currículo produzidas por Alice Lopes e Elizabeth Macedo e à abordagem do ciclo de políticas de Stephen Ball e colaboradores. Com essa filiação teórica entende-se as políticas de currículo como produção cultural discursiva em múltiplos contextos, marcada pela contingência do social. A tese apresentada é a de que, na política Lula/Dilma, o significante educação de qualidade é tendencialmente vazio, representando, no que se refere ao currículo, tanto demandas por um ensino voltado para a distribuição igualitária do conhecimento, visto como possibilidade de promover a justiça social, quanto demandas por um ensino voltado para resultados estipulados e mensurados por meio de sistemas de avaliação nacional que atestam sua eficiência e que representam o discurso da qualidade que se pretende total, segundo o qual a educação é um investimento que precisa dar retornos. A equivalência entre demandas, aparentemente, antagônicas, é possibilitada pelo vínculo que o significante qualidade estabelece com a demanda por justiça social, ao ser adjetivado como social, dando origem ao discurso da qualidade social. A política de qualidade social da educação, portanto, constrói um discurso de promoção da justiça social por meio do currículo comum e da centralidade do conhecimento (verificável), lançando mão do vocabulário das perspectivas críticas e ao mesmo tempo utilizando-se de ações das perspectivas instrumentais, que reduz o currículo às dimensões instrucionais. São, portanto, duas cadeias de equivalência em disputa no cenário educacional: a cadeia da qualidade social, representada pelo projeto de poder Lula/Dilma, que se justifica pela demanda da justiça social e opera a ressignificação das lógicas da centralização curricular e suas formas de avaliar, e a cadeia da qualidade que se pretende total, representada pelo projeto de poder FHC, que condiciona a educação às demandas de produtividade do mercado

Grounding human vocabulary in robot perception through interaction

This thesis addresses the problem of word learning in computational agents. The motivation behind this work lies in the need to support language-based communication between service robots and their human users, as well as grounded reasoning using symbols relevant for the assigned tasks. The research focuses on the problem of grounding human vocabulary in robotic agent’s sensori-motor perception. Words have to be grounded in bodily experiences, which emphasizes the role of appropriate embodiments. On the other hand, language is a cultural product created and acquired through social interactions. This emphasizes the role of society as a source of linguistic input. Taking these aspects into account, an experimental scenario is set up where a human instructor teaches a robotic agent the names of the objects present in a visually shared environment. The agent grounds the names of these objects in visual perception. Word learning is an open-ended problem. Therefore, the learning architecture of the agent will have to be able to acquire words and categories in an openended manner. In this work, four learning architectures were designed that can be used by robotic agents for long-term and open-ended word and category acquisition. The learning methods used in these architectures are designed for incrementally scaling-up to larger sets of words and categories. A novel experimental evaluation methodology, that takes into account the openended nature of word learning, is proposed and applied. This methodology is based on the realization that a robot’s vocabulary will be limited by its discriminatory capacity which, in turn, depends on its sensors and perceptual capabilities. An extensive set of systematic experiments, in multiple experimental settings, was carried out to thoroughly evaluate the described learning approaches. The results indicate that all approaches were able to incrementally acquire new words and categories. Although some of the approaches could not scale-up to larger vocabularies, one approach was shown to learn up to 293 categories, with potential for learning many more.

As Relações Públicas e a gestão de artistas numa editora musical

Trabalho de projeto apresentado à Escola Superior de Comunicação Social como parte dos requisitos para obtenção de grau de mestre em Gestão Estratégica das Relações Públicas.

