Los discursos publicitarios o el arte de triturar la realidad

Issue coordinated by Meda MUCUNDORFEANU Editorial board: Prof. Elena ABRUDAN Ph.D., director Prof. Delia Cristina BALABAN (BĂLAȘ) Ph.D., executive director Assoc. Prof. Mirela Codruța ABRUDAN Ph.D., editor-in-chief Members: Veronica CÂMPIAN Ph.D., Ioana IANCU Ph.D., Meda MUCUNDORFEANU Ph.D., Radu MEZA Ph.D., George PRUNDARU Ph.D., Julia SZAMBOLICS Ph.D. Review board: Prof. Alina BÂRGĂOANU Ph.D., National School for Political and Administrative Studies, Bucharest Prof. Ștefan BRATOSIN Ph.D., Paul Valery University Montpellier Prof. Mihai COMAN Ph.D., University Bucharest Assoc. Prof. Nicoleta CORBU Ph.D., National School for Political and Administrative Studies, Bucharest Assoc. Prof. Ilie FÂRTE, Al.I. Cuza University Bucharest Prof. Sandu FRUNZĂ Ph.D., Babeș-Bolyai University Cluj-Napoca Prof. Ludwig HILMER Ph.D., University of Applied Sciences Mittweida Assoc. Prof. Ioan HOSU Ph.D., Babeș-Bolyai University Cluj-Napoca Prof. Wilfried KÖPKE Ph.D., University of Applied Sciences, Hannover Prof. Michael MEYEN Ph.D., Ludwig Maximillians University Munich Assoc. Prof. Marian PETCU, University Bucharest Prof. Hans Peter NIEDERMEIER Ph.D., University of Applied Sciences Mittweida Prof. Ilie RAD Ph.D., Babeș-Bolyai University Cluj-Napoca Prof. Flaviu Călin RUS Ph.D., Babeș-Bolyai University Cluj-Napoca Assoc. Prof. Dan STOICA, Al.I. Cuza University Iaşi Prof. Peter SZYSZKA, University of Applied Sciences, Hannover

ISSN 1844-8887 • Accent Publisher, 2014

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Contents

Germán LLORCA ABAD 3

Los discursos publicitarios o el arte de triturar la realidad Marian PETCU, Arina URECHE

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The Research of Mass-Media – Dynamics, Figures and Astonishments Magor KÁDÁR, Zsolt KÖNCZEY

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The Content Management of Media Convergence Anamaria TOMIUC

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Navigating Culture. Enhancing Visitor Museum Experience through Mobile Technologies. From Smartphone to Google Glass. Georgeta DRULĂ

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Media Convergence and Mobile Technology Radu MUREA, Ion JOSAN

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Progress and Control: Positivism and the European Epistemological Hegemony

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Reviews What Every Body Is Saying. An Ex-FBI Agent’s Guide to Speed-Reading People Joe Navarro, Marvin Collins

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(Laura Maruşca)

Los discursos publicitarios o el arte de triturar la realidad

Germán LLORCA ABAD Universitat de València e-mail: [email protected]

Abstract. Advertising is becoming globalized. As the world is more interconnected, advertising discourses occupy new spaces in consumers’ minds. This article highlights some of the new strategies employed by advertising creators and their struggle against communicative saturation. The distracted minds of consumers are increasingly inaccessible to their strategies. Consumers, hyper-connected minds are now affected by advertising campaigns that appeal to the most basic part of our instincts. The process is the same, regardless of the advertising medium or distribution channels. The article proposes an analysis of the phenomenon through different examples from everyday life. The examples have a global reach and are representative of a global trend. Key words: advertising strategy, intoxication, advertising stereotypes, emotional branding, neuromarketing.

Introducción Paseando por una céntrica calle de Bogotá, Colombia, un póster xerografiado sobre una pared desvencijada llama nuestra atención: Beer or death. Venceremos! El póster, firmado por BRVTO, reproduce la cara de Homer Simpson imitando los atributos de la conocidísima fotografía de Ernesto “Che” Guevara: bigote, pelos y gorra replicados con exactitud. Y no hay lugar a dudas. A pesar de no haber visto el detalle del póster, el lector de estas palabras ya ha visualizado mentalmente la fotografía del Che y la cara del histriónico padre de familia amarillo norteamericano. Cada vez se producen con mayor frecuencia este tipo de fenómenos. Los marcadores geográficos y referenciales de toda clase dejan progresivamente de tener 3

Journal of Media Research, 3(20)/2014, pp. 3-16

importancia. El lector es cada vez más un (proto)tipo universalizado. No importa que el póster esté escrito en dos idiomas, que se encuentre sobre la pared de un edificio céntrico de una megalópolis urbana, que sea parte de una campaña de (auto)promoción, o que mezcle de un modo grosero dos iconos tan opuestos. Aquí lo importante son, precisamente, la indeterminación del mensaje y la imposibilidad de clasificarlo y, de hecho, estos son sus atributos identificativos. Decía Lyotard (2004) que las sociedades se dirigen hacia la total fragmentación y mercantilización de los discursos, avanzándose varias décadas a la crítica de la publicidad globalizada. En el contexto de las sociedades actuales se ha instalado una suerte de ideario que todo lo impregna. Se trata de la ideología del todo vale. Es, a nuestro entender, una estrategia conducente al vaciamiento de sentidos y significados. Lejos de comprometerse con la indagación teórica o reflexiva que pudiera implicar cierto relativismo filosófico, la ideología del todo vale se emplea para producir en realidad desconcierto, desconocimiento e incluso indefensión. El presente artículo trata de aproximarse de una manera analítica a esta versión de la ideología de la no ideología fukuyamista en el ámbito de los discursos publicitarios. La publicidad, los mensajes comerciales, la propaganda y las versiones más refinadas del márquetin explotan hasta sus últimas consecuencias esta estrategia de la mezcla. Una fusión/confusión de espacios comunicativos (Virilio, 1998) y mezcla justificada únicamente por el fin de vender más y más en el ultra competitivo mundo del producto capitalista. Un producto que desde hace varias décadas ha dejado de ser exclusivamente material. La publicidad se pega a todo y nos envuelve en un denso manto de mensajes. Se estima que diariamente recibimos una media de 3.000 impactos publicitarios de los que en buena parte no somos conscientes1. Pero es justamente esta familiaridad acrítica la que naturaliza la existencia de unos discursos profundamente tendenciosos. La publicidad confunde a propósito elementos que no deberían confundirse. La publicidad propone lecturas completamente aberrantes de las cosas. La publicidad pervierte, como decíamos hace un instante, la posibilidad de discernir. Entendemos que no se trata de una cuestión de legitimidad. La publicidad es perfectamente legal en la mayoría de sus expresiones. Entendemos que se trata de una cuestión infinitamente más profunda, con ramificaciones en todo el espectro de los debates de la postmodernidad. Hemos comenzado con un ejemplo emblemático. Pero no se trata, ni mucho menos, del único. Y, posiblemente, no se trata de uno de los más importantes. Ahora bien, si finalmente se acepta el uso de la figura del Che como una fórmula adecuada para vender cerveza, estaremos aceptando la definitiva disolución de la posibilidad de conocer. 1 La piel como marquesina. (28 de enero de 2013). ElPais.es, recuperado de: http://sociedad.elpais. com/sociedad/2013/01/28/actualidad/1359389585_255130.html.

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El planteamiento hecho, así como sus implicaciones en todos los niveles, son extrapolables a cualquier tipo de expresión publicitaria comercial. No obstante, nuestro interés en el presente texto se centrará, sobre todo, en los ejemplos publicidad audiovisual. La televisión del siglo XX y su prolongación digital en el vídeo embebido del youtube del siglo XXI, dan sustento a una enorme máquina de visión (Virilio, 1998) que tritura los sentidos y los deshace. La realidad que vomitan es una pasta amorfa en la que nada puede distinguirse. Solo una advertencia previa: puede que ya sea demasiado tarde. De qué estamos hablando Los discursos publicitarios forman parte del contenido de los medios y espacios de comunicación. Esta es una de las razones por las que su presencia en nuestra cotidianidad está naturalizada. “Para un niño que crece inmerso en la cultura de las imágenes, el flujo mediático es la cosa más natural del mundo” (Gitlin, 2005: 37). Este detalle se deriva de la historia particular de la publicidad en nuestras sociedades. Por razones obvias, no nos detendremos en explicar dicha historia, pero es importante destacar el papel preponderante que a lo largo de los últimos doscientos años ha adquirido en muchos niveles: simbólico, discursivo y económico. La publicidad forma parte de un sector económico muy lucrativo. Se calcula que las grandes agencias publicitarias gestionan un volumen de negocio de 500.000 millones de dólares a nivel mundial (Zenith Optimedia, 2013). El informe que citamos estima en un 6’5% de media el crecimiento anual de esta cantidad. No parece necesario advertir sobre la importancia del hecho. Las empresas compiten de un modo feroz en el terreno de la publicidad, que es un sector muy lucrativo de la economía. Una competencia que es económica pero que, sobre todo, es discursiva. La necesidad de llegar a las adormecidas conciencias de los consumidores en un mundo completamente mediatizado y saturado de comunicación (Gitlin, 2005) obliga a las empresas a adoptar cada vez estrategias más agresivas. Es una necesidad de posicionamiento (Ries y Trout, 2002) para que el usuario tenga presenta una determinada marca a la hora de hacer su decisión de compra. Las estrategias empleadas por las grandes empresas han cambiado en consonancia con el contexto económico en el que se han dado estos condicionantes. Los discursos publicitarios, en un sentido muy general, han evolucionado a partir de dos parámetros: el nivel de desarrollo tecnológico de las herramientas y estrategias de comunicación y las necesidades de comunicación. En este sentido, hacemos distinción de tres fases analíticas2: la primera, o la de los pioneros, mar-

2 La distinción tiene un carácter meramente funcional. El detalle de las diferentes subetapas en las que divide esta historia ha sido descrito por varios autores. Nosotros recomendamos la lectura de Eguizábal (1998) y Checa (2007).

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cada por un bajo desarrollo tecnológico, la concurrencia de pocos competidores y una comunicación publicitaria basada en el producto y su precio. La segunda, o la de los competidores, marcada por un aumento en el número de competidores, la hegemonía de la radio y la televisión como formas preponderantes del intercambio mediatizado de información y una comunicación publicitaria centrada en las características del producto. Y la tercera, la época de las súper-marcas, en la que la competencia es exclusivamente comunicativa, donde las tecnologías de la comunicación ocupan todos los espacios y en la que la comunicación publicitaria está basada en la transmisión de emociones y el sentimiento de pertenencia (Klein, 2001). Por razones obvias el cambio que más nos interesa desde la perspectiva de este trabajo es la transición entre las fases dos y tres y aquella que se desarrolla después. En pleno siglo XXI, los discursos publicitarios han potenciado al máximo la tendencia a olvidarse del producto y de sus características objetivas, para ocuparse únicamente de vender estilos de vida (Klein, 2001). La fabricación del objeto, es decir, su producción material, ha dejado progresivamente de ser responsabilidad de la empresa/marca con la que se comercializa. Este cambio, sin lugar a dudas, que es consecuencia de los procesos de globalización económica, implica que las grandes organizaciones ya solo deben preocuparse por competir en el terreno de la comunicación. No es, como señalábamos antes, una competencia fácil. Todo lo contrario. Pero los condicionantes de esta lucha deben estar en la base de una obligada aproximación analítica y crítica a ciertas formas de hacer publicidad en la actualidad. Otras consecuencias del proceso La página web Planeta Urbe3 recoge en uno de sus contenidos una serie de anuncios que desde la perspectiva actual deben ser calificados, como mínimo, de chocantes. Las sociedades modernas no evolucionaron solo en el aspecto material. También lo hicieron en los aspectos sociales y culturales. Hoy en día, serían inconcebibles tratamientos discursivos abiertamente o explícitamente racistas o sexistas, por ejemplo. Serían inconcebibles también aquellas publicidades orientadas a vender productos dañinos para la salud, o que ensalzaran las cualidades de productos prohibidos o peligrosos. La regulación del contenido de los discursos publicitarios evolucionó del mismo modo que hizo la sociedad (Vilajoana, 2011). Los valores éticos de respeto, pluralidad o seguridad, con los que poco a poco fueron impregnándose las conciencias en las sociedades modernas, con el tiempo alcanzaron también a la publicidad. No obstante, a medida que entraron en conflicto el derecho ciudadano a la información y el derecho de las empresas a la libre competencia (Martín y Hernández, 2011), la

3 Disponible en: http://www.planetaurbe.com/anuncios-antiguos-que-hoy-estarian-prohibidos/ (Acceso: 25/06/2014).

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legislación sobre los discursos publicitarios fue haciéndose cada vez más compleja. Dicha complejidad debemos relacionarla también con el proceso en tres etapas descrito líneas atrás y el paulatino cambio de una publicidad de corte racional a una de tipo emocional. En el proceso, los estados y administraciones introdujeron una serie de reglas que reconciliaran los diferentes derechos y las sensibilidades desarrolladas en el ámbito de lo cultural/social. No obstante, esta sobrerregulación, a nuestro juicio, ha conllevado y conlleva la búsqueda de estrategias alternativas por parte de las empresas y organizaciones que han producido efectos aún más perniciosos. Y el racismo, el machismo, o la indiferencia por la protección de los derechos de la infancia y la juventud y otras valoraciones más que cuestionables, siguen formando parte del contenido publicitario. ¿Qué cambia? Cambia que todo se da en un nivel infinitamente más sutil. En la era de las súper-marcas, las empresas deben superar el drama del ruido. La sobreinformación es un mal de nuestras sociedades y todo sucede a una gran velocidad: “La velocidad no es un fenómeno tangencial en el mundo moderno, sino esencial” (Gitlin, 2005: 93). Diariamente nos encontramos en la necesidad de gestionar centenares de procesos comunicativos: “Hoy nos encontramos ante un problema crucial: ¿en qué se convierte la relación con la libertad cuando la información es superabundante? (Ramonet, 1999: 53). Nuestro trabajo, nuestras formas de ocio, nuestras acciones relacionales, nos exigen estar permanentemente conectados a un flujo de comunicaciones que pueden agotar nuestra capacidad de atención (Llorca Abad, 2011). Este contexto es desfavorable para la comunicación empresarial. Con el fin de penetrar en nuestras conciencias, las empresas han adoptado cada vez estrategias más feroces. Por un lado, conducentes a romper la barrera del ruido que bloquea nuestras conciencias. Por otro lado, conducentes a respetar los límites impuestos por la regulación publicitaria. Sin embargo, es justamente el equilibrio precario que mantienen estas instancias, el que produce algunos de los ejemplos más aberrantes en cuanto a transgresión discursiva. Aunque la legislación publicitaria ha tratado de adaptarse a los nuevos tiempos, es aún insuficiente para combatir determinadas prácticas escandalosas por parte de las empresas. Y son escandalosas, puesto que es en la trascendencia mediática de las polémicas donde se halla el auténtico impacto publicitario. El ruido y la era del “no lo olvides” El documental The Persuaders (Goodman y Dretzin: 2003) se ha convertido en pocos años en un clásico imprescindible a la hora de conocer los entresijos que explican el estatus actual de los discursos publicitarios. En otras palabras, para comprender el tránsito de la época de los pioneros a la época de las súper-marcas. La publicidad del más y mejor dio paso progresivamente a un tipo de identificación 7

