Sistema Regional de Información
en línea para Revistas Científicas de América Latina,
el Caribe, España y Portugal

Chile’s earthquake on February 27 relaunched the discussion on the role of the ICT in emergency situations. Precise and timely information becomes a valuable resource during any catastrophe, and prior experience has given rise to the development of Information Management Models. Based on those models this article seeks to analyze the behavior of four relevant elements: Internet, mobile telephones, data centers, and the use of the web as a tool for obtaining basic public information. It is important to mention that the analysis of these components has not been easy due to the high degree of secretism with regard to the information and the fact that there are no standards that require –or at least allow– expeditious access to it.

El Premio Periodismo de Excelencia Universidad Alberto Hurtado, una iniciativa que partió en 2003 con el afán de recopilar los mejores artículos publicados el año anterior en la prensa chilena, después de todo este tiempo se ha transformado en uno de los escasos referentes prácticos para mostrar -sobre todo en las escuelas de periodismo- lo que se intenta explicar con la teoría. Con todo lo antojadiza y a veces arbitraria que resulta ser una elección, los 28 artículos publicados en el libro de este año reflejan como pocas veces la disparidad del periodismo chileno en términos de resultados de un proceso intelectual.

This study reports key findings from a census of journalists and journalism and mass communication educators in the Antofagasta, Biobio, Araucania and Metropolitana regions of Chile, describing their demographic, education, and labour characteristics, as well as the productive logics and job development in the profession. The results show important labour diversification in all of the analyzed zones, and a clear geopolitical centralization. The added information also shows a major percentage of young professionals, a relative parity of gender, significant levels of mobility and multi-employment, important levels of professionalization versus incipient degrees of specialization. However, the specific analysis of the information confirms the existence of important differences, directly associated to the labour areas, and with the place -region /capital- where they work

This research aims to explore the relationship between the Chilean elite and the national communications media. The questions that guide the research ask what the media do with the elite and, in turn, what the elite does with the media. The study begins with the theoretical supposition that ownership of the communication media is not enough to gain complete control over their discourse. Because they are aware of that fact, the elites continuously develop new communicational strategies to influence the discourse that the media do or do not put into circulation. In-depth interviews were conducted with members of the corporate sector of the communications industry and with communications consultants to the government and parliamentarians, to explore this connection. The study is currently in an initial exploratory phase, but interesting findings have already come to light.

This paper reflects about the creation process of a political identity in 15- 17 years olds, following their exposure to the contents of newscasts in 2008. Based on the theory of social identity, we inquire about their representation about political activity from those presented in the news and how this is reflected in opinions about issues and persons connected with the subject. The conclusions aim to a receiver with critical attitude but passive about political messages. Besides, it refers to a reformulation of the newscasts as an effective way for political socialization of young people.

This essay looks at television in the context of contemporary Chile and the case of one of the five major broadcast networks in Chile-Chilevisión. Despite the constraints that we would expect to find on any commercial network, as well as the nuanced restrictions imposed on Chilean television that are unique to Chile´s recent history, this network got some truly revolutionary "reality" TV programming on the air in the beginning of the new millennium. In the earlier part of the decate, it was the boldest of the big five networks, offering the largest amount of controversial, sensitive subject matter. This no longer appears to be the case

The channel offer’s expansion, as a result of the new system of transmission and reception that represents the digital terrestrial television (DTT) in Spain, has brought a significant increase of the audience share of Latin-American soap operas. This evidence confirms once more the leadership of this type of products, which had already had the approval of local audiences as much as Latin-American immigrants. The basis of this growth and expansion are the competitive prices, the sale of season packets and an new design, thoroughly directed to the international export. Such a featured genre as the contemporary Latin-American is nothing but an amalgam of themes and collective imaginaries, along with a social picture and an identity mechanism, expressed in the form of a melodrama.

The present article analyzes the importance of including foreign news in local newscasts from the public’s point of view. The analysis is based on the results of a survey and focus groups held during 2009 in the context of Foreign TV News Around the World project. It identifies the perceptions of the Chilean public about this type of news considering the low coverage of them on Chilean newscasts. Considering the public’s opinions this paper discusses some concepts of newsworthiness such as proximity, social significance and deviance; and some news treatment factors like contextualization and sensationalism.

The main objective of this article is to analyze how Spanish media, and specifically television news, construct the information related to the area of public safety. For this purpose, three national television channels and one regional channel were chosen, encompassing a total of 105 news programmes and 299 news stories, applying qualitative analysis techniques to their contents. Thus, from a descriptive perspective, texts have been coded and classified, looking for common and divergent discourses around three dimensions: emphasis, description of effects and consequences, possible explanations and solutions or measures.

This article examines in greater depth the ideas put forward in an earlier study (Otero, 2006) which, based on relevant literature published from 1983to 2004, maintained that communications and media studies constitute a fragmented and scattered set, a multiplicity of points of view that do not talkto each other and insist on ignoring and excluding each other. In an attempt to explain this fact, the distinction between paradigmatic and pre-paradigmatic sciences developed by the philosopher Thomas S. Kuhn was used. Taking into account the present state of communication theory studies, this argument adequately describes the immature state of this area of research. In this article, new records from communication journals published from 2005 to 2010 are used in an attempt to verify whether the fragmentation theory still applies. Facts obtained from this analysis are consistent with the fragmentation diagnosis. The study attempts to explain this finding in terms of the difference between an institutional or administrative entity and an intellectual entity as formulated by the American researcher John D. Peters.