El Sur como espacio identitario en Torres García, Borges y Solanas

L’étude conceptualise la symbolique du Sud en tant qu’espace identitaire construit par une idéologie politique et une esthétique. Les cartes géographiques inversées (1936, 1943) de Joaquín Torres García (Uruguay) sont une prise de position politique qui affirme le pouvoir d’énonciation des artistes latino-américains de façon indépendante aux centres culturels européens. Sa théorie, l’« Universalisme Constructif », propose un nouvel art pour l’Amérique latine, combinant l’éthique artistique précolombienne et l’abstraction moderniste. Dans la nouvelle « Le Sud » (1953) et l’essai « L’écrivain argentin et la tradition » (1951), Jorge Luis Borges (Argentine) redéfinit la littérature latino américaine, marginalisée et périphérique, en tant que littérature qui a droit à toute la culture occidentale. Il rejette une culture qui ne serait que nationaliste. Le diptyque de Fernando Solanas (Argentine) formé des films Sud (1985) et Tangos, l’exil de Gardel (1988) est étudié à partir de son manifeste « Vers un Tiers- Cinéma » (1969), coécrit avec Octavio Getino. Dans le diptyque, le Sud est un espace de dénonciation des censures de la dictature et de l’impérialisme, mais aussi un espace de rénovation culturelle et identitaire. Dans son cinéma, Solanas utilise un produit culturel régional, le tango, comme outil de dénonciation politique. Tout au long de l’étude, on utilise des notions de Michel Foucault, (hétérotopie) et de Walter Mignolo (le centre amovible) pour approfondir le sens de l’espace Sud.

Créer ou produire un jeu vidéo? Étude ethnographique d’un milieu de production vidéoludique montréalais

Le jeu vidéo est un produit qui ne cesse de gagner en popularité alors que les expériences ludiques tendent de plus en plus à se diversifier. Les recherches académiques sur l’objet vidéoludique se sont multipliées dans les dernières années afin de comprendre les particularités du nouveau média, surtout en ce qui concerne l’analyse du produit lui-même et sa réception, mais laissant peu de place à sa créa-tion et sa production. Montréal est un lieu idéal pour étudier le médium : en peu de temps, l’industrie du jeu vidéo est devenue l’un des fleurons industriels québécois. La présente étude s’est intéressée aux développeurs de Montréal, ville où se situe la plus grande partie des studios au Québec, afin de connaître leur perception du produit vidéoludique et de l’industrie. Au travers d’une perspective phénoménologique, un séjour ethno-graphique a été effectué dans un studio de production vidéoludique où plusieurs développeurs ont été observés et interviewés. Ce travail s’inscrit dans une anthropologie du travail et rend compte de la com-plexité qui émerge lorsqu’un travail essentiellement créatif vient se heurter à des motifs de production strictes. Plus encore, il rend compte d’un paradigme opposant directement la création et la production dans un milieu qui se présente comme une avenue prometteuse pour une jeunesse désirant vivre d’un travail créatif. Cette condition est attribuable à la nature du jeu vidéo lui-même qui se situe, selon Kline, Dyer-Witheford et De Peuter (2003), à mi-chemin entre la culture, la technologie et les visées commerciales (marketing). Les développeurs se trouvent donc entre deux eaux : d’un côté ils sont influencés par la culture du jeu, relevant de leurs pratiques, leurs préférences et des commu-nautés de développeurs et, de l’autre côté, par l’industrie qui dicte les façons de faire et viennent selon eux minimiser leur potentiel créatif.

The branding of arts and culture : an international comparison

This paper explores the approach of arts and cultural organisations towards branding in Italy and Australia. Data were collected through extended interviews with general managers and marketing managers of 18 arts and cultural organisations, including museums, galleries, theatres and festivals of both countries. Through the analysis of the data collected, five initial elements emerged when seeking to classify the branding paradigms of the organisations, viz., the orientation of the brand management, the type of brand management, the level of customers’ involvement in the brand “idea”, the degree of consistency in branding and attitudes toward risk in branding. For this article, we focus on two particular elements, the orientation of the brand management and the degree of consistency in branding, as these elements have an important influence on how an arts organisation will strategically manage its brand.