con los valores irracionales asociados a la marca. Como decíamos líneas atrás, este proceso se produjo en el marco de los procesos sociales, culturales y económicos de la globalización. Ya no se trataba de vender productos, sino de vender las emociones asociadas a ellos. Ya no se trataba de estar presente en la conciencia del consumidor en el momento de la decisión de compra, sino de ser algo mucho más profundo: su referencia cultural. Nuestra cotidianidad arroja ejemplos bastante claros acerca de este hecho. Encontramos identificaciones personales que van mucho más allá de la razón de las personas. Al hablar o discutir sobre si son mejores Apple o Microsoft, Pepsi o Coca-Cola, o Barça o Real Madrid, las razones aducidas no son tales. Se da un tipo de identificación que nos lleva a relacionar la marca con su estilo de vida y su ser. Si bien esta estrategia, implementada en primer lugar por marcas globales como Nike, McDonald’s, o Marlboro, dio resultados positivos, pronto se descubrieron las carencias desde el punto de vista de los resultados. La adopción de estrategias emocionales destinadas a romper la barrera del ruido y captar la atención del consumidor, terminaron por generar aún más ruido (Crispin, Mark. En Goodman y Dretzin, 2003). Aquello que funciona razonablemente bien cuando es novedoso, deja de hacerlo cuando es la estrategia global de todos los competidores y ya no produce el impacto asociado, precisamente, a la novedad. Los consumidores terminamos por desarrollar una suerte de inmunidad hacia los anuncios comerciales, que poco a poco fueron perdiendo su efectividad (Klein, 2001). Ante la avalancha de publicidades emocionales, las súper-marcas han tratado de combinar diferentes estrategias de comunicación corporativa. Es decir, la gestión de la publicidad ya no pertenece únicamente al ámbito del discurso meramente comercial. En estas circunstancias, la era de las súper-marcas ruidosas ha ido cediendo el paso a una era en la que lo importante es que el consumidor no olvide jamás ni la marca ni sus tributos más importantes. El ruido, que sigue estando presente, es combatido con estrategias arriesgadas encaminadas a generar polémica a partir de la fusión/confusión de conceptos. La nueva forma de hacer publicidad se resume de manera muy gráfica en boca de dos de los gurús del posicionamiento, Al Ries y Jack Trout (Ries y Trout, 2002): no seas el mejor, simplemente sé el primero. La frase es significativa por todos los mensajes que hay implícitos en ella. No solo se trata de combatir el ruido, sino que ahora ya ni siquiera importa la calidad de lo que se está vendiendo. Es como si el discurso publicitario y el producto que refiere se hubieran distanciado definitivamente. La afirmación, asimismo, implicaría también que una buena parte de los discursos publicitarios, los que apostarían por este tipo de retórica, dejan de incorporar otro tipo de valores, digamos, humanísticos. Las grandes firmas publicitarias y sus gurús se amparan en la necesidad de las empresas en llegar a sus clientes (Medina y Buil, 2013) y se esfuerzan, abiertamente, en justificar la necesidad de abundar en explicaciones meta-publicitarias acerca de 8

la creatividad, la necesidad de impacto, la excesiva regulación y otros argumentos, a nuestro entender, superficiales. Esta era, la del no lo olvides, requiere causar impactos, debates y escándalos cada vez más acusados. Y todo ello en un contexto en el que concurren aún diferentes subprocesos que podríamos reducir a tres del siguiente modo: primero, las marcas que aún son simples luchan por convertirse en súper-marcas. Segundo, la publicidad ocupa cada vez más espacios, incluso aquellos lugares y espacios más inverosímiles, en todos los procesos de comunicación digital y/o analógica. Y tercero, se lleva hasta límites insospechados la explotación del sentimiento de pertenencia a una comunidad4, que no es más que una falsa comunidad comercial. No todo es emoción, pero… El teórico y experto en comunicación corporativa Paul Capriotti (1999) analiza en su trabajo la respuesta de las personas al componente de identificación con las marcas. Capriotti describe esta adhesión con la metáfora de la imagen mental cognitiva. En otras palabras, la percepción que tenemos de las marcas puede explicarse como una suerte de mezcla entre los aspectos cognitivos y emocionales en relación con ella. Es decir, como la mezcla que se da en nuestras conciencias entre los elementos de conocimiento racional que poseamos, el grado o nivel de experiencia con los productos de una empresa o marca que tengamos y la influencia que hayan ejercido en nosotros los discursos publicitarios de la misma. Capriotti (1999: 58 y ss.) no desdeña el componente individual en este proceso, ya que el nivel de desarrollo de la identificación “estará en función de la implicación que tengan los miembros de un público con una empresa en una situación determinada”. Los grados de conocimiento, experiencia e influencia dependen de muchos factores que no son reductibles a unas pocas variables y que indican la variedad y complejidad de las variables que tienen relevancia en el asunto. Con todo, en tanto que propuesta para la comprensión global del fenómeno, entendemos que la figura de la imagen mental cognitiva es muy pertinente. No cabe abundar demasiado en una idea: la proyección de la imagen de marca, el valor de venta añadido que ésta supone sobre el producto comercializado y la función competencial de este proceso, son determinantes en el negocio de los 500.000 millones de dólares. A medida que nos socializamos, los discursos publicitarios se convierten en una de las instituciones simbólicas (Berger y Luckmann, 1996) participantes en el proceso. Esta circunstancia sería la que explicaría la naturalidad con la que se aceptan. Desde que la teoría publicitaria definiera la función aspiracional que debe contener todo 4 Un japonés ya hace cola para comprarse un iPhone 6. (19 de febrero de 2014). ElPeriodico.com. Recuperado de: http://www.elperiodico.com/es/noticias/economia/japones-hace-cola-paracomprarse-iphone-3112989.

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anuncio y comunicación comercial, los especialistas de este tipo de comunicación se han esforzado con denuedo en ocultar las otras funciones de la comunicación: informativa, afectiva, reguladora de la conducta, de motivación, de cooperación y expresión emocional. La excusa empleada, a decir de los propios expertos, es siempre la del legítimo derecho de las empresas a competir para llegar a sus clientes. La publicidad no es el único discurso legitimador. Tal y como hemos visto, nuestra percepción del objeto publicitado y de la empresa publicitaria contiene una dimensión racional que no debemos obviar. Ahora bien, ¿por qué motivo se ocultan en los metadiscursos publicitarios las funciones profundas de esta tipología discursiva? Sin duda, la estratagema recoge dos fines fundamentales: confundir a los receptores, aprovechándose de la naturalidad con la que absorben el mensaje y poder utilizar conceptos e ideas que, en otros contextos y situaciones, permanecerían perfectamente delimitadas para el análisis y comprensión. Esta es una de las claves esenciales de nuestra propuesta analítica. Las sociedades son comunidades de sentido que pueden o no terminar siendo comunidades de vida (Berger y Luckmann, 2008: 43 y ss.). En otras palabras, la publicidad influye en la construcción de las comunidades de sentido, porque deviene en uno de los marcos referenciales de los miembros de la sociedad, de la comunidad. En relación con la creación de apegos irracionales a una marca y sus atributos, los publicistas buscan crear comunidades de vida que substituyan cualquier otra referencia cultural o social en los individuos pertenecientes a ella. En un mundo globalizado, las marcas persiguen la lectura universal de sus símbolos y la configuración de hordas de fans o seguidores incondicionales que adopten sus estilos de vida. Es cierto que esta voluntad se encuentra diluida, desde una perspectiva más general, dentro de un abanico mucho más amplio de tipologías discursivas. Ahora bien, en este punto debemos tomar como marco de análisis la propuesta lanzada por Bernardo (2006). El autor propone un supuesto ineludible en cualquier análisis de los discursos mediáticos. Éste supuesto sería que la interrelación existente entre todos los discursos que conforman la programación mediática implicaría una unidad textual-comunicativa compleja y global que constituiría el marco de producción, comprensión e interpretación de cada uno de los programas individuales. En otras palabras, el sistema mediático opera, a la vez, de marco de producción y comprensión del sentido, en una estética como estesia y anestesia provocada por él (Silva Echeto, 2014: 62). Es decir, que las comunidades de sentido se desplazan (han venido desplazándose) hacia la virtualización de la experiencia y de la propia noción de sentido. Y sería en este contexto donde la publicidad de la última época, la del no lo olvides, encontraría su contexto expresivo ideal. La distorsión provocada por la mezcla conceptual y de ideas encuentra así su medio de expresión incontestable. ¿Con qué fin se aprovecharían la publicidad y los otros discursos de esta peculiaridad inherente a la comunicación mediática? Sin duda, para esquivar las 10

barreras de prevención racional que frente a sus efectos negativos y no deseados podrían desplegarse. Hemos observado que en determinadas situaciones pueden ocurrir crisis intersubjetivas de sentido. Los parámetros típicos de coherencia son diferentes en las diversas comunidades de vida, y también difieren de una sociedad a otra de un período a otro. La condición para que se produzca una crisis de sentido es que los miembros de una determinada comunidad de vida acepten incondicionalmente el grado de coincidencia de sentido que se espera de ellos, pero que sean incapaces de alcanzarlo (Berger y Luckmann, 2008: 50). A pesar de vivir en un universo virtual, los personajes y las situaciones etéreas que lo habitan y se reproducen en él ejercen su influencia sobre el mundo real. No olvidemos que la marca desea estar presente en el momento de la decisión de compra. Y a pesar de la aparente contradicción, no son cuestiones incompatibles. En contra de lo que muchos desearían, la realidad real es muy tozuda e insiste en seguir existiendo. Con todo, el pseudomundo generado por la sociedad del espectáculo, como anunciara Debord, ejerce una influencia magnífica sobre todas las cosas. La estrategia Incluso los más obtusos saben que no hay que discutir con ni tratar de convencer a una persona aquejada del mal de la estupidez. Los arrastraría hasta su nivel y ahí, la persona estúpida, es donde ejerce su maestría experta sin rival. En otras palabras, no hay máquina de manipulación más eficaz que aquella que convierte a la persona en estúpida, ya que por mucho que se intente después ésta no abandonará nunca sus puntos de vista. A este respecto, la publicidad postmoderna es una máquina perfecta de idiotización. Una herramienta sutil y bien engrasada de estupidización masiva. Porque el idiota, convencido más allá de la razón, permanece(rá) siempre en ese estado. Las marcas comerciales, a decir del reputado psiquiatra y gurú de la publicidad Clotaire Rapaille (En Goodman y Dretzin, 2003), deben ser capaces, justamente, de crear fidelidad más allá de la razón. ¿Apple o Microsoft? Este es el quid de la cuestión. Convertir a los consumidores en una suerte de idiotas que toman decisiones de compra sin saber realmente porqué las están tomando. Las estrategias de la publicidad emocional hace tiempo que iniciaron el proceso de separación de lo racional en la decisión de compra. En la era del no lo olvides dicha separación se lleva hasta sus últimas consecuencias en la implementación de una serie de estrategias que convierten el discurso publicitario en, como apuntamos, la máquina idiotizadora perfecta. La publicidad de la era del no lo olvides practica, no obstante, el equilibrio entre diferentes acciones. Combinadas, dichas acciones configuran una estrategia general que parte del branding emocional como premisa. Los productos, las empresas y los servicios se comunican solo para excitar nuestros sentidos, provocarnos reacciones 11

emocionales, generar implicación irracional. Esta práctica debe combinarse, no obstante, con otras para ser eficaz. Aquí es donde cobran una especial importancia la mezcla discursiva de conceptos y de estrategias comunicativas: la publicidad se mimetiza con la realidad en nuestra cotidianidad. Las empresas no volverán a cometer el error de permitir que desarrollemos inmunidad hacia ella. Desde una perspectiva factual, esta mímesis precisa de la ejecución de otra estratagema: el narrowcasting. Las publicidades masivas asociadas a la radio, la prensa y televisión convencionales, dejan paso progresivamente a un tipo de comunicación publicitaria mucho más personalizada. Esto conlleva que el usuario se sienta atendido en lo que entiende que es una preocupación por la marca en llevar hasta él lo que necesita. La confusión entre la pulsión o deseo y la necesidad no es nueva en el terreno de la comunicación publicitaria. Sin embargo, el nivel de perfeccionamiento es cada vez más sutil. Finalmente, las modernas técnicas de neuromárquetin culminan un proceso en el que la publicidad es indistinguible del fondo sobre el que se proyecta. Se convierte así en nuestro referente incuestionado. Se convierte en un elemento más del paisaje. Un elemento, sin embargo, que no debería estar ahí por ser antinatural. Y la manipulación de nuestras mentes se consigue retorciendo, machacando y triturando todos los referentes posibles; todas las ideas posibles, todos los marcos de comprensión y análisis imaginables. Todo vale para vender. Cualquier concepto que sea útil para vender zapatillas de deporte, automóviles o cremas milagrosas antienvejecimiento servirá a que creamos que ¡la vida es chula! Uno de los principales problemas que detectamos a este respecto parte del hecho de que la legislación que regula los discurso publicitarios a día de hoy no se aplica estrictamente. El segundo problema es que a pesar de su exhaustividad, se queda obsoleta en un mundo global, donde la aplicación de las leyes sigue estando en manos de las autoridades locales. La disparidad de normas y sentidos de aplicación permite a las grandes marcas globales burlar el control que debería haber sobre algunas de sus prácticas. Finalmente, la legislación en materia de publicidad debería reescribir la definición del concepto de lo subliminal. No como aquello que nuestra capacidad de atención no es capaz de percibir, sino como aquello que además nos convierte en una suerte de zombis irracionales. ¡La vida es chula! La no ideología de la publicidad es el resultado de combinar neutralidad y determinismo en un discurso que prolifera absolutizando publicitariamente la necesidad de productos (Méndez Rubio, 2003). Esta es la clave. En 2012, la marca global Desigual5 hizo fortuna con una serie de spots televisivos. En ellos, la empresa de

5 Recuperados de: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41OcC8RWhU8 y https://www.youtube. com/watch?v=qeD25jfn3f4.

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ropa empleaba la estrategia de la (falsa) transgresión presentando a un grupo de jóvenes, hombres y mujeres, probándose trapitos frente a un espejo. Estos hombres y mujeres, representantes de un cierto tipo de canon de belleza de éxito social, frivolizaban con cuestiones de una gravedad extrema: ¿me caso o no me caso? ¿Les digo a mis padres que soy homosexual o no? ¿Me voy de misionero con una ONG, o sigo haciendo el imbécil frente a un espejo con esta ropa? Comprar una blusa barata, o un ridículo pantalón a la moda, equivale en el cerebro de este ideal social de machos y hembras a dedicar la vida a combatir la pobreza en un país desfavorecido, o a tomar una decisión trascendente como casarse. El mensaje final de la campaña, ¡la vida es chula!, expresión infantil equivalente a un life’s cool! anglosajón, resume a la perfección la precisa capacidad de la publicidad de convertirlo todo en una vomitiva sopa de indefinición. En la mente de los descerebrados, las cosas más inverosímiles y alejadas entre ellas parecen tener la misma importancia. Es como si el hecho de decidir comprar unos zapatos horrorosos tuviera la misma trascendencia vital que declarar abiertamente la homosexualidad en un mundo profundamente homófobo. En la búsqueda incesante de mayor repercusión, la campaña de 2013 de Desigual6 llevó al extremo el planteamiento original. Ahora, se trataba de una chica jugando a ser mamá7 mientras se enfundaba un desagradable vestido cool, en un ambiente guay, tomando una decisión happy-flower sobre la maternidad. En un momento del anuncio, la actriz protagonista decide finalmente “ser mamá”. Pero no lo decide de cualquier manera: lo hace pinchando con un alfiler el preservativo que, tal y como el lector habrá podido intuir, gastará a posteriori con algún “afortunado” padre. Y queremos que quede meridianamente claro: no se trata de una lectura moralista ni con pretensiones moralizantes. Nada más lejos de nuestra intención. Sencillamente no entendemos que en un mundo pretendidamente civilizado, la expresión de la moda más insustancial y de comprar ropa equivalga a la grave responsabilidad de tener hijos. Este ejemplo, que nos ha servido de forma emblemática, no es en absoluto el único. Cualquier súper-marca globalizada practica el mismo deporte comunicativo. Y no resulta difícil encontrar decenas de anuncios y campañas comerciales en las que lo trascendente, o aquello que debería ser trascendente o no frivolizable, mezclado con la expresión emocional de adquirir una colonia, unos zapatos, o un automóvil. En la campaña de 2013, Desigual fue obligada a rectificar y modificar el spot original. Pero solo fue prohibida la versión del spot en la que la actriz pinchaba el condón y sin perjuicio de la extensa difusión que tuvo la versión no cortada a través de las plataformas digitales de comunicación. El resto del anuncio, con el mensaje de fondo (¿vestiditos o ser mamá?) seguía estando ahí.

6 Recuperado de: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8D6OFJPvyRM. 7 La actriz que aparece en el spot coloca una almohada debajo del vestido simulando un embarazo.

