Giving sense and making choices: supporting ethnographic and discursive approach to the news

The need to direct our attention to different events in a permanent flow is the reverse of the ambition of universality that motivates journalism. Journalists cannot turn their attention to all events as if they all have the same relevance. Frames and typifications are procedures used by professionals to establish the relevance of issues. However, this relative relevance is, often, established at the expense of diversity and openness. We stand for a research project in journalism studies, drawing on plural contributions (Discourse Analysis Phenomenology, Interactionism and Ethnography) that help professionals to produce an inclusive news reportinginfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

My Data Is Mine

In August 2018, several European consumer associations have launched a lawsuit against Facebook arguing that “My data is mine,” but chose not to boycott the social network in its publicity campaign. The DECO FAQ list reveals why associations did not call for a boycott: they chose instead to use Facebook to disseminate information and to answer questions consumers might have. The argument presented by the associations confronts us with intricate questions concerning the nature of civil society, mainly with respect to the linkage between the market and the public sphere. Generally, critical theorists think that the realms of necessity and freedom are found incompatible with one another. The public sphere is considered as the realm of pure freedom where citizens deliberate matters concerning the destiny of the polis. The civil society is concerned with profit and with providing for material needs. The present paper approaches these questions by considering the nature of institutional configurations of contemporary digital capitalism and, also, the kind of interactions among social agents that act inside it. Are corporate digital networks (Facebook, YouTube, etc.) permeable enough to communicative rationality to make us believe that they can host a culture of convergence and cooperative interaction among social agents such that can aspire to a rational public sphere? To answer those queries, this paper develops a) a literature review on the contradictions of modern contemporary cognitive capitalism; b) a critical analysis of activists’ statements against the use of digital networks; c) support for a critical literacy approach that identifies textual structures and contextual frameworks in digital public debate.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Communication and Humanties: a post-conventional approach

What do humanities bring to the study of communication? What concept of humanities can help us understand communication? Do communication studies belong to the humanities or to the social sciences field? In spite of a recent turn in communication research towards empirical data that seems to be supported by a generation of young researchers, communication sciences have almost always maintained, in their many branches, the existence of critical approaches highlighting a powerful link to the role of language and symbols and their many connections to social structures, placing particular emphasis on the phenomena of meaning and relation. Human life is essentially a life of meaning, of reflexive thought and communication. My hypothesis involves considering this concern with relation as a social phenomenon as what distinguishes it epistemically. I also believe that this distinction involves extensive atten- tion on the nature of the human, helping maintain a productive bridge with humanities and culture. Issues such as the role of symbols in social life are related to the constitution of subjectivity and the transmission of cultural heritage in life-world, bringing questions concerning truth, rationality, the conditions necessary for autonomy of the self and the nature of human agency to an on-going theoretical debate. Following this tradition, attempts are made to establish communication as a discipline which finds its foundations in the concept of mediated interaction and as the discipline that expresses the relational nature of human agency. Following this perspective, the field of communication studies, in a somewhat similar way to cultural studies, has redefined itself by dealing with new cultural approaches, with the help of American cultural studies (particularly James Carey), critical theory, hermeneutics, symbolic interactionism, and critical realism as theoretical keys to unveiling the dialogue between humanities and social sciences that crosses through the communications field.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

The feeling of what happens and animal minds. A critical analysis of Hauser’s wild minds

In this paper, I intend to dispute Marc Hauser’s thesis, sustained in Wild Minds. What animals Really Think (2000), that we must abandon the question of whether animals have a feeling of themselves, replacing it for an objective and scientific analysis capable of disclosing the extraordinary similitude between different mental procedures animals undergo when they face common challenges

Private Information: Similarity as Compatibility

We investigate the continuity of equilibrium in differential information economies with a finite number of agents. In this setting, agents can make contingent contracts based on events that are commonly observed. With private information modelled as finite partitions of a compact and metrizable space of states of nature, we introduce a topology on information that takes into account the compatibility of information fields in assessing similarity between private information fields. This topology allows us to establish upper semicontinuity of the private core correspondence.Differential Information Economy, Asymmetric Information, Radner Equilibrium, Private Core, Topologies on Information.