On the basis of the assumption that branding is driven by different factors in different countries, the paper identifies two main paradigms/models of branding characterised by specific drivers: marketing tools and strategies in Australian arts and cultural organisations; history and tradition of the cultural product/offer in the Italian ones. What emerges in this study is that the importance of brands in the arts and culture context should not be underrated by arts and cultural managers. Both models (the Italian and the Australian) represent valid examples for managers to look at in relation to the brand management process.

Os programas de incentivo à cultura e o processo de fomento às organizações culturais no rio grande do norte: o caso da Casa da Ribeira em Natal

Since the emergence of the first demands for actions that were intended to give greater attention to culture in Brazil, came the first discussions which concerned the way the Brazilian government could have a positive influence in encouraging the culture, as is its interaction with the actors interested and involved with the cause. During the military dictatorship, there were programs which relied on the direct participation of the State to ensure that right, from the viewpoint of its support and implementation of public resources in developing the "cultural product" to be brought to society in its various forms of expression - all this, funded by the government. It is an example of "EMBRAFILMES" and "Projeto Seis e Meia", continued until the present day in some regions of the country, though maintained by entities not directly connected with the administration or the government. However, it was from the period of democratization and the end of the dictatorship that the Brazilian government began to look at the different culture, under its guarantee to the society. Came the first incentive laws, led by "Lei Sarney" Nº 7.505/86, which was culture as a segment which could receive foreign assistance in order to assist the government in fulfilling its public duty. After Collor era and the end of the embargo through the encouragement of culture incentive laws, consolidated the incentive model proposed in advance of Culture "Lei Sarney" and the federal laws, state and local regimentares as close to this action. This applies to the Rouanet Law (Lei Rouanet), Câmara Cascudo Law (Lei Câmara Cascudo) and Djalma Maranhão Cultural Incentive Law (Lei de Incentivo à Cultura Djalma Maranhão), existing in Natal and Rio Grande do Norte. Since then, business entities could help groups and cultural organizations to keep their work from the political sponsorship under control and regiment through the Brazilian state in the form of their Cultural Incentive Law. This framework has contributed to the strengthening of NGOs and with the consolidation of these institutions as the linchpin of Republican guaranteeing the right to access to culture, but corporate social responsibility was the one who took off in the segment treated here, through the actions of Responsibility Cultural enterprises arising from the Cultural Organizations. Therefore, in the face of this discourse, this study ascertains the process of encouraging the Culture in Rio Grande do Norte from the Deviant Case Analysis at the Casa da Ribeira, the main Cultural Organization that operates, focused action in Natal in order to assess the relationships established between the same entity and the institutions which are entitled to maintain the process of encouraging treated in this study - Enterprise, from the viewpoint of corporate sponsorship and Cultural Responsibility and State in the form of the Laws Incentive Funds and Public Culture Incentive

A imagem da pessoa comum: sobre os filmes dos pontos de cultura de natal/rn

The following research aims to address the image of the ordinary person in the films of the Pontos de Cultura (Culture Points) in Natal-RN. About ten years the Federal Government of Brazil created the Cultura Viva (Living Culture) program. It enabled the State to support financially civil society organizations that had developed cultural works in communities across the country. Along with the resources the program developed, in parallel, another action, Cultura Digital (Digital culture), intended to bring the tools of digital technology for people who have never had access to them. As a result of these initiatives were produced short films. These films were characterized by the presence of the image of the ordinary person. The creation of this type of cultural product was benefited by state initiative, however, it was inserted within a historical, political and cultural construction whose research was necessary for this image understood to be understood by its importance: it is the expression of emancipation the ordinary person and not just as a consumer of culture, it identifies them as the protagonists of the society and recognizes their vital role in its organization