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Por un lado, la empresa consiguió la repercusión publicitaria extra de la polémica. Por otro lado, no se evitó en absoluto el problema de fondo. Ahora bien, la cuestión que reviste mayor importancia es, a nuestro entender, que en la inmensa mayoría de las ocasiones ni se produce polémica ni mucho menos se produce rectificación. Y esta es la razón por la que los discursos sexistas, racistas, y con todos los tópicos imaginables e inimaginables campen a sus anchas en los discursos publicitarios. Campan a sus anchas inundando las adormecidas conciencias de los clientes-usuarios que naturalizan desde la cotidianeidad, con una facilidad pasmosa, cualquier tipo de comparación en los términos descritos. ¿Cómo lo hacen? A la manera de un icono de la contracultura y la crítica capitalista como Bob Dylan prestando su imagen para la campaña de uno de los bancos responsables de la crisis mundial, que provocó desde 2008 una de las recesiones económicas más grandes y profundas que se recuerdan (ING Direct8). O a la manera de una bella joven vietnamita, que gracias a la irresistible acción de un desodorante cae rendida a los pies del militar norteamericano que bombardea con napalm su país (Axe Peace9). O a la manera de un automóvil tóxico y contaminante que se convierte en la respuesta del mundo a los requerimientos provocados por el cambio climático y la escasez de recursos energéticos (BMW10). Etc. Conclusiones En un mundo ideal no hay lugar para el pensamiento racional. Una suerte de new wave postmoderna nos invita constantemente a dejarnos llevar por nuestros deseos y nuestras emociones. Es decir, nos invita a que sean solo nuestros instintos animales más primarios los que nos gobiernen. Los sentimientos y las emociones están de moda y los discursos publicitarios, corresponsables de la situación, llevan hasta límites insospechados la excitación extrema de nuestros sentidos. Como decíamos, en el mundo perfecto de la publicidad, alejadísimo de nuestra realidad real, no hay espacio para la prevención racional. Todo es y pasa por la imagen que vale más que mil palabras. La cultura del branding alcanza cada vez a más personas. Las súper-marcas y las grandes multinacionales que las gestionan ocupan cada vez más un lugar preponderante en la lista de instituciones, simbólicas y no simbólicas, de socialización. Somos lo que compramos y el producto, con absoluta independencia de sus cualidades físicas y/o racionales, nos define como somos; aquello que somos. La brandización de la sociedad se consigue mediante la estrategia definida líneas atrás. Las súpermarcas deben crear una fidelidad que vaya más allá de la razón y todo porque la 8 Recuperado de: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pg8ZRHn2ZKs. 9 Recuperado de: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63b4O_2HCYM. 10 Recuperado de: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhJk1wMbNR4.

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fe no puede discutirse. Y aún hay más: el poseedor de la fe no cuestiona, no duda, no pregunta; simplemente acata. La era del no lo olvides es una cultura fuertemente virtualizada. Nuestros espaciotiempo relacionales reales se diluyen en un magma de intercambios y flujos de comunicación canalizados a través de los medios y de las tecnologías digitales de la comunicación. Vivimos en un mundo virtual de sensaciones desechables (Gitlin, 2005), en el que la falsa emoción producida por un producto o su imagen de marca dura lo que dura un spot publicitario. En ese nivel, la banalidad implícita en la compra de un jersey a la última moda se equipara a la lucha por los derechos humanos, la dignidad del ser, o la lucha contra las desigualdades. Todo vale. La publicidad, la máquina trituradora de la diferencia, así lo hace posible. Nada es ya reconocible. En un mundo sin diferencias, ¿dónde será posible establecer los puntos de referencia? ¿Cómo trazaremos las líneas de ningún mapa que nos guíe en el caos? Inmersos en el magma de la indiferencia(ción), cada vez estaremos más solos y perdidos. Cualquier crítica será desoída y todo se encontrará al mismo nivel. Y tener hijos, casarse o marcharse a África a dedicar nuestra vida a los demás significará lo mismo que comprar unos pantalones. Bibliografía 1. Berger, Peter L. y LUCKMANN, Thomas (1996), La construcción social de la realitat, Herder, Barcelona. 2. – (2008), Modernidad, pluralismo y crisis de sentido, Paidós, Barcelona. 3. Bernardo, José María (2006), El sistema de la comunicación mediática. De la comunicación interpersonal a la comunicación global, Tirant lo Blanch, Valencia. 4. Capriotti, Paul (1999), Planificación estratégica de la imagen corporativa, Ariel, Barcelona. 5. Checa, Antonio (2007), Historia de la publicidad, Netbiblo, A Coruña. 6. Eguizabale, Raúl (1998), Historia de la publicidad. Eresma & Celeste, Madrid. 7. Gitlin, Todd (2005), Enfermos de información, Paidós, Barcelona. 8. Goodman, Barak y DRETZIN, Rachel (2003), The Persuaders [Documental]. Disponible en: [http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/persuaders/]. 9. Klein, Naomi (2001), No Logo, Paidós, Barcelona. 10. Lyotard, Jean-François (2004), La condición postmoderna, Cátedra, Madrid. 11. Llorca Abad, Germán (2011), Lucidez desarticulada, En Ghrebh-, núm. 17, pp. 142-152. 12. Martin Llaguno, Marta y Hernandez Ruiz, Alejandra (2011), El control de la comunicación comercial en un mundo globalizado. En Lecciones del Portal, PortalComunicación. com – INCOMUAB, disponible en: [http://portalcomunicacion.com/lecciones_det. asp?lng=esp&id=50]. 13. Medina, Pablo y BUIL, Pilar [coords.] (2013), La publicidad sí vende, Ediciones B, Barcelona. 14. Mendez Rubio, Antonio (2003), La apuesta invisible, Montesinos, Barcelona.

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15. Ramonet, Ignacio (1999), La tiranía de la comunicación, Debate, Madrid. 16. Ries Al y Trout, Jack (2002), Posicionamiento, la batalla por su mente, McGraw-Hill, México. 17. Silva Echeto, Víctor (2014), Caos y catástrofe, Gedisa, Barcelona. 18. Vilajoana, Sandra (2011), Las leyes de la publicidad, UOC, Barcelona. 19. Virilio, Paul (1998), La máquina de visión, Cátedra, Madrid. 20. Zenith Optimedia (2013), La estabilidad en las inversiones publicitarias mundiales allana el camino hacia la recuperación, disponible en: [http://blogginzenith.zenithmedia.es/ estudio-zenith-la-estabilidad-en-las-inversiones-publicitarias-mundiales-en-2013-allana-el-camino-hacia-la-recuperacion/].

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The Research of Mass-Media – Dynamics, Figures and Astonishments

Marian PETCU University of Bucharest e-mail: [email protected]

Arina URECHE Transmedia Romanian Audit Bureau, Bucharest e-mail: [email protected]

Abstract. Our study is based on the measurements performed by The Transmedia Romanian Audit Bureau (BRAT), during the 2002-2014 timeframe, a period chosen in order to observe the changes that the media offer in Romania has been going through. We present here the dynamic of the media consumption, including the access to the new information and communication technologies. The Internet consumption performs an important role, because here is where we find the explanations regarding the changes that took place in the cultural/media consumption. A secondary analysis, performed over the database of the National Library (The Legal National Repository), has allowed us to evaluate the state of the written press in the recent years. We also present the evolution of the written publications’ circulation and the trends that have manifested in mass media. Key words: mass media, Romania, Internet, market research, study, cultural consumption, BRAT users.

Internet consumption in Romania Recent research performed by specialized institutions such as The Transmedia Romanian Audit Bureau – its National Readership and Audience Study – indicate a significant increase of the Internet consumption. For example, between 2002 and 2014, the number of the Internet users has increased from 1,774,000 persons from 17

Journal of Media Research, 3(20)/2014, pp. 17-24

the age group 14-64 years, living in the urban environment, to 6,576,000, which means 75% of the researched population (meaning the representative sample for this large group of population that was questioned for this research). During the relatively small interval of time December 2013 – July 2014, the number of user has grown by 108,000. As for the Internet user’s profile, one can notice an increase of the share held by women, from 45% in 2002 to 50% in 2014, which reflects the population’s distribution on genders, according to The National Institute for Statistics (48% men, 52% women). The number of people who reported to be daily Internet consumers is of 4,892,000 persons, that is: 55%, compared to 505,000 persons in 2002, (8%). The profile of the Internet user If we were to relate, as above, to the urban population (14-64 years), we will notice that the group which has the largest share in the total is the 25-44 years age group, meaning 51% (on the 1st of July 2014). For comparison, it is worth adding that the group of people aged of 14-24 years hold a share of 25%, those of 45-54 years have a share of 18%, while those with the age of 55-64 years, 8%. By referring to the total of the population that was investigated, we will notice that only 6% of young people (group of age: 14-24 years) don’t use the Internet; the same proportion is kept in the case of the 25-44 years age group, so the proportion held by the non-users is the same: 6%; but out of those aged 55-64 years, 9% don’t use the Internet. The users’ level of education is another important indicator. For example, out of the 35% share of the urban population which has primary and secondary studies (those who have graduated primary education and secondary education), 26% are constant users; out of those 41% which have college studies, all are Internet consumers; those with a higher education (who had graduated a faculty or university) represent 24% out of the total population and 31% out of the Internet consumers, hence the conclusion that 7% of the people with a higher education don’t use the Internet. The geographic distribution of the Internet users presents itself as such: 17% in Bucharest, 25% in cities with more than 200,000 inhabitants, 28% in cities with 50200,000 inhabitants and 30% in smaller cities or towns which have less than 50,000 inhabitants. As for people’s attitude towards the Internet, the number of people who believe it “is indispensable for work-job / for school” has increased from a weight of 49% in 2006 to 61% in 2014, meaning an gain of 12 percentage points; the weight held by those who trust the information found on the Internet has decreased with 9 percentage points, that is: from the maximum of 44% reached in 2008, to 35% in 2014, when it is on a growth trend. Out of the total number of Internet users, 60% have declared they use the Internet when they need a piece of information, and this weight marks 18

an increase of 27 percentage points compared to the weight reached in 2006. Other relevant answers were: “The comments posted by others on the Internet are useful” – state 50% of the users, in 2014; “Internet advertising doesn’t bother me” – are saying 39% of the users; “Internet shopping makes my life easier” – 36%. When they were asked about the purpose they have in mind when accessing the Internet, 62% of all the respondents said that they have looked for information using the browsers; 58% in order to use the e-mail; 48% have been looking for classified ads; 41% have downloaded software, programs or games; 35% have listened to the online radio, while 30% have joined some group discussions (on chat, on forums, on newsgroups) At the 1st of July 2014, the most accessed sites were those which advertise job offers (30%), followed by the sites of art and culture (29%), the sites of the online stores (24%), the generalist portals (20%); the sites presenting information from the real estate market (12%) and those specialized in business / finance / stock exchanges (11%). We add that the Internet is used at home by 64% of the users, at work by 20% of them, at school/faculty by 9% and it is used from another place by 23%. Out of the total population that was investigated, 80% had an at home Internet connection at the 1st of July 2014, which means 7,101,000 inhabitants. Out of all the Internet users, 41% are accessing the Internet from their mobile phone. The Internet Users’ Level of Education. Urban sample, 14-64 years. Source: BRAT, July 2014. The reports issued by The National Authority for Administration and Regulation in Communications are also showing a significant increase in the number of Internet connections. For example, during 1 July-31 December 2013 were registered 3.8 million connections from fixed points – meaning an increase of 7.1% compared to the same period of time in the previous year – and a growth of 34.8% in the number of connections from active mobile points. And finally, according to the official statistic, the penetration rate of the services which are providing users with Internet access (fixed points) per 100 inhabitants was, at the end of 2013, of 25.9% in the urban areas and 10.6% in rural areas – a situation that can be better explained by the penetration rate per 100 households: 60.1% in the urban areas (an increase of 3.4 percentage points compared to 2012) respectively 28.3% in rural areas (an increase of 3.3 percentage points compared to 2012). Consumption of electronic media The research shows that, during the interval 2006-2014, some spectacular changes have taken place in the structure of consumption. For example, for the indicator “average daily time” spent consuming media and expressed in minutes/person, the following values were recorded: 258 minutes on the Internet, 197 minutes on TV, 105 minutes on Radio. More precisely, during the last 9 years, there was a gain of 19

47 minutes in the case of Internet, while TV lost 14 minutes daily and the Radio lost 34 minutes. One can notice that the Internet consumption grew most rapidly, from 138 minutes average daily time to 258 minutes. Both in the case of TV watching or viewing and in the case of listening to the Radio, there is trend of a significant decrease of the daily time dedicated to them, especially starting with the year 2012. The daily mass-media consumption has gone, during the interval 2002-2014, through the following evolutions: TV consumption decreased from 89% to 80%; the Internet consumption grew from 8% to 55%; the Radio from 59% to 35%; newspapers consumption decreased from 47% to 13%, while the magazine consumption decreased from 18% to 6% (these figures reflect what happened in the case of the population from the urban areas). The Attitude Towards the Internet. Urban sample, 14-64 years. Source: BRAT, July 2014. For example, at the end of August 2014, in Romania there were 594 functional radio licenses, out of which – according to the method used to broadcast the signal: terrestrial, satellite or cable – 561 were given for frequencies allowing the broadcasting of terrestrial radio, 30 were for satellite radio and 3 for cable radio. A certain form of concentration is manifested in this area, too, in the sense that some companies own a lot of licenses, including national networks. For example, the firm “S.C. P7S1Radio Holding srl” owns 91 frequencies, out of which 89 are for terrestrial broadcasting and 2 for broadcasting through satellite; an association named “Asociaţia Centrului Media Speranţa” in Voluntari (a town which is also a suburb of Bucharest) owns 46 licenses; the company “S.C. Grupul Media Camina”, with its office in Bucharest, owns 39 licenses; the public broadcaster “Societatea Română de Radiodifuziune”, 24; the firm “S.C. On Air Studio SRL”, Bucharest, 18 and so on. It is worth noticing that there are 7 companies which own national radio networks – Radio XXI Bucureşti, Radio France International, Bucharest (2), ABC Plus Media Oradea, Patriarhia Ortodoxă Română (The Romanian Orthodox Patriarchy), Europe Developement International Bucureşti and Minisat Telecom Târgovişte. As for the TV licenses, there were given 191 licenses for terrestrial television, 104 for satellite television and 308 for cable television. In the case of TV there are, also, notable differences – a media company such as “Pro TV Bucureşti” has 44 TV licenses, another media company “Antena TV Group” has 41, the company “Nextgen Communications” has 24, and so on, but most competitors own just one license, usually for terrestrial TV and/or cable TV. Overall, 2,426 licenses for audiovisual broadcasting are active, owned by 734 companies and by other kinds of entities (such as The Romanian Orthodox Patriarchy, The Moldavian Metropolitan etc.) and all these licenses are dispersed in 7,869 cities and towns. 20