Existence and generic efficiency of equilibrium in two-period economies with private state-verification

Private state-verification is introduced in a two-period economy with spot markets in both periods and complete futures markets for contingent delivery in the second period. Existence of equilibrium is established, under standard assumptions. The equilibrium allocation is shown to be generically efficient if the number of states is not greater than the number of goods.General equilibrium, Differential information, Private state-verification, Two-period economies, Existence of equilibrium, Generic efficiency

General equilibrium with private state verification

We study general equilibrium with private and incomplete state verification. Trade is agreed ex ante, that is, before private information is received. It is useful to define a list of bundles as a derivative good that gives an agent the right to receive one of the bundles in the list. Enforceable trade agreements can be described by Pi-measurable plans of lists of bundles, instead of Pi-measurable plans of bundles as in Radner (1968). In equilibrium, the price of a list coincides with the price of the cheapest bundle in the list, and it is always the cheapest bundle of the list that is delivered. This property leads to a system of linear inequalities which are deliverability constraints on the choice set. We investigate existence of equilibrium in the case in which preferences are Pi-measurable. If there is a perfectly informed trader in the economy, existence of equilibrium is guaranteed.General equilibrium, Differential information, Verifiability, Uncertain delivery, Lists of bundles, Rational expectations

Contracts for uncertain delivery

We propose the notion of objects of choice as uncertain consumption bundles, extending the formulation of Arrow (1953). Agents sign “contracts for uncertain delivery”, which specify a list of alternative bundles, instead of a single one. This allows us to incorporate uncertainty and asymmetric information in the model of Arrow-Debreu. Relatively to the model of Radner (1968), efficiency of trade is increased and some “no trade” situations are avoided, while the classical results still hold: existence of core and competitive equilibrium, core convergence, welfare theorems, etc.Uncertainty, Asymmetric information, Private information, Contingent delivery, Radner equilibrium.

The degrowth of consumption as an economic strategy: is sustainable development a fading adage?

Classificações do JEL: O44; Q56The modern concept of ‘sustainable development’ emerged from the 1987 Bruntland Report, and was based on a growing recognition of serious environmental problems. Decision-makers worldwide began to accept the interconnections between the environment, the economy, and social well-being. However, about 30 years later the world is already overshooting the earth’s capacity and resilience. Mainstream policies of sustainable development seem to have done little to stop the unsustainable path. Some have questioned a few development myths and have highlighted the dangers of the current global economic paradigm, namely the failure, inequity, and unsustainability of contemporary economic development models. The promise was to reconcile economic growth with the environment, but this did not answer the core economic principle of an impossible everlasting growth due to biophysical limits. Given their weight, consumption patterns are in the centre of the problem. After analysing the current economic paradigm and providing insights regarding the well-established sustainable development concept as well as its offshoot, sustainable consumption and production, this dissertation focuses on the sustainable degrowth of consumption as an economic strategy. The degrowth movement emerges as an alternative, rejecting the growth fetish and advocating a strong sustainable consumption governanceO moderno conceito de ‘”desenvolvimento sustentável” emergiu com o relatório Bruntland em 1987, e baseou-se num reconhecimento crescente quanto à existência de graves problemas ambientais. Decisores em todo o mundo começaram a aceitar as interconexões entre o ambiente, a economia e o bem-estar social. Contudo, cerca de 30 anos depois, o mundo já está a ultrapassar a capacidade do planeta Terra e a sua resiliência. As políticas vigentes para um desenvolvimento sustentável parecem ter sido insuficientes para cessar este caminho insustentável. Alguns têm questionado certos mitos de desenvolvimento e alertado para os perigos do atual paradigma económico dominante, nomeadamente o fracasso, a iniquidade e insustentabilidade dos modelos de desenvolvimento económico contemporâneos. A promessa era de reconciliar o crescimento económico com o ambiente, mais isso não respondeu ao princípio económico fundamental que reside no facto de um crescimento perpétuo ser impossível devido à existência de limites biofísicos. Dado o seu peso, os padrões de consumo estão no centro do problema. Depois de analisar o atual paradigma económico e de providenciar percepções sobre o bem-estabelecido conceito de desenvolvimento sustentável, bem como das suas derivações, consumo e produção sustentáveis, a presente dissertação irá focar-se no decrescimento sustentável do consumo como estratégica económica. O movimento Degrowth está a emergir como uma alternativa, rejeitando o fetiche por crescimento económico e defendendo uma governação do desenvolvimento de acordo com os princípios da ‘sustentabilidade forte’