Itinerário educacional de uma aluna cega e a busca pela imagem adaptada

The scope of this study directs an investigation in search of how the blind person learns knowledge at school mediated by the image in context of an inclusive education and how it can be (or is) triggered by the adaptation of images to the tactile seizure of the blind person and his correlative process of reading. To achieve this intent we choose a qualitative approach of research and opted for the modality of case study, based on the empirical field of a public school in the city of Cruzeta, RN and as a the main subject a congenitally blind female student enrolled in high school there, focusing, often, on the discipline of geography in its words mapping. Our procedures for construction of data are directly involved to the documentary analysis of open reflective interview and observation. The base guiding theory of our assessments is located in the current understanding about the human psychological development of its educational process inside an inclusive perspective, of contemporary conceptions about the visual disability as well of image as a cultural product. Accordingly, the human person is a concrete subject, whose development is deeply marked by the culture, historically built by human society. This subject regardless of his specific features, grasping the world in an interactive and immediate way, internalising and producing culture. In this thinking, we believe that the blind person perceives in multiple senses the stimuli of his environment and acts in the world toward his integration into the social environment. The image as a product of culture, historically and socially determined, appears as a sign conventionally used as an icon that in itself concentrates knowledge of which the student who does not realize visually himself and his surroundings cannot be excluded. In this direction, the inclusive educational process must build conditions of access to knowledge for all students without distinction, including access to the interpretation of the images originally intended for the seizure strictly visual to other perceptive models. Based in this theory and adopting principles of content analysis, we circulated inside the interpretation of the data constructed from the analysis of documents, from the subject speeches, from records of the observation made in the classroom and other notes of the field daily. In the search for pictures on the school contents, adapted to the tactile seizure of blind student, was seen little and not systematic in practice and teaching at the school. It showed us the itinerary of the student life marked by a succession of supports, most of the time inappropriate and pioneers in cooling the construction of her autonomy. It also showed us the tensions and contradictions of a school environment, supposedly inclusive, that stumbles in search of its intent, in the attitudinal and cumulative barriers brought, because of its aggravating maintenance. These findings arose of crossing data around of a categorization that gives importance to 1) Concepts regarding the school inclusion, 2) Elements of the school organization, educational proposal and teaching practice, 3) Meaning of the visual image as the object of knowledge, 4) Perception in multiple senses and 5) Development and learning of the blind person before impositions of the social environment. In light of these findings we infer that it must be guaranteed to the disabled person removal of the attitudinal barriers that are against his full development and the construction of his autonomy. In that sense, should be given opportunity to the student with visual disability, similarly to all students, not only access to school, but also the dynamics of a school life efficient, that means the seizure of knowledge in all its modalities, including the imagery. To that end, there is a need of the continued training of teachers, construction of a support network in response to all needs of students, and the opportunity to development of reading skills beyond a perspective eminently focused in the sight

Folhetos de cordel entre realidade e ficção cotidiana: um estudo da mídia na construção do personagem Seu Lunga

In this work, from the case of Mr. Lunga, a character of the brazilian northeastern culture whose stories circulated orally until they turned into verses of cordel (regional literature illustrated by xylographic printing images), we intend to understand that gender of leaflet, as significant cultural product, like media, with specific language features that act as means of construction and transmission of realities. To understand this phenomenon of meaning production in the cordel media, we used hermeneutics as a method and applied the general theory of interpretation in six chosen leaflets. We worked with a constructivist perspective that grounds the discussion of everyday reality and fiction, concepts that are raised around the essence of the character that is real, but it is also part of the creative activities of poets, how both are interrelated and constitute the understanding that individuals have the real. From the analyzes, we realize that each poet presents the fields of significance of Mr. Lunga in a different way, based on subjectivity, intention and mediations between each of them and the discourses they produce. Each cordelist contributes in his own way of significance for the construction of the imaginary Mr. Lunga. The speech of the cordelists contains a number of elements that aim to legitimize as truth the actions described. In this confrontation, our goal in this work is to understand the construction of the fields of signification, where these discourses are located, the production of meaning around a character who is not in a finite field, but transits through many of them, making the boundaries between reality and fiction dynamic