On the Romanian media market, the terrestrial radio licenses are owned by 184 competitors, the terrestrial TV licenses are owned by 67 competitors, while 356 companies have got the licenses for the programs’ retransmission through cable. The Press The statistic data collected by the National ISSN Center – “Centrul National ISSN6” – which keeps the evidence of the serial publications according to the International Standard Serial Number, for short: ISSN, defined by ISO 3297) – indicate the fact that, during the recent years, there was a significant increase of the number of the publications issued in Romania. For example, during the year 2007, in Romania were being published 2,400 head-titles (of newspapers, magazines and other periodical publications); in 2012 – 2,780 head-titles; in 2013 – 2,791 head-titles. We need to specify that these values mean codes assigned to the head-titles which exist in the Legal Repository – a periodical publication can even have three codes – for their print edition, for their online edition and for the CD Rom edition. What is the meaning we give to these data? It is related to the unprecedented multiplication of the entities, which are providing the offer of periodical publications – as there are thousands of schools and other education institutions which are “producing” their own internal magazines, while out of them there are many which get an ISSN code and, as such, they appear in the specialized statistics. The explanation of this phenomenon lays in the fact that the teachers and professors are assessed according to a set of criteria which includes the criterion which states the editing and publishing a school’s periodical publication. As for the commercial sector, the editors know that having an ISSN code ensures a reduction of the VAT by 9%, according to the Fiscal Code, irrespective of the publication’s quality and its circulation. According to the monitoring performed by BRAT, the publications’ circulations have decreased dramatically between 2000 and 2013, to the point where many of them have ceased their editing and were closed, especially after the year 2008, when the effects of the economic crisis are felt (the purchasing power declines; in the public sector, which is financed from the state’s budget, the salaries are reduced; the Internet consumption is growing etc.). Some of the newspapers with a very high circulation are cutting down the number of copies they put into circulation, as the daily newspaper “Evenimentul zilei” (“The Event of the Day”) had done, from 116,850 copies average circulation/issue, down to 20,935 copies, a measure to which it had added a smaller format, fewer pages, fewer editors etc. The daily newspaper “România Liberă” (“Free Romania”), cuts down its circulation from 76,958 copies to 39,333 copies, in terms of gross daily average circulation. The daily newspaper “Adevărul” (“The Truth”) reduces its circulation from 194,348 copies to 17,408 copies and, at the same time, it closes its network of free-of-charge 21

distributed newspapers (the evening editions, which used to be issued and published in the capitals of the counties). At the end of 2013, there were circulations as low as the ones of the local or regional publications “Ziarul de Iaşi” – 6,158 copies; “Obiectiv Vocea Brăilei”– 4,381 copies; “Observatorul de Constanţa” – 1,000 copies; “Ziarul de Roman” – 614 copies; “Crişana”, 6,517 copies; “Gazeta de Sud” (a regional newspaper, edited in Craiova city) – 14,128 copies; “Transilvania expres” – 5,267 copies. Still, there were some increases in circulation, recorded by publications such as “Libertatea“ (“The Freedom”, a daily tabloid) – which grows from an average circulation of 91,790 copies to 123,607 copies, and “Gazeta sporturilor” (“The Sports’ Gazette”) – which has grown from 33,999 to 46,205 copies. Even the most faithful audiences, and here we refer to the feminine audiences, have abandoned some head-titles of women magazines, whose circulation decreased sharply – “Ioana” shrinks from 120,115 copies to 35,800 copies; “Femeia” (“The Woman”) from 55,000 down to 20,142 copies; “Cosmopolitan” from 50,500 to 26,000 copies; “Practic – idei pentru casă, grădină şi apartament” (“Practical – Ideas for House, Garden and Apartment”), from 100,589 to 39,333 copies; “Avantaje” (“Advantages”) from 90,433 to 21,205 copies etc. The trend manifested by the decrease of circulations had become more and more striking. During the time period we are referring to, many publications have left the market, while some have continued to be issued only in their online edition – such as the former daily newspapers “Gândul” (“The Thought”), “Cotidianul” (“The Daily”) and others. One can notice a significant decrease in the total number of daily newspapers issued and published in the entire country, from 80 in 2007, to 51 in 2010 and 53 in 2012, then 49 in 2013. If we make a hierarchy of the periodical publications, according to the Decimal Universal Classification, we will notice that, in the last 10 years, a pretty strange distribution has been kept. Most of the periodicals belong to the class “Education. Teaching. Leisure Time”, followed by the “Religion” class, then by “Civilization. Culture”, “Applied sciences – Medicine”, “Technical. Engineering”, “Law. Legislation. Jurisprudence”, “Literature”, “Zonal monographs” etc. The last class in this succession includes, actually, the local and regional press (around 98 head-titles at the level of the entire country). Conclusions Factors such as the new information and communication technologies – especially the Internet – the economic crisis, the erosion of the journalism’s prestige, the generalization of the “press release” type of journalism, have all led to some significant decreases of the publications’ audiences and, also, have led to changes in the forms of culture consumption. The new forms of journalism, such as the one of the “news aggregators” – which gather in a single place the news published by other news sites – have led to breaches 22

in the professional and moral norms of behavior and have generated the audiences’ confusion – in the sense that the indiscriminate “taking over” of the contents found in any kind of online support, without a minimum of checking, determines the reader to regard with distrust some media offers. The evolution of the telecommunications technologies, which has been faster than ever, made possible the consumption of messages received via mobile phones and, also, the “free-of-charge” access to the Internet from many public locations – and the effect of these was the generalization of the newspapers’ online editions, the release of some video productions created by the editorship of the newspapers and magazines etc. The Internet also solves an issue which couldn’t be solved in the last 25 years by the companies which were in the press business – the penetration of the press into the rural areas. Despite the fact that the level of endowment with electronic equipments is low in these areas, there is something that might give us hope: the fact that the education institutions, the public libraries, the administrative units etc, are equipped with computers and have got Internet connections. We notice that the mass media’s traditional economic model has been abandoned, because of the same factor: the communication technologies – and while the printing facilities, the actual paper and the distribution made up the largest share in the total expenses around five or six years ago, now the dissemination of the media products is performed at small costs and throughout unlimited geographical spaces. The biggest challenge that must be overcome on this market, where competition is quite intense, is represented by the contents provided to the audiences and this challenge is an even more dramatic now than it was before the emergence of the Internet. References 1. The National Romanian Bibliography. Serial publications. The National Library of Romania, The Legal Repository, 2013. 2. Research Report, The Transmedia Romanian Audit Bureau (BRAT), July 2014. 3. Research Report, SATI (acronym of the Romanian name of “Studiul de Audienta si Trafic Internet”, or “The Study of the Audiences and Internet Traffic”, performed by BRAT) , Bucharest, July 2014. 4. Research Report, The Focus National Study of Audience, July 2014. 5. The Office for Licenses and Authorizations, The Situation of the number of licences per each society, Radiobroadcast, the 27th of August 2004, http://www.cna.ro/Situaţia privind licenţele, 6771.html – link accessed on the 10th of September 2014. 6. The market of mobile communications services in Romania. Statistical data report, ANCOM (The National Authority for Management and Regulation in Communications), The Executive Direction for Regulation, site: www.ancom.org.ro, accessed on the 10th of September 2014.

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Endnotes (1) The Transmedia Romanian Audit Bureau (BRAT) an associative form which represents the media industry in Romania and whose headquarter is in Bucharest. (2) SATI’s research involve an universe composed of the urban population aged 14-74 years, the sample being constituted out of 50,000 interviewed persons; the SNA Focus studies are performed within the same population and involve a sample of 14,000 persons/interviews. (3) The market of the mobile communications services in Romania. Statistical data report, ANCOM (The National Authority for Management and Regulation in Communications), The Executive Direction for Regulation, p. 36, site: www.ancom.org.ro, accessed on the 10th of September 2014. (4) According to the National Institute of Statistics, in Romania there are 7,481,155 households, out of which 4,215,125 in the urban environment and 3,266,130 in the rural environment. (5) The Office for Licenses and Authorizations, The Situation of the number of licences per each society, Radiobroadcast, the 27th of August 2004, http://www.cna.ro/Situaţia privind licenţele, 6771.html – link accessed on the 10th of September 2014. (6) The Legal National Repository – The National Library of Romania. (7) The Romanian Audit Bureau Transmedia (BRAT), Research Report, July 2014.

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The Content Management of Media Convergence

Magor KÁDÁR Babeș-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca e-mail: [email protected]

Zsolt KÖNCZEY MA student, Babeș-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca

Abstract. The media convergence of the internet-based society can be the main solution for the printed media to hold and communicate more efficiently with the consumers. The paper gives a brief overlook on the aspects of online communication, the transformation of the consumer’s expectation and satisfaction and the new ways of content management. The overlook can be useful in understanding or teaching the online media and media convergence. Keywords:media convergence, online content management, online communication, online journalism, multimedia, interactivity.

The convergence of the media platforms Media convergence means the synchronization of the traditional media channels with online platforms, making possible for the consumers to spend more time with the content, produced by the media institution. Nowadays it is indispensable for the media companies to give these platforms in the service of convergence. In the future the platforms have to be formed according to the users’ expectations, as the consumer whishes to use it. Actually the process started with the appearance of the Web 2.0. Today we speak about user-generated content and in the future amateurs can become media and content generators. Because of the data quantity a main server will be needed, being capable of releasing all the necessary data at the 25

Journal of Media Research, 3(20)/2014, pp. 25-32

same time. Also it should be able to determine whether the searched data should be available fully or just partially and when it could be accessed, in the means of time. Besides these characteristics it is important that system is capable of choosing the proper channels (Ilchi, 2010). In the means of the media platforms’ contents, the online platforms of the media products need to provide the most kinds of services available. Speaking of userbased platforms it is an important aspect that these platforms are so called smart platforms, being able to memorize the consumers’ settings, tools and contents. As a result of this in the future, the convergence is going to make it possible to access from different carriers the personalized contents (Gundelsweiler–Filk). The platform changes will bring the popularity of new income sources, for the media channels; an example for this is the high usage of the e-book readers. The above mentioned process will increase the selling of the digital contents and the popularity of new platforms (PWC Hungary, 2012). The conquest of the digital media will be more substantial than the conquest of the traditional and printed media. Because of its usual platform, the last one mentioned, will remain in the background. When the mediators are thinking about media portfolios, they have the opportunity of relocation. To do this they have to guarantee the traditional platform for the elder and the several times mentioned, online platform for the youth; an interactive platform with multimedia. The converged platforms in the following way, will be able to support the mediators, because in traditional cases they function from the advertisement incomes. (Más Rádió, 2011). The characteristics of the online communication The presents of the internet and online communication radically changed the communication models, as this is the first many-to-many channel. Today the communication through the online platforms is inseparable from the mass-communication, nevertheless the internet became the main mass-communication tool. Furthermore the interaction became important. One has to understand beneath this statement, that different media contents structure disbands; in many cases the users create contents. Building upon the new media’s characteristics, it was considered to be important at this point the construction of a user friendly platform, which can be used collectively, with the possibility of reaching larger communities and to activate tighter and stronger relationships. Furthermore it is also considered to be important in this matter: the dynamic, compressed competence, the opened remixing/ syncing possibility and the recombination of the innovations. Sharing, interaction and openness are valorized. (Fehér, 2013). The new media’s world appears the content producer and communicator user. With the opportunity of interaction they can change the well known media characteristics, changing this way the media companies’ monopoly situation. 26

The changed consumer habits According to a survey from 2004 made by the American Magid Associates, in the means of media consuming the users can be split into four groups (Bodoky, 2007): 1. just online consumers (a usual news monitoring, several times in a week, in the online space and they rarely use of the offline platforms); 2. just offline consumers (prioritizing the printed media, skipping the online content); 3. consumers using several channels(monitoring online and offline content as well); 4. unskilled consumer (rare usage of the media platforms). In the same time, as the new media appeared, next to the above mentioned groups the audience segmentation and the differentiated audience appeared, having its effect on the online consumers’ world as well. However the new media’s content targets wide range of communities, they can’t be viewed as mass-audience, because the messages are not received at the same time and what is more important the message is not the same for everybody. According to the above stated, we can’t speak about mass media in the case of the new media, because it doesn’t send a limited number of messages and we can’t speak about a solid mass-audience either. The user base is selected and thought its extensiveness remained, sending to different units specific messages. According to Youichi Ito, professor of the Akita National University, the mass-society becomes a segmented society, as a result of the new communication technology. The new technology’s aim is to give a specialized briefing, because the audience, the ideologies, the values and the life style are being segmented (Castells, 2011). In the new media’s system the message is the mediator. In an approachable way the message defines the mediator’s characteristics, no matter if it is musical, picture based, multimedia based or any kind of channel. The result is that it targets not just different segments, but the target audience will be segmented, according to preferences, based on the messages and channels (Castells, 2011). The users feel the need to have the control over the media platforms. The new media allows the users to choose the content, being relevant to them and this opportunity is used by the consumers very often. Because of the Web 2.0, the readers became the editors, deciding in which content they are interested. Beside this they point out their opinion with joy, adding this way to the materials value. In an ideal situation the user not just gets the content but he or she adds to it. We don’t speak about just consumers in this way, in the new media, but we speak of content generators as well, both in the same person. In the past few years the claim for a user-generated content has grown. Due to the Web 2.0 the consumers found those platforms, where they can express their 27

opinion and where they can edit the contents, being relevant to them. The videos, blogs, multimedia contents, mobile contents and Wikipedia can be viewed as UGC (Takács, 2007). According to Melinda McAdams, who took part in preparing of publishing the online edition of The Washington Post, the media consumer needs to be involved in the content generation. Today the one way communication is not enough, the readers expect extra from the service providers (Frank, 2002). A new key term appeared besides the user generated content (UGC). The so called mass self-communication appeared. Castells’ point of view states that this new communication form is the result of the new technology, which can be viewed as the revolution of the media. The main point of this process is that the consumer at the same time becomes the source as well. The mass self-communication is similar to the mass-communication: anybody is able to decode the message if the proper tools are there. The users feel the need to express their opinion, for this, the social networks and the blogs are the perfect platforms. The blog became an opportunity, where the user can exercise any form of the self-expression. The mass self-communication is present in the social network as well. It is a characteristic in today’s society, the fact, that the consumers are able to have a say in the media channel’s running system and status by expressing their opinion (Nechita, 2012). The reader behavior changes are strongly related to the consuming changes. The internet changed these components. Today the readers’ interests have the next characteristics (Lee, 2008): 1. fast-paced society, wanting the news “NOW”; 2. overvaluing the timeliness and convenience; 3. because of the busy schedules and the constant waywardness more and more opportunities to access the news; 4. Shorter news, so called pull-out boxes; 5. Multitakers; 6. The changed interest for the new; 7. Skepticism in the means of trustworthiness of the news; 8. Better content service; 9. Multimedia and interactivity; 10. Feature-styled stories in the place of dry news, especially in the case of the printed version; 11. More mass/local news; 12. Complex subjects, in an easy and understandable way; 13. Articles which: a. Give a subject to talk about; b. Make the reader cleverer or more educated; c. Pay attention to the readers’ civilian and personal interests; 28

14. Go and do articles; 15. Short online stories; 16. In content promotion, differencing the present mediator from the competition. In another perspective for the future generation the traditional media platforms will remain important, however provided services will not be enough for the future generation. The consumer index goes in the direction of the multi channels and at the same time more content provider media (PWC Hungary, 2012). The media companies need to take into consideration the efficient transmission of the relevant content, based on age groups, because while the youth’s favorite is the internet, the elders prioritize the traditional platforms. Viewing the consumer segmentation, the ideal mediator is: the one who can reach every target group, allowing in the same time to users of different channels the communication (Más Rádió, 2011). Repositioning the content service The changed consumer needs develop necessity of repositioning the content. Under such circumstances the examination of the interactivity becomes important, because interactivity is in a strong relation with the content and the consumer changes. The content consuming grows because of this, taking in consideration the fact, that users tend to spend more time in a platform, which is interested in them. Tim Guay’s point of view states that interactivity’s highest level is the adaptive interaction, meaning that a web site, if not directly, but on short term, could accommodate to the user’s needs. If a website is more interactive for the user, the content seems more personal (Frank, 2002). Two professors from Boston University, Sally J. McMillan and Edward J. Downes, state the interactivity can be grown by the following factors: 1. If the purpose of the communication is the exchange of the information 2. If the user gets an active role on the website 3. If the two sided communication is reached on the online platform 4. If the users communicate with each other 5. If the content makes the virtual surrounding real. We can separate three levels of interactivity: navigational, functional and adaptive. Under the navigational interactivity, we understand the process in which the user decides on the site’s content, in means of what and in which order he or she wants to read from the content. For this the source or the platform’s proper management is needed. The functional interactivity makes it possible for the user, to search trough key words and titles. The third level, the adaptive interactivity offers the possibility of personalizing the website’s content. According to L. Massey and Mark R. Levy the online interactivity can be reached in four different ways: based 29

on the composition of the reachable choosing possibilities, based on the usage, with the help of interpersonal communication and with the creation of an easy way to add information (Deuze, 2003). In the process of repositioning the content, the option of personalization has to be taken in to consideration. This would mean a content service, where there is no superfluity and having only the content in which we are interested (Frank, 2002). With the help of the digital technology an attractive, customized content can be reached for the customers. Furthermore it is important that the printed media can fill out extra information because of the digital technology, for example with the help of the QR code, reachable in an easy way from smart phones (PWC Hungary, 2012). All of this predicts an interactive multimedia content era. Under interactive multimedia content, we understand the whole of those contents, which can be accessed easily from smart phones, tablets or any kind of digital tools. In these platforms the users can select the relevant information for themselves, so the customization prevails (Gundelsweiler–Filk). The new form of the content service will be the integrated multi-channel form, having more advantages to the mediators (Ilchi, 2010): 1. More channels mean higher income possibilities and with this the user base grows as well. 2. The increased consumer need for the web and mobile applications can be used. 3. The employee’s productive skills will grow due to the easy way of reaching this channels 4. Increases the consumers’ satisfaction by the possibility of reaching the multi-channels. 5. Strengthens the brand’s visibility and awareness due to the web or mobile tools 6. Increases the online channel’s role as the main information source 7. Decreases the information, which reaches the users in the means of the time-to-market model, still it generates users. Respecting the above written such a content repositioning and sharing could be reached, which would give serious advantages against the competition. The online and offline mediator’s success highly depends on the content coordination and cooperation. (Lee, 2008). According to the above stated, the following content corrections should be taken into consideration: 1. In the case of the printed media those go and do themes are needed which inspire the reader to visit the newspaper’s online platform: at the end of the article a hint to the web site, to the blog and to complementary information; the reader not just reads the paper, but he or she uses it. 2. The printed media institutions should produce a multimedia version of the stories, which could be accessed on the official web site: the printed 30

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

and the online version need to be synced with the multimedia content in a symbolic way; this way the reader becomes a part of the story. In the case of online newspapers it would be important not to prioritize the subjects which are related to the whole country, but to accentuate the local news: besides the big news the hometown angle should have an important role. In the case of online newspapers the releasing of one or two push articles would be important. Articles that are considered important by the editors and could do an advertising and could identify them, with one world their presents would enter in the reader’s consciousness. The printed media’s stories should direct the readers to the institution’s professional blogs, where the subjects are discussed. The printed media’s fault is the lack of interaction; if the printed newspapers could relate to the relevant professional blogs in a certain matter, a discourse could appear between the author and the consumers. This could help the improvement of the mediator and to upgrade the interactivity. The so called letter to the editors could help to improve the popularity of the printed materials. In this case the aim would not be the papers based letters, but the electronic ones; reader would communicate through e-mails with editors of the printed stories. Explanation of the professional terms: every media product or article should include a reference sheet, where the readers can find the explanation of the professional terms; this can be achieved in online and offline form as well. More specific content is needed: with the help of this the mediator could be well delimited from the competition; taken from the field of advertisement the mediators should have unique advertising position.

Taking all this into consideration, we can state that the online and offline mediators with each other’s content supplementation could provide a very strong media form, the online media contents besides their hot and information centric news will become important part of the offline forms. The officiousness and the trustworthiness will become an indispensible for the media. The consumers only stay with a channel if that channel gives trustworthy and useful information (Wintermantel, 1999). The convergence becomes more and more a wide range tool, connecting and in many cases syncing the mass-channels; providing a new segmentation, content adaptability for a smaller, well defined consumer society. The consumers become an interactive attendant of the communication situation and after that they become content providers. This situation has to be answered by the companies by feeding the means of information, customized content and messages; attendance to the consumers and their involvement in to the process.

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References 1. Bodoky, Tamás, Nincstévém, nemolvasokpapírújságot (2007), retrieved May 02, 2013, from www.mediakutato.hu/cikk/2007_02_nyar/06_nincs_tevem/01.html. 2. Castells, Manuel (2011),Azújmédiaés a tömegközönségdiverzifikálódása, retrieved May 02, 2013. 3. Enyedi-Bak, Sarolta – Kádár, Magor (2008), The Fascinating World of Web 2.0, in: Jurnal of Media Research, 2/2008. 4. Fehér, Katalin.Azinternettőlazújmédiáig(2013), retrieved April 29, 2013 from www. feherkatalin.hu. 5. Frank, Benedek (2002), Online médiumokfejlődésiirányaiMagyarországon – Azinternettérhódítása: Azinternetesújságírás,retrieved May 02, 2013 from: www.elib.kkf.hu/ edip/D_8694.pdf. 6. Gundelsweiler, Fredrik –Filk, Christian (2013), Media Platforms for Convergence Journalisms, retrieved April 29, 2013, from EBSCOhost Online Research Databases. 7. Ilchi, Behzad (2010),Converging Media Platforms to Maximize Content Value, 2010,retrieved April 29, 2013, from EBSCO host Online Research Databases. 8. Lee, Lorraine (2008), Print and Online Newspapers: Working Together, Becoming Stronger,2008, retrieved May 02, 2013, from: www.readership.org/blog2/lorrainelee.pdf. 9. Nechita, Alina, Mass self-communication(2012), retrieved March 03, 2013 from: EBSCOhost Online Research Databases. 10. Price Waterhous eCoopers (Pwc) Hungary (2013),Szórakoztatóipariésmédiapiacikörkép 2012-2016, 2012, retrieved May 12, 2013, from www.pwc.com/hu/hu/media-es-szorakoztatoipar/assets/e-m-outlook-2012.pd. 11. Takács, Zoltán (2007), Amédiakonvergenciahatásaazelektronikusmédiaátalakulására, 2007, retrieved April 29, 2013, from: www.elib.kkf.hu/edip/D_13488.pdf. 12. Wintermantel, István (1999), A sajtójövője: az online hírlapok, retrieved May 02, 2013, from: mek.iif.hu/porta/szint/human/media/onlinhir.hun.

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Navigating Culture. Enhancing Visitor Museum Experience through Mobile Technologies. From Smartphone to Google Glass.

Anamaria TOMIUC Senior lecturer, PhD University of Art and Design Cluj-Napoca Department of Theoretical Subjects Email: [email protected]

Abstract. This paper focuses on the use of mobile technologies and their ability to engage audiences in a new type of exploration that enriches the museum experience. The rapid expansions of media technology, the universal access to the Internet, the continuous online presence in the social media are fundamentally changing the cultural experience. In the entertainment and the new museum era, the issue is no longer whether new media and technologies should be used by cultural institutions (more precisely, in this article, museums), but how they may be used so that they heighten the visitor experience. Therefore, we will explore the new relationship between technology and museums and the ways in which newly emerging technologies such as augmented reality could be used in order to transform the audience’s encounterwith culture. Keywords: mobile technologies, museum experience, Smartphone apps, augmented reality, Google Glass.

Introduction The beginning of the third millennium comes with a technological revolution: the digital sphere has been immersed in the everyday life of society. Websites, Ipads, Smartphones are only a small number of new media that have gained control 33

Journal of Media Research, 3(20)/2014, pp. 33-46

over our lives. The rapid expansions of media technology, the universal access to the Internet, the continuous online presence in the social media are fundamentally changing the cultural experience. In the entertainment and the new museum era, the issue is no longer whether new media and technologies should be used by museums (the focus of our study) but how they may be used to develop a richer, deeper and more immersive visitor experience. Generally, digital media have been explored in order to strengthen the communication process between the museums and their visitors, to provide new methods of visitor interaction with the collections and the art works. In this study we investigate some of the forms used by museums to build up a digital experience for the visitor, focusing on the use of Smartphone applications and the characteristics of the museum experience that they share. Through the review of literature and document analysis, we discuss five categories of fundamental topics that subsume different types of applications – art and ideas, interaction and creativity, curation and interpretation, behind the scenes journey, masterpieces tours and personal trails – and a series of character figures, metaphors for the museum visitor experience: the Explorer, the Analyst, the Listener, the Creator, the Gamer and the Socializer. We also acknowledge the next step in the evolution, by the insertion in the application technologies of augmented reality through which the visitor experience of the museum is highly enriched in terms of learning, entertainment and creativity. The new museum and the museum experience The new museology (Vergo, 1989) focuses on the social role of museums and on their interdisciplinary profile, along with new styles of communication. The new museology is promoting an open institution towards the public that focuses on the active participation of the visitor, which functions as a platform that generates social changes. Until the 80’s, the museum has been the ivory tower by excellence, without the need of other justification than its own existence. The cultural changes within the mediatized society generated real modifications in the museum’s constitution and an essential transition from an institution with an educational purpose towards an institution with a recreational purpose centered on the audience and its needs. More precisely, the museum is nowadays influenced by the consumption society and the entertainment era, aiming to transform art and culture in a spectacular performance. The focus of the new museum has moved from objects / collections on individuals / communities. The public, the audience and the contemporary individual are the concentration point of the new museology. The new museum reflects the dynamics and the multicultural nature of the 21st century, as it is an institution which favors dialogue, interpretation and experience. Museums are, therefore, exciting places for the visitors, free-choice learning environments (Falk & Dierking, 2000) that may shape identities – through access to objects, information and knowledge visitors can see themselves and their culture reflected in ways that encourage new connections, 34

meaning-making and learning (Hein, 1998; Hooper-Greenhil, 2000; Falk J.D., 1992). Nowadays, museums are involved in a real dialogue with their audience, based rather on interpretation than on absolute truths, sharing views and inviting the public to spend successive, countless experiences, to wonder, encounter and learn. Still, the learning outcome of the museum visit is second after its entertaining quality. Research has found that strong motivations to visit museums are leisure and entertainment (Moore, 1997; Packer & Ballantyne, 2002), as people visit museums for new experiences, worthwhile leisure, learning and entertainment in an exciting and stimulating environment. With the development of digital technologies and the rapid expansion of new media, museums have been undergoing a fundamental shift to a site for experiences. Emerging technologies (the wireless Web, virtual worlds, augmented realities overlaid on physical ones, advanced simulations and networked knowledge) have transformed everything that constitutes our notion of “reality”– our ability to sense our surroundings, our capacity to reason, our perception of the world (Burnette Stogner, 2009). The museums are re-evaluating their position in relationship with their audiences, while the new media technologies are changing the very concept of the museum. The issue is no longer whether to use this technology to recreate the museum experience, but how to use it for a maximum impact on the audience. The use of technologies and the digital experience of the museum Contemporary museum exhibitions are adopting a range of new media technology, from high definition videos, animation, music, sound effects, sets and lighting, to 3-D movies, 3-D interactive, 4-D sensoramas, holographic imagery, simulations, gaming and a lot of other new, emergent forms as means of ensuring the entertaining of the visitors. The traditional audio guides are replaced by multimedia tours, Smartphone apps, PDA’s, GPS locators, augmented reality to provide more complex information with instant access or on-demand. Through the use of the cyberspace, most museums are extending the visitor experience beyond their borders: websites provide supplementary on-line information, exhibitions or educational programs, creating connections and direct access to a global audience, while the Newseum and others offer virtual experiences on Second Life, where one’s avatar might join a docent avatar on a tour of a digitized exhibition. Different devices are used to personalize the museum experience, visitors calling for immediate personal relevance experience that results in clearly identified knowledge gain. The museum presence in social media (Facebook, Twitter, Myspace) generates direct feedback and new forms of participatory user experience, personal and shared. The use of new technologies demands a new type of literacy on behalf of the visitor, but, in the same time, they enable a high level of creative output and creative consumption. Two distinct new forms of museum experience are emerging (Burnette Stogner, 2009). The first is the media-enhanced on-site experience: richly multi-sensory, contextualized, experiential 35

and immersive. It is narrative-driven. It draws a diversity of people together and provides a collective experience. The second is the media-driven off-site experience that is personalized, on-demand, global and enables a vast sharing of information and personal experience. These types of experience reflect the new vision of museums that are now visitor centered, focused on reaching out multiple audiences, expanding their role of on-site and on-line cultural trend-setters. As Stephen Weil (Weil, 2007) observes, museums have shifted the balance from being about something to being for somebody. Challenging the unique authority of the curator, they invite visitors to actively create their own meaning from the collections, encouraging existing audiences to interact in new ways with the objects, as well as reaching out to new audiences. In this process, museums have been experimenting with different strategies and practices, exploring, among others, the use of new technologies which were developing very fast, permeating every aspect of social life. Introducing Smartphones The convergence of communication technologies and mobile consumer computing devices is on the way to bring interoperability and change the way people interact and communicate with the world. The Smartphone is the main device that is at the moment on the leading edge of this convergence process and it is playing the role of universal mobile terminal. The Smartphone term was introduced to refer to a new class of mobile devices that provide integrated capabilities including communication, computing and mobile services like voice communication, messaging, personal information management applications and wireless communication. In fact, the Smartphone is a mobile phone with more advanced computing capability and connectivity than basic feature phones. Smartphones typically combine the features of a phone with those of a computer and other popular consumer devices, such as a personal digital assistant, a media player, a digital camera, and/or a GPS navigation unit. Smartphones came to include all of those features, adding a touchscreen for easy user interaction, web browsing, Wi-Fi connectivity, 3rd-party apps, motion sensor and mobile payment. The adoption of Smartphones has been tremendous in mainstream consumer markets all over the world. Surveys show that around 42% of mobile subscribers in US use Smartphones, along with 44% of mobile users in 5 major countries of European Union (France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and UK) (Nurfit, 2012). Media usage on mobile – including browsing the mobile web, accessing application and downloading content saw a major increase and surpassed 50% in many markets. This introduced the high-speed networks and increased public WiFi availability in those areas. With the ability to connect on-the-go and use internet and mobile services, mobile users have not only adopted real-time social networking on their Smartphone at a growing rate but frequency of access has been also increasing day by day. A UK telecommunica36

tions regulator, Ofcom, released the following statistics as part of their study on Smartphone usage in the United Kingdom only: 37% of adults and 60% of teens admit they are highly addicted to their Smartphone; 51% of adults and 65% of teens say they have used their Smartphone while socializing with others; 23% of adults and 34% of teens have used their Smartphone during mealtimes; 22% of adult and 47% of teens admitted using or answering their Smartphone while in the bathroom (ComScoreInc, 2012). Smartphone Apps for museums There is considerable information and research on the use of multimedia technologies in the fields of cultural organizations and tourism for the provision of cultural interpretational information, but mostly connected to their technical aspects. Currently, the tools used to develop multimedia applications for mobile devices and their development process comprises of tasks for: multimedia content creation or optimization, interface design, interaction design and service development or provision, all tailored to adequately satisfy user, designer and mobile device applications requirements. A survey conducted by the Museum Association (Atkinson, 2013) on the use of mobile devices in UK museums in 2013 points out that 50% of 175 respondent institutions have a mobile offer, in which QR codes are the most popular mobile technology employed in museums (63% of the museums that provide a mobile offer), followed by museum-provided audio-tours (46%), mobile optimized websites (45%), Smartphone apps for Apple (39%) and Smartphone apps for Android (36 %). The main objectives in offering mobile technologies are to provide additional content to visitors (68%) and to create a more engaging visitor experience (67%), to attract new visitors (33%), to keep up with visitor demand (28%), to widen access for people with special needs (27%). These devices were dedicated and targeted for all visitors, rather than for specific groups. The limited use of mobile technologies in museums is a consequence of the lack of human resources and insufficient staff time, of the limited knowledge, of the lack of a dedicated budget and the high costs of these devices, as well as of the structural barriers in venues. QR codes is at the moment the most widely used mobile technology (especially in mid-size museums), certainly because of their affordability and easy to use character. Still, with the development of technology, these QR codes (Quick response codes) seem to be overstepped by MPV codes (Mobile Visual Search codes) used through mobile apps such as Google Goggles. Therefore, the expanding of museum mobile apps is mostly popular with large-size institutions that can financially afford this technology while their use increases each year. Worldwide museums have started introducing mobile apps in their range of interpretative media and visitor services in 2009. With the continuous development of mobile technology, the capabilities of Smartphones in creased, while they became 37

more accessible and popular. The use of mobile apps opened up, for museums, new channels of communication with their visitor, which extent to his or her personal space and go beyond the boundaries of the museum’s walls. It was in the 1990’s when the popular audio tours started to develop in digital mobile guides (the Minneapolis Institute of Art in 1994, The HIPS/HIPPIE project in Europe in 1997) allowing visitors a more interactive experience: they received related information as they wandered around in the galleries independently and to their own will, they gained access to information related to the particular context and the surrounding space, while enjoying the use of these devices that were offering an increasing number of options for color presentation, incorporation of sound and video, memory capacity, wireless communication or the ability to get a personalized presentation of the content according to the users’ needs (Tallon, 2008). From 2002 the existing and possible applications of mobile computing in museums have been studied, with different possible scenarios, for the use role of mobile applications as: virtual guides, electronic maps, guides to the museum’s website, communication channels, ways of accessing the museum shop, and personal diaries for recording visitors’ impressions (Gay, Spinazze & Stefanone, 2002). Since 2009 the museum-related applications for mobilephones, known as mobile / Smartphone apps, the large majority of which were designed for Apple’s iPhone, were widely used. The creation of mobile apps with museum content has been a rapidly expanding area with several institutions around the world experimenting with their potential, particularly their advanced computing abilities and connectivity. For museums which are continuously exploring new strategies for communicating with current and potential audiences, one of its most attractive features is that it opens the possibility for reaching new audiences through a personal device they have chosen and are familiar with, not only during thei rmuseum visit, but also before and after the visit, wherever the user chooses to be. This ability to reach users in conditions and in an environment of their choice opens up new possibilities for the communication of cultural content for life-long learning and edutainment, apart from the potential for cultural marketing. Additionally, the fact that these users are connected in a wide network opens up possibilities not only for one-toone communication between the cultural organization and the user, but also for social networking and creating communities of users interested in cultural content, incorporating Web 2.0 capabilities (Economou & Meintani, 2011). There is limited empirical research investigating the existing Smartphone apps in international museums (let alone in Romania, where the apps have been rarely introduced since 2012). This is partly because of the rapid evolution of these mobile devices and the relatively slow rate of integration of these devices in the museum work, partly because of the issues that emerge with their use: selection of distribution platforms of mobile apps, the rather traditional content of the information integrated 38

within the apps, the overshadowing of the exhibits and the museum itself, the nature of the interaction between the museum and its visitor etc. Different types of classifications for museum Smartphone apps have been pointed out in a series of studies, focusing either on the information content of the application (Economou & Meintani, 2011), on their effects on the visitor experience and the user interaction (Rung & Laursen, 2012), or on the technical approaches and development tools used for building up the application. From the content information point of view, six categories have been investigated: presentations – guided tours of permanent exhibitions and the museum in general, presentations – guided tours of temporary exhibitions and practical information about the museum visit, combination of the two above, apps devoted to a single object or artwork from the collection, content creation or manipulation from the user, inspired by artists’ work, games based on the exhibits (Economou & Meintani, 2011). Taking in consideration the development tools used for museum apps, two categories have been generally described: mobile apps with interactive and multimedia features (incorporate text, audio, video, location systems) and mobile apps with augmented reality features (Economou & Meintani, 2011). Several functions have been discussed for the building of a museum app: to arouse curiosity and inspire people to visit the exhibition, to function as an experience in itself away from the exhibition, before, during and after the exhibition, to function as an audio guide that introduces a ‘slowness’ of pace to the way people walk through the exhibition, thereby inspiring people to look at the artworks in more detail, to present different perspectives on the artworks, to provide a contemplative dimension (the music, which is not connected to specific art works), to function as a memory of a good and meaningful visit to the museum – a memory that can be shared with others and that is stored on the phone (Rung & Laursen, 2012). In the same time, three categories of users have been illustrated: the guide-orientated user (very loyal to the guide, following it from the beginning to the end), the spontaneous user (led by instinct and interest, drawn spontaneously on works that attract him / her), and the all-consuming user (following both the app and the written exhibition guide on the wall). The research found that visitors choose to use the app for four major reasons: to receive various and new type of information, just to try it, to be in control of the visit, or to have a nicer experience (Rung & Laursen, 2012). Smartphone apps and the visitor experience As we mentioned above, museums are nowadays visitor-centered and a high quality museum experience is set as a major goal for each of these institutions. We have made a short analysis of the Smartphone apps offer provided by some of the most important art museums in the world (placed in top 5 of the most visited institutions in the last two years) (Visitor Figures 2012, 2013) (Pes & Sharp, 2014) 39

in order to observe what museums promise through their applications and what kind of experience they value. This off-site analysis is based on the information found on the internet pages of the following institutions: The Louvre Museum (no. 1 in attendance in 2012 and 2013), Metropolitan Museum of Art New York (no. 2 in attendance in 2012 and no. 3 in 2013), The British Museum (no. 3 in attendance in 2012 and no. 2 in 2013), Tate Modern (no. 4 in attendance in 2012, no. 6 in 2013), National Gallery (no. 5 in attendance in 2012, no. 4 in 2013). The Louvre Museum provides 4 apps: one general app. Musée du Louvre official app, The Louvre Audio Guide App and two exhibitions apps: Louvre Abu Dhabi and Late Raphael Exhibition Apps. The Met provides 22 apps and games of which one official app The Met App, one video collection, 82nd & Fifth from the Meta nd 20 quizzes, online games and exhibition complements. The British Museum offers one general app made by an external provider Vusiem The British Museum, a recently launched official application based on augmented reality – Gift for Athena and one exhibition app Life and death Pompeii and Herculaneum. The National Gallery is the first of these institutions that had launched a Smartphone app in 2009 – Love Art and it has only been joined by a second app dedicated to Leonardo’s studio. Tate Modern provides 22 apps dedicated either to the whole museum (Tate Guide to Modern Art Times or Tate etc.) to different series (The Unilever series at Tate Modern App) or different exhibitions (Gerhard Richter Panorama app, Damien Hirst app) generating the most diverse offer for the visitor. From the point of view of the information content and its conceptual structure, we mention five categories of fundamental topics that subsume different types of applications: art and ideas, interaction and creativity, curation and interpretation, behind the scenes journey, masterpieces tours and personal trails. The first category – art and ideas – integrates multiple perspective approaches, videos, photographs, essays, texts and comments by curators, critics and artists. They investigate a complex areal of artistic approaches and styles or current trends in art theory and practice, define specific terminology or share new concepts. The second category – interaction and creativity – includes those apps that focus on visitor interaction, offering the possibility for the visitor to explore and play with the content information provided, to answer questions and solve quizzes, to create and recreate stories, puzzles or images, as well as to combine surprising and playful interactions with articles, multimedia and doit-yourself experiments. Personal engagement and sharing are the specific features of this type of applications, as the visitors are invited to be active participants in the development of the app and most generally to upload their answers and results or creations on social media networks. The third category – curation and interpretation – enables the visitors to virtually construct their own galleries, to curate their own digital exhibitions based on the existing works, to comment and interpret on the art collections and exhibits, to draw, video or photograph (on) the exhibits and to browse and select information while immersing within different levels of the ap40

plications. The fourth category – behind the scenes journey – supplies the visitor with interesting insights and central concerns about artists’ lives and works, presenting detailed aspects of particular works of art or carefully selected attributes that either describe, analyze or build them up. The last category – masterpieces tours and personal trails – invites the visitor either to follow up guided tours based on thematic selections or masterpieces descriptions, or to personalize his/her own voyage on the basis of their own interests, knowledge and disposition. As a direct consequence, these types of apps promise different types of museum experience by conveying, what we call a series of character figures, metaphoric for the museum visitor: the Explorer, the Analyst, the Listener, the Creator, the Gamer and the Socializer. Most people who go to museums do not usually have a predetermined idea of just what they are going to do or learn, unless they already know a lot about the works; thus, they willingly allow the museum to structure their visit. These apps offer the museum the possibility to target different audiences who use museum content in varied forms. Tourists, for example, tend to try to see the entire museum; schools, on the other hand, tend to target visits to a particular gallery or a subject. The self-directed visitor may have a specific goal related to long-term personal interests and may be building o nlong-term knowledge. In most of the cases, visits to museums are brief and leisure or learning oriented. But besides these two main goals of the museum (to provide learning and entertainment), the focus on specific museum experiences by recognizing the active role of their visitors could raise the attendance and enhance the quality of the visit. Therefore, within our analysis we have ventured to construct these museum visitor experience typologies, by conceptualizing the actions that the visitor should involve into and by their outcomes at the personal level. The Explorer is the visitor who is ready to focus on, and integrate multiple perspectives, who takes varied tracks and investigates different tour guides and options. These Explorer types of apps transform the Smartphone in interactive virtual worlds, masterpieces tours and unforgettable journeys with varied stops and choices on the way. They are the largest apps, usually the general apps of the museums. The Analyst is the professional visitor who holds a large expertise in the field and focuses mainly on details, insights and critical approaches that concern specific objects or works of art. These type of apps provide clearly defined pieces, additional videos, comments or photographs, biographical or historical information, putting themes, concepts, movements, works of art, various media at the visitor’s ease. These are the apps that focus on specific exhibitions or art works, specific artist movements or theoretical or practical trends. The Listener is the visitor who takes a guided journey, step by step, immersing in the story provided by the app. Storytelling emerges as a major paradigm, whereby the story is narrated by one or more virtual characters, as the visitor moves within the museum site. The narration sequence may be linear or it might adapt dynami41

cally to the trajectories followed by the visitor. These types of apps create various narratives, bringing exhibits to life or sharing interesting visions and fantasy worlds. The Creator – is the visitor who creates his/her own story, drawings, photographs or digital works of art or curates his/her own exhibition by accepting the incitement of the museum apps and generating new art and content. These apps focus on entertainment and dare to provoke the users to enrich the experience with their own creativity. Most of these apps are directly targeted, providing specific content for certain group ages or allowing various forms of do-it-yourself projects. The Gamer–is the visitor who responds to particular requests of performing situated tasks, thus contributing to the achievement of some plot, devised by the apps, often inspired by well known educational museum games like role-playing, treasure hunt, observation or mystery games. These apps are highly interactive, focused on entertainment and therefore offering leisure oriented content. These apps complement various exhibitions or illustrate different artistic and practical trends. The Socializer– is the visitor who shares his/her views on social networks, generally following up his/her experience within the museum. This category is related to the sharing of museum content, commenting, evaluating and tagging material as ‘favorite’. Sharing is related to content of either the app itself (video, images etc.) or that has been created by the users (photographs, comments, evaluations, lists of favorite material, messages etc.), or both use as sharing platform the online social network websites (Facebook, Twitter, Flickr) video sites (YouTube, Vimeo) and email. Most of the apps integrate this profile and include this type as a general target. Smartphone apps have the potential to promote the museum, to support the visitors’ meaning-making by framing and focusing their activities and interactions, as well as to build up the visitors’ active participation and follow up beyond the museum. And, especially with the insertion in the application technologies of augmented reality, the visitor experience of the museum is highly enriched in terms of learning, entertainment and creativity. Augmented reality and the museums Some of the newest Smartphone applications used by museums, which attract also a great number of users and a lot of publicity are those based on augmented reality like The British Museum App “The Gift for Athena” or the Tate Modern “Pocket Art Gallery”. Among the first museums which inserted this technology were the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam which used AR to install artworks in a local park (ARTours), and the San Francisco Exploratorium which turned an evening event into a surreal AR playground (Get Surreal). Augmented reality is a concept that can be traced for already a hundred years. It was first mentioned in the 1900 as an idea of an electronic display/spectacles that overlays data onto real life. It has always been a goal for inventors to try to create a workable implementation of the idea by applying the newest technologies of the day. 42

It went through a long development process, from a cinema style implementation in the 50’s, though a variety of cumbersome head mounted displays until the 90’s. Serious development on augmented reality began in the 1960s through inventors like Ivan Sutherland, Myron Krueger and Howard Rheingold. Considered by some as an evolution of VR, augmented reality always implies a mix of real world and virtual experience. Azuma first defined augmented reality in 1997 (Azuma, 1997) as a medium ‘combining the real and virtual, interactive in real time, registered in 3D: Augmented Reality (AR) is a variation of Virtual Environments (VE), or Virtual Reality as it is more commonly called. VE technologies completely immerse a user inside a generated synthetic environment. While immersed, the user cannot see the real world around him. In contrast, AR allows the user to see the real world, with virtual objects superimposed upon or composited with the real world. Therefore, AR supplements reality, rather than completely replacing it. Ideally, it would appear to the user that the virtual and real objects coexisted in the same space. Augmented reality is a live direct or indirect view of a physical, real-world environment whose elements are augmented (or supplemented) by computer-generated sensory input such as sound, video, graphics or GPS data. As a result, the technology functions by enhancing one’s current perception of reality. With the introduction of the Smartphone, the idea has seen a new boost in interest as the relatively high computational power coupled with the camera and display of the phones presented a new base for the creation of augmented realities. As the phones became more and more powerful and cameras and displays became better suited for the requirements of the new technology, the resulting augmented reality applications became more realistic and started to generate more interest in a variety of fields. Also the wide scale penetration of Smartphones means that the base for augmented reality has increased considerably. New fields have come to benefit from the application of AR. Art, architecture, commerce, culture, education, navigation, entertainment are just some of the new fields that have incorporated AR. Museums have also started to use AR in order to bring the ultimate immersive experience to the museum visitor.Augmented reality applications can enhance a user’s experience when traveling by providing real time informational displays regarding a location and its features, including comments made by previous visitors of the site. AR applications allow tourists to experience simulations of historical events, places and objects by rendering them into their current view of a landscape. AR applications can also present location information by audio, announcing features of interest at a particular site as they become visible to the user. A study of the British Museum (Mannion, 2014) points out four categories of interactions AR could be used for: outdoor guides and explorers, interpretive mediation, new media art and sculpture, virtual exhibitions. Still, as AR is a technology that uses all of the functions available on a mobile device, the potential interaction is incredibly varied. AR could be generally used in different manners to present the museum 43

collection. Virtual reconstruction is one of the most used techniques to generate content. AR has the potential to show things at scale, such as buildings, interiors or massive objects. Using 3D models, it is possible to reconstruct these large scale contexts around objects which respond to users’ movements. As they rotate their device, for example, new elements of the models are exposed and can be explored by zooming or tapping the screen for more information. Another way AR is used in museums apps is the “multiple views”of the same gallery space or narrative. Museum interpretation is becoming increasingly sensitive to the needs of different audiences. It is impractical to cater to a variety of needs with printed panels and labels because of space limitations. AR allows invisible content suited to different users to be embedded in galleries and accessed by users on demand. A third category is connected to bringing creatures back to life. Using animated 3D models to show what an extinct animal or plant would have looked like is another ideal use of AR. Holding your device over a skeleton or fossil to reveal an animated model answers an age-old interpretive challenge. These types of applications are increasingly easier and cheaper to construct. The next big thing in museum apps: Google Glass The next step in AR is wearable technologies. Devices like Google Glass and a few others are on the way to completely changing our day to day life. The new devices will have as the main function bringing augmented reality to the user in a way no other devices were able to do so before, and most importantly at a price that many will be able to afford. Google Glass is a mobile wearable technology created by Google that enables users to capture images and video, to receive email, SMS messages, and social media updates, and to find directions or browse the Internet. Although it’s arguably the most famous, it’s only one of many new mobile devices that have emerged in a field of wearable cameras, smart watches, and wristbands. As these devices are intended to enrich the experiences of the user, the adaptation of these devices for entertainment and more in line with our line of research, the museum experience will be straight forward. Museums could provide the visitors the needed devices, or visitors who own Google Glass could use / rent / buy an app from the museum store. The app would use image recognition to automatically identify works of art and other exhibits, quickly surfacing relevant information about what the wearer is looking at. The app could also offer narrated audio guidance and indoor and outdoor navigation to help guide visitors around the museum’s grounds. In January 2014, the Creative Augmented Realities Hub at Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU) started the first Google Glass project in cooperation with Manchester Art Gallery and 33 Labs from California, aimed at testing the technology in an Art Gallery Environment (Jung, 2014). Visitors were able to explore the art gallery in a completely different light, receiving augmented information to create a unique experience of cultural 44

heritage. The pilot project (testing some very simple prototypes based on a painting – in April and June 2014) received a general positive feedback, where users were excited by the opportunities of this new and innovative technology, appreciated the following: more convenient hands free experience, personalized experience, enhanced interaction, better understanding of connections between paintings, increased dwelling time, sharing functions. Still, as it is a new technology the producers were confronted with issues with heating up of device, problems with loading times of videos or battery life. It is only a matter of time, costs and involvement until these new technologies will be mass produced and used. Still, at the moment, we can only assume (based on the rapid evolvement of information technologies and media in the third millennium) that the future for museum visits is highly connected to these devices that personalize and multiply the experience of the visitors, providing enhanced interaction and sharing. Conclusions Mobile technologies have started to be widely used in museums nowadays, facilitating the visits and providing additional information and generating different types of museum experience. This article investigates the use of new technologies, from Smartphone apps to Google Glass and their effects on the users, conceptualizing five categories of fundamental topics that subsume different types of applications and different types of envisaged museum experiences (and their protagonist’s characters). The large extent to which Smartphone apps have spread in museums (the top 5 most visited museums in 2012 and 2013 have provided since 2009 around 50 applications that we have considered in our analysis) proves that this tendency has already been appropriated by museums and constitutes the future of the connection between the museum and its audience. Smartphone apps have the potential to promote the museum, to support the visitors’ meaning making by framing and focusing their activities and interactions, as well as to build up the visitors’ active participation and follow up beyond the museum. And, especially with the insertion in the application technologies of augmented reality, the visitor experience of the museum is highly enriched in terms of learning, entertainment and creativity. Augmented reality and wearable technologies seem to be the next step in the above mentioned connection, Google Glass opening up series of infinite ways of sharing the museum experience. Refereces 1. Atkinson, R. (2013, October 14), How Are Museums Using Mobile?. Retrieved from Museum Association: http://www.museumsassociation.org/museum-practice/mobile-in-museums-2013/15102013-mobile-survey-2013-results.

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2. Azuma, R.T. (1997), A Survey of Augmented Reality. Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments, 355-385. 3. Burnette Stogner, M. (2009), The Media Enhanced Museum Experience: Debating the Use of Media technology in Cultural Exhibitions. Media in Transition 6 (MiT6). 4. ComScoreInc. (2012), ComScore releases the 2012 Mobile Future in Focus Report. Retrieved from http://www.comscore.com/2012MobileFutureinFocus. 5. Economou, M., & Meintani, E. (2011), Promising beginnings? Evaluating museum mobile phone apps. Rethinking Technology in Museums 2011. Emerging experiences, (pp. 26-27), Limerick. 6. Falk, J.D. (1992), The Museum Experience, Whalesback Books, Washington. 7. Falk, J., & Dierking, L. (2000), Learning from Museums: Visitor experiences and the Making of Meaning, AltaMira Press, Walnut Creek. 8. Gay, G., Spinazze, A., & Stefanone, M. (2002), Handscape: exploring potential use scenarios for mobile computing in museums. Cultivate Interactive, 8:15. 9. Hein, G. (1998), Learning in the Museum, Routledge, London. 10. Hooper-Greenhil, E. (2000), Museums and the Interpretation of Visual Culture, Routledge, London. 11. Jung, T. (2014), Google Glass Augmented Reality. Retrieved from Creative Augmented Realities Hub: http://www.creativear.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/Google-GlassProject-Summary.pdf. 12. Mannion, S. (2014), British Museum – Augmented Reality: Beyond the Hype. Retrieved from Museum ID: http://www.museum-id.com/idea-detail.asp?id=336. 13. Moore, K. (1997), Museums and Popular Culture, Cassell, London. 14. Nurfit. (2012), Smartphone Addiction and Impact on Society. Retrieved from http://nurfitriah.wordpress.com/2012/03/25/smarphone-addiction/. 15. Packer, J., & Ballantyne, R. (2002), Motivational Factors and the Visitor Experience: A Comparison of Three Sites. Curator, 45(2), 183-198. 16. Pes, J.,& Sharp, E. (2014, March 24), Visitor Fugures 2013: Taipei takes top spot with loans from China. Retrieved from The Art Newspaper: http://www.theartnewspaper.com/ articles/Visitor-figures--Taipei-takes-top-spot-with-loans-from-China/32105. 17. Rung, M.H., & Laursen, D. (2012), Adding to the experience: use of Smartphone Applications by Museum Visitors. The Transformative Museum, Roskilde. 18. Tallon, L. (2008), Introduction: Mobile, Digital and personal. In L. & Walker Tallon, Digital technologies and Museum Experience, Handheld Guides and Other Media, (pp. XIII-XXV). UK: AltaMira Press. 19. Vergo, P. (1989), The New Museology, Reaktion Books, London. 20. Visitor Figures 2012. (2013, April). Retrieved from The Art Newspaper: http://www. theartnewspaper.com/attfig/attfig12.pdf. 21. Weil, S. (2007), From Being about Something to Being for Somebody. The ongoing transformation of the American musuem, in R.S. Janes, Museum Management and Marketing (pp. 30-48), Routledge, London.

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Media Convergence and Mobile Technology

Georgeta DRULĂ, Ph.D. Associate Professor University of Bucharest Faculty of Journalism and Communication Studies E-mail: [email protected]

Abstract. Convergence of multimedia content involves the unification of several media channels through a technology, and it is in a state of continuous transformation driven by the technological evolution. Recently developed, mobile and wireless technologies have facilitated new forms of convergence that permit users to consume information. Although media convergence involves many aspects, this paper considers just the perspective of technological convergence. The subject of this article is mobile sites created as a consequence of the convergence based on mobile technologies and devices. This paper shows new forms of media convergence designed by the mobile technologies. It presents and discusses theoretical aspects of this topic, and also describes practical solutions adopted by the media industry in Romania. The methodological solution is based on hierachical cluster analysis to group similar mobile sites based on their characteristics. The results of this study show that mobile technologies bring a new perspective to media. Keywords: mobile sites, mobile convergence, mobile journalism; mobile media; mobile news.

Introduction Multi-platforms share multiple characteristics that belong to computers, televisions and mobile devices, encouraging media fragmentation. This means that users can consume the same information on various platforms, and can share multiple platforms at the same time. Under these conditions, the online presence of media 47

Journal of Media Research, 3(20)/2014, pp. 47-71

industries requires content to be continuously redefined. Thus, the development of mobile technology has created new possibilities for the provision and consumption of multimedia information in the media industry. Increasingly, more people use their mobile phone or other mobile devices to access sites and to read news, as Bosomworth (2013) (1) shows in an analysis of the mobile market for 2013. This technology makes it easier and quicker for news to reach users. A study carried out by Google in partnership with Ipsos MediaCT (2), called ‘Our Mobile Planet: Romania - Understanding the Mobile Consumer’, in May 2013 (using a sample of 1,000 Romanian online adults) shows that smartphone penetration was 12% of the population in 2012 and has risen to 28% of the population in 2013. This survey is designed to gain insights into how consumers use the Internet on their smartphones. Results show that mobile searches, viewing of video, usage of apps and social networking are prolific. Moreover, 81% of smartphone users do multitasking operations with other media. Thus, they use their phone while doing other things, such as watching TV (32%), reading magazines/newspapers (29%), using the Internet (45%), reading a book (10%), listening to music (51%), watching movies (25 %), or playing video games (19%). The Google survey (2) shows that smartphones are used everywhere, at home; work, in public transport, and on-the-go. 33% of respondents said they would rather give up TV than their smartphone. 63% of people search on their smartphone everyday and it is the major access point for internet searches. Other figures show that 90% of smartphone users look for local information on their phone and 50% of population uses smartphones every day. This study concludes that smartphones are multi-activity portals. So, 82% of respondents use them for communication (to access email and social networks), 65% of them, to access news (reading news from newspapers and blogs), and 89% for entertainment (browsing the Internet, listening to music, playing games, watching videos on video-sharing sites like YouTube). Regarding apps, the same Google study (2) shows that they have 17 apps installed on average, 8 apps used in the last month, and 2 paid apps installed on average. The same study shows that smartphone users are avid consumers of videos; 83% of users watch videos. Another conclusion shows that smartphone users are frequently connected with social networking sites: 88% of users visit social networks, and 57% of them make at least one visit per day. The Google survey also identifies several barriers to further usage of mobile phones: − Users cannot trust credit card security on mobile devices. − Restricted screen size makes it hard to type. − Website pages take rather long to open. − Online access from mobiles tends to be interrupted. 48

But, this study focuses only on smartphones, not tablets. So, it can be supplemented by other data and statistics. Thus, International Telecoms Union (ITU) (3) reports the data for each country regarding mobile usage (including mobile broadband subscriptions) for 2013, to show growth in the use of mobile technologies. In Romania, according to the Eurostat statistics (4), in 2010, individuals using mobile devices via wireless connection: mobile phones (or smartphones), handheld computers (palmtop, PDA), portable computers (laptop) away from home or work to access the Internet, was 14%. In 2012, regarding the mobile devices usage, 7% of population used a portable computer or a handheld device to access the Internet. Statistics of Eurostat published in September 2013 show that, in 2012, 3% of Romanians with mobile Internet access did so using a handheld device every day (in comparison with an EU average of 16%). The same statistics show an insignificant percentage of individuals that used tablet computers to access the Internet in 2012 (5) in comparison with the EU average of 7%. Eurostat (6) lists possible causes and the difficulties of using mobile Internet in Romania, such as: difficulties with mobile phone network (4%), inconvenience of using small screens or entering text (2%). According to Eurostat data (7), in 2012 in Romania, purposes to use the mobile Internet via handheld devices have been for − Sending and receiving emails – 5% of individuals (EU average 21%). − Reading or downloading news, newspapers and magazines – 3% of individuals (EU average 14%). − Reading or downloading online books or e-books – 1% of individuals (EU average 4%). − Playing or downloading games, images, music, or video – 2% of individuals (EU average 12%). − Using podcast service to automatically receive audio video files of interest – 1% of individuals (EU average 3%). These statistical data show the users’ preferences for usage of mobile devices and consumption of Internet information through handheld devices. It can be noticed that mobile devices are becoming increasingly important in access to information and education in Romania and all over the world. This paper, therefore, is not about the consumption of information and audience preferences, or journalism practices. This paper is about the media products on mobile devices that can be found on the online market today. In this context, it considers mobile sites and mobile news. The mobile sites are convergent products that are based on the news from the sites of traditional media and put in a new format, specific to mobile technology and devices.

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Literature review The main concepts addressed in this paper are ‘mobile media’, ‘media convergence’ and ‘mobile technology’. They are all materialized in mobile sites. Each concept can be found separately in the specialized literature. The connection between mobile technology and the media industry has generated mobile news and mobile media. Westlund (2013) shows that in recent years, mobile media and news has gained more popularity, and journalistic practices constantly use this technology for news publishing or for gathering information. The same conclusions were found by Quinn (2009). There is a growing literature on mobile media, mobile news and mobile journalism. Many of the authors consider several more practical examples of mobile technology usage. They show how this technology was already incorporated in the publication activities of media companies. Mobile sites are developed as mobile versions of news sites. But this evolution is due to mobile technologies and to the applications on these devices. Human interaction with mobile technologies and devices is based on new practices in reading news. Thus, journalistic practice must reconsider these aspects of reading news, as Väätäjä, Koponen, and Roto (2009) recommend. They suggest that in order to provide useful information journalists must consider the audience experiences of working with text and images on the small screens of mobile devices. Authors also show that mobile tools are important for news reporting. The importance of mobile technology in gathering information is also noticed by Quinn (2009) who describes the three levels of multimedia reporting and shows the advantages of mobile journalism. Quinn’s paper defines mobile journalism, discusses the journalists’ output, the techniques used by the mobile journalists, and the workflow issues. All the cases presented by the author are in Asian region. He also shows that the mobile journalist needs to understand the technology and how it works and describes an economic model for mobile forms of journalism. Mobile technology has generated not only new forms of media and journalism, but also new forms of convergence. Thus, Cameron and Sturt (2009) consider that the new form of convergence based on wireless networking, mobile telephony and digital photography sustains the mobile journalism. In this context, they give several examples of journalism practices using the mobile technologies. Moreover, Ahonen (2008) considers mobile devices as the seventh of the mass media channels and dedicated a whole book to this subject. Mobile technologies are used as media tools both for consumption and production of news. The mobile environment permits easy and accurate identification of the audience, Web traffic, and the tracking of content usage. Erdal (2013) defines ‘cross-media’ as communication and production done in an integrated way, on more media platforms. This author wonders how news must be made differently to be published on different media platforms. Erdal (2013) says that convergence 50

and cross-media production in particular affect many journalistic practices, such as: hierarchies of information, authorship, the control of sources, and the multimedia content. Erdal (2013) shows that the differences between cross-media and multi-platform (production or publishing) must be considered. So, he considers the explanation offered by Thomasen (2007) (as cited in Erdal, 2009: 217) according to which cross-media is an extension of ‘multi-platform’, because it involves communicative relations or references between platforms. The most widely known example is for television channels and shows that have a Facebook page or a blog, and also use a mobile phone platform for audience feedback. Another cross-media example is when television shows use media content from users, through SMS messages or pictures, e-mails or on their Facebook pages. Erdal (2013) distinguishes between cross-media communication and cross-media production of news. These differences are identified for dealing with media convergence at the different levels of technology and content. A new phase of media convergence is determined by the mobile technologies. Many industries move on mobile technology: banking, media, advertising, music, computers, Internet. It is understood that technological convergence is based on multiple technologies, such as information systems, telecommunication and, of course the media technologies. Thus, the new technological convergence has led to the ability to access the Internet from a variety of mobile devices (Humphreys, Von Pape and Karnowski, 2013). They say that users distinguish different ways of consuming information online, some of which are ‘extractive’ and others ‘immersive’. Humphreys, Von Pape and Karnowski (2013) address a study on Web browsing, and information seeking with mobile. They consider that ‘mobile Internet’ is assimilated today, as a bundle of services for mobile devices. The application market or ‘apps’ market is also important. The ‘immersive’ reading is for the e-books. The readers have a linear approach to browsing information. The process of ‘extractive’ reading involves a selective browsing and seeking specific information. For mobile technology we can access the content both through browsing the Web in a traditional way using a browser, or by using specific mobile apps. The mobile applications require users to employ both ‘immersive’ and ‘extractive’ reading techniques. Humphreys, Von Pape and Karnowski (2013) suggest that the information accessing is different in mobile Internet from the traditional Internet. The technological convergence generated by the mobile technologies is also presented by Ahonen (2009) in 50 case studies of world services, around topics of mobile social networking and digital communities. He offers stories of Twitter, MTV, i-Report, and others. The content convergence can have a variety of forms. It is approached for news, in text or multimedia format. In media, convergence is acting as a combined or hybrid multimedia story, where different parts of it are expressed in different formats that communicate different aspects the most effectively. The convergence aspects 51

of mobile content are also related to mobile applications. Convergent mobile news applications are used to distribute mobile news. Even if the mobile devices are in general mobile phones, now we must take into consideration tablets and other mobile devices. Several technical possibilities and limitations permit or hinder the convergence of content (Westlund, 2013), such as: − Mobile sites can be accessed with mobile web browsers or/and mobile apps. − Mobile sites typically contain mostly text, and fewer images, video and audio with the purpose of quickly loading the pages and reducing the costs of data transmitted. − Designing fluid Web sites that adapt the content to any screen: ‘a mobile device, computer, tablet or television’. The content must be easily accessible and manageable. − Native mobile applications introduce restraints regarding browsing hyperlinks and sharing content via social media platforms. − Publishing news for mobile devices is divided between two approaches: using native apps for customizing news, or publishing tailored content for mobile using a responsive Web design (with HTML 5.0) in an explicit convergent platform. Even if in media, convergence has a lot of forms and advantages the literature shows also the divergences in media. Thus, Singer (2009) argues that television and online journalism will continue to converge, but print and online journalism will continue to diverge. To consider both the convergence and divergence in media, it is necessary for media companies to produce content across multiple platforms and with different formats. The mobile technologies, with their forms of convergence and divergence have generated many important questions for journalistic mobile practices. Even if, historically, the Internet was born in the twentieth century and mobile technologies in the twenty-first, Westlund (2013) proposes a new model of journalism for mobile sites and mobile applications that is based on repurposing and customizing journalistic content. The model is obtained on findings of specialized literature in the nexus of journalism and mobile media. This model of journalism is based on technological convergence between important actors in the mobile, telecommunication, and IT markets. Even if the mobile devices work as interpersonal communication tools, they gain a ‘mass’ function and shape the global mobile media (Westlund, 2013). The mobile journalism comes directly on the media market on a convergent approach. Publishing news on mobile platforms is based both on mobile news sites and apps, but each media company has chosen its own solution over time (Westlund, 2013). Editing news for mobile devices also requires customizing the content flow. Thus, unique content can be produced designated for mobile devices by ‘reducing 52

or adding elements to the content published on other news platforms. Added elements may involve infographics, edited pictures or videos, or news summaries.’ (Westlund, 2013). Tablets and mobile phones are equipped with video and photo cameras, and also they have Web browsers and mobile applications. This situation permits a flourishing of citizen journalism. Westlund (2013) offers a model of mobile journalism which revolves around two axes. One axis is based on the relationship between human actors and technological devices and systems (such as CMS – Content Management Systems). The second axis is based on possibilities of news publishing: customization versus repositioning (the same content being published for other platforms). Westlund (2013) concludes that the mobile journalism has evolved through a customized content. Erjavec and Poler Kovacic (2009) show that audiences have a participatory role in news production for mobile devices. Thus, they conclude that journalists create the structure and the content of the mobile news, but audience produces mobile news items as a ‘denunciatory participatory practice’. This means that audience is more preoccupied to browse news, and then to react in denunciative way, as authors said. The mobile news production process and also the mobile news structure are described by Erjavec and Poler Kovacic (2009). They say that mobile news has a headline – a title which is also the anchor of the article. The production team must control the timing and topics of the mobile news in the site. Also, the production team can ask users to send information as direct observation or photographing. The text accompanying the mobile news must be a short commentary that attracts the users’ attention. It is known that images and photos are important for the news and also for the informational content. However, the visual quality of the images obtained from users is important for the gatekeeping process. The structure of mobile news defined by Erjavec and Poler Kovacic (2009) in their work, as other authors have done before, consists of: − A title which is also an anchor (also termed an intro) through which the news attracts the viewers’ attention. − The short comment, about two lines that separates the contents of the article and summarizes the central action by answering the questions ‘who’, ‘when’, ‘where’,’what’ and sometimes ‘why’, and establishes the point of the story as Allen and Hill (2004) or Hartley (1996) describe (as cited in Erjavec and Poler Kovacic, 2009: 159). Mobile news is an opportunity for citizens to offer their opinions according to specific and limitative conditions and rules. Frequently, mobile news is associated with television shows and sites. Producers use this possibility and offer the audience opportunities to participate in journalistic practices (Erjavec and Poler Kovacic, 2009). However, their conclusions show that producers do not consider audience 53

as actors in the process of defining topics, or in supplying photographs potentially appropriate for publication. Methodological framework The subject of this article is the media products, mobile sites, created as consequences of the convergence based on mobile technologies and devices. The hierarchical cluster method is used to describe the Romanian mobile media landscape. The cluster method calculates similarities and dissimilarities and creates groups of mobile sites. The whole analysis was carried out using the SPSS software package. This method is used as an exploratory method to find a structure of mobile media in Romanian virtual space. The methodological solution is applied on a database of mobile sites found on sati.ro, an Internet audience site for Romanian virtual space. The list of mobile sites from sati.ro is registered in August 2013. This list consists of 36 mobile sites, but only 28 are mobile sites for journalism and thus considered. Each mobile site is described and measured with a set of characteristics that help to group it in a class through cluster analysis. Cluster analysis is used to group similar mobile sites based on the criteria of their characteristics (structure, multimedia content – topics and format, layout and design of mobile news in the websites, user interaction, user participation, device access, reading mode or reading version – desktop or mobile). Following the market characteristics (number of views and visits), the first three places in the list are occupied by the three mobile sites for sport topic: m.sport.ro; m.gsp.ro, and m.prosport.ro (Table 1). Table 1. Most important mobile sites in terms of the market indicators Mobile site frequently accessed m.sport.ro m.gsp.ro m.prosport.ro

Number of views

Number of visits

19214903 11730392 10500505

7057465 4460489 4890089

(Source: sati.ro - August 2013)

For each of the 28 mobile sites in the sati.ro list various criteria were considered in grouping them. One criterion relates to the type of media, and considers aspects of convergence with mobile technologies. Thus, 11 mobile sites are designated to televisions channels and shows (Table 2), 15 mobile sites are for online publication (Table 3), and 2 are designated to news agencies or news portals (Table 4). Hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA) is an exploratory tool designed to group data sets and reveal clusters that would otherwise not be apparent. This method is most useful for a small number (less than a few hundred) of objects (cases or variables). This is also our situation. 54

Table 2. Mobile sites of television channels Mobile sites for televisions shows and channels 1 realitatea.mobi 2 m.stirileprotv.ro 3 m.wowbiz.ro 4 m.romaniatv.net 5 m.antena3.ro 6 m.acasatv.ro 7 m.kanald.ro 8 m.procinema.ro 9 m.a1.ro 10 m.money.ro 11 primatv.mobi

Number of views

Number of visits

6654968 4602217 4251905 1949800 1291333 763956 417306 300506 104374 79984 26664

3252496 3565383 2266266 1195405 763120 426113 274463 258134 70113 48023 14802

(Source: sati.ro - August 2013) Table 3. Mobile sites of online publications

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15

Mobile sites for online publications m.sport.ro m.gsp.ro m.prosport.ro m.cancan.ro m.libertatea.ro m.gandul.info m.adevarul.ro m.evz.ro m.click.ro m.zf.ro m.jurnalul.ro m.descopera.ro mobile.romanialibera.ro m.capital.ro m.cotidianul.ro

Number of views

Number of visits

19214903 11730392 10500505 4769265 4735854 3868597 2450749 2394347 1907892 1219292 657963 647257 631673 529354 262734

7057465 4460489 4890089 3192712 2118268 2389931 1141437 1221453 742981 726356 484998 328838 330907 297699 111127

(Source: sati.ro - August 2013) Table 4. Mobile sites of news agencies or news portals

1 2

Mobile sites for press agencies and news portals m.hotnews.ro m.mediafax.ro

Number of views

Number of visits

2162855 2109448

1067904 1213066

(Source: sati.ro - August 2013)

The number of variables used in this method is 14 and they are related to a site’s performance in the market (number of visitors and views), its multimedia content, layout and its interactivity. These variables are correlated through the measures 55

of dissimilarities and similarities. Variables are transformed in z scores based on standard deviation. This is necessary to assure the compatibility for variability of variables. Groups of mobile sites were created based on similarities/dissimilarities evaluation of their characteristics. In this method, the closest or most similar cases are grouped iteratively. The method of grouping used in this paper is the agglomerative hierarchical clustering technique – complete linkage. The complete-linkage clustering is based on the furthest neighbour and makes a strong classification of clusters. This solution is good to construct the distinct clusters. The dendrogram graphically represents the clusters solution for each characteristic or for more. Cluster analysis is a useful solution for investigating mobile sites and working out their structure types. It does not test a research hypothesis, but searches the groups and typologies of mobile sites. The clustering method helps to discover the groups of similar patterns. Findings Usage of mobile technologies and devices creates new reading habits among users and new interests with regard to information consumption. This paper uses the hierarchical cluster analysis procedure to group mobile sites according to their number of visitors, views and their characteristics. Characteristics refer to the type of multimedia content (topics and format); layout and design of the user interface; interactivity, forms of users’ participation, and structure. All characteristics refer to the homepage on each mobile site. The variables considered are: category of site, type of mobile sites, site name, number of views, number of visitors, device access (desktop and mobile), reading mode (browser / apps), reading version (mobile or desktop), multimedia content (topics and format), layout and design, structure (number of items on homepage), interaction with the users, forms of users’ participation, company. Multimedia content is measured as number of topics. A limitation of this quantification refers to the number of categories on homepage. There are considered so the categories in the mobile – tablet version and on desktop version. Multimedia content – format refers to text and photos; text; text, photos and video. Layout and design refers to the number of columns and the visual arrangements of the content on screen. Structure of mobile news addresses the number of items (mobile news) on mobile page – homepage. Interaction with users refers to links or search boxes. Forms of users’ participation consider comments for mobile news; Facebook and/or Twitter connection for comments; ‘like’ and ‘share’ on Facebook. The hierarchical cluster analysis applied to the 28 cases gives the dendrograms for the cluster solutions. Cases are listed along the left vertical axis and distance 56

between clusters is measured on the horizontal axis. This method is used to appraise the current mobile media market in Romania. Mobile sites are grouped according to criteria of site performance in the market (number of views and number of visitors), and their characteristics (topics, structure, layout, reading possibilities etc). Data were collected and processed using the SPSS software. This method groups mobile sites with the highest market performance, according to their number of views and specific characteristics. The results obtained are outlined below. (Fig. 1.) Using the classification of mobile sites based on the market indicators (number of views and visitors), three groups of mobile sites were identified: a group of mobile sites in sport (sport.ro, gsp.ro and prosport.ro), another group of sites in entertainment (wowbiz, libertatea, cancan) and news (stirileprotv and realitatea. net), and the biggest group consisting mostly of news sites from television and online publications.

Fig.1. Groups depending on market indicators - number of views and visitors

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(Fig. 2.) Following the complete linkage procedure, five clusters of mobile sites according to reading mode, device access and reading version were identified. Thus, we have a group of six mobile sites (mediafax, gandul, descopera, zf, cancan and prosport) that allow access both on the mobile devices and desktop. The mobile news can be read only with a Web browser and the mobile version is identical to the desktop version. The largest group of mobile sites which part is hotnews.ro, permits access to mobile news both from the mobile devices and desktop and read news with a browser. Their mobile site version is different from the desktop version. Another group is made up of the mobile sites primatv.mobi, procinema.ro, acasatv.ro and sport.ro which permit access to mobile news only from a mobile device. Only the group formed by the mobile sites kanald and money use also a mobile application to access mobile news, and Web browser. The gsp mobile site is a special case. Its mobile news can be read only on mobile device.

Fig. 2. Groups depending on reading mode, device access and reading version

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(Fig. 3) Depending on categories of topics found on the homepages of analyzed mobile sites, three important clusters were identified. The largest cluster is formed by the mobile sites that have 9-12 categories of topics (hotnews, mediafax, stirileprotv, gsp, prosport, rtv, money, romanialibera, adevarul, evz, gandul), then the cluster that contains 5-8 categories of topics (realitatea, kanald, procinema, descopera, libertatea, click, wowbiz, a1, cancan) and the last important cluster that groups mobile sites zf, capital, acasa and primatv with 15-20 categories of topics.

Fig. 3. Groups depending on categories of topics in the homepages of mobile sites.

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(Fig. 4) Three clusters of mobile sites were obtained depending on the variable multimedia format. A cluster groups mobile sites that used only text for the list of their mobile news, another cluster groups the mobile sites that uses both texts and photos in the list of their news and a special case where video sequences are also used (stirileprotv).

Fig. 4. Clusters given the multimedia format criterion

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(Fig. 5) Cases are grouped in four clusters based on complete linkage analysys, depending on layout and design of the homepage. The largest group of cases is defined by a layout and a design with one column that has a photo to the left and text to the right (acasa, romaniatv, wowbiz, antena3, kanald, sport, libertatea, adevarul, hotnews, and cotidianul). The title of the mobile news item is also the link. A group has the same layout as the desktop version. This group is the same that has the reading version identical with desktop (cancan, zf, gandul, descopera, gsp, prosport, mediafax). Two very small groups, one consisting of the sites stirileprotv and procinema has more then two columns, and other group consists of sites primatv, capital and jurnalul which have only one column with texts and links, and no photos.

Fig. 5. Clusters depending on layout and design of the homepage in the mobile sites

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(Fig. 6) Two main clusters were obtained in terms of structure. Structure refers to the number of items (mobile news) on homepage of mobile site. This variable has a limitation given by the fact that in situation of desktop version of homepage in the mobile site, the number of mobile news items was not considered. Thus, we have an important group of mobile sites with an identical structure with the desktop version. For reading version on mobile devices, clusters indicate lists of mobile news containing between 10 and 30 items per page.

Fig. 6. Clusters in terms of structure (number of mobile news items)

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(Fig. 7) Three clusters are defined in terms of user interactions. One group uses a homepage of mobile site-only links to navigate through the page (realitatea, stirileprotv, wowbiz, acasatv, primatv, sport, libertatea, adevarul, click, jurnalul, descopera, cotidianul). Another group also introduces several interactive elements, such as a search box (procinema, a1, money, evz, romanailibera and hotnews), and the third group enjoys the same interactive elements as the desktop page (gsp, prosport, cancan, gandul, zf, mediafax).

Fig. 7. Clusters in terms of user interactions

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(Fig. 8) Using complete linkage procedure of HTA for the 28 cases of mobile sites in terms of users’ participation, four clusters were identified. All four groups are almost equal to the number of mobile sites. The first group (mediafax, gsp, cancan, gandul, prosport, romanialibera) has the same forms of participation as the desktop version. The second group (sport, libertatea, a1, adevarul) permits participation on the Facebook platform with likes and comments. The third group (money, zf, cotidianul, hotnews, antena3, click, capital, acasatv, primatv) permits interactions with Facebook and Twitter platforms. The fourth group (procinema, descopera, wowbiz, romaniatv, kanald, realitatea, stirileprotv) permits user comments for mobile news on the site itself and on Facebook. Some cases offer all forms of participation, others none.

Fig. 8. Clusters of mobile sites in terms of user participation

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(Fig. 9) Groups in terms of multimedia format, layout, and structure, through a complete linkage procedure are four, and also three different cases (stirileprotv, procinema and money.ro). From this perspective mobile sites zf, mediafax, gsp, cancan, gandul and prosport are more similar and create a group. Mobile sites primatv, capital and jurnalul are also similar from the perspectives of their content, layout and structure. The largest group is formed by the mobile sites evz, romanialibera, kanald, adevarul, cotidianul, acasatv, and sport.ro, very similar to each other, even though their objectives and the types of news offered are very different.

Fig. 9. Groups in terms of multimedia format, layout, and structure

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(Fig. 10) Five main clusters are identified in terms of user interactions and participation. Three of the five groups have the same number of mobile sites and show us that they have chosen the same forms to have connections with the audience. In terms of these characteristics, there are no relationships between the type of the mobile sites and their connectivity with the audience.

Fig. 10. Groups in terms of user interaction and participations

(Fig. 11) Complete linkage procedure of hierarchical cluster method applied for all cases and considering all variables gives 12 clusters. This situation shows a great diversity of mobile sites in terms of their characteristics.

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Fig. 11. Clusters of mobile sites in terms of all characteristics

In all analyzed situations, the average number of clusters is 3-4, depending on each variable. Analyzing the dissimilarities between variables, such as number of views and visitors, or reading mode, reading version, and device access, it can be noticed that the variable ‘number of views’ is closer to number of visitors and further by the reading modes with browser or mobile apps. Availibility through mobile devices or desktop influences also the number of views. Regarding the audiences and users’ preferences for the mobile sites, it can be noticed that the sites that have important traffic indicators on Internet also have traffic on mobile devices (Table 5). Thus, it was shown that the audience migrates from one platform to another, which is more comfortable to be read. Also, it can be seen that the sites with high traffic, have similar views and visits on the mobile versions. The sport and tabloid categories of sites have many users on mobile devices. These categories are on top. 67

68

sport sport General news tabloide tabloide General news Tabloide General news General news General news General news General news General news Tabloide General news Economic & financiar Lifestyle feminin General news Science & research General news Economic & financiar Entertainment Entertainment General News Entertainment Economic & financiar Entertainment

Sport

Site category as sati.ro

Type of mobile sites Online Publication (OP) OP OP TV OP OP TV TV OP OP OP News Portals News Agencies TV OP TV OP TV OP OP OP OP TV TV OP TV TV TV 11730392 10500505 6654968 4769265 4735854 4602217 4251905 3868597 2450749 2394347 2162855 2109448 1949800 1907892 1291333 1219292 763956 657963 647257 631673 529354 417306 300506 262734 104374 79984 26664

19214903

MobileNo. of views 4460489 4890089 3252496 3192712 2118268 3565383 2266266 2389931 1141437 1221453 1067904 1213066 1195405 742981 763120 726356 426113 484998 328838 330907 297699 274463 258134 111127 70113 48023 14802

7057465

MobileNo. of visitors

(Source: sati.ro - August 2013)

m.gsp.ro m.prosport.ro realitatea.mobi m.cancan.ro m.libertatea.ro m.stirileprotv.ro m.wowbiz.ro m.gandul.info m.adevarul.ro m.evz.ro m.hotnews.ro m.mediafax.ro m.romaniatv.net m.click.ro m.antena3.ro m.zf.ro m.acasatv.ro m.jurnalul.ro m.descopera.ro mobile.romanialibera.ro m.capital.ro m.kanald.ro m.procinema.ro m.cotidianul.ro m.a1.ro m.money.ro primatv.mobi

m.sport.ro

Site name

34045243 27518312 39914949 42377891 37466115 28163323 22642726 20573660 13175309 12421868 10357395 6632430 11275318 19357824 14809572 5855656 4438588 6873606 2677614 3515222 3400685 4441878 3232914 2847924 7015415 494434 1311285

36631793

SiteNo. of views

Table 5: Audiences of news sites and their mobile version

9699721 10616493 16107630 15166920 12088838 16355438 11405629 10137515 5827256 4642453 4208857 3326833 6772620 4940357 4114481 2740746 1573755 3156917 1316639 1160771 2210143 2422932 1601538 1065298 2465285 275354 427395

13788668

SiteNo. of visitors

Convergent Media Mediafax Group m-realitat Pro TV Ringier Romania Pro TV Dogan Media International Mediafax Group Adevarul Holding Editura Evenimentul si Capital Media Bit Software Mediafax Group Q2M Adevarul Holding Antena 3 Mediafax Group Pro TV Intact Publishing Mediafax Group Media Gamma Publishers Editura Evenimentul si Capital Dogan Media International Pro TV Q2M Antena TV Group Q2M SBS Broadcasting Media

Pro TV

Company

Conclusions The results obtained in this study show that the convergence has lot of forms when it meets mobile technology in the Romanian media landscape. The results of cluster analysis applied below present various solutions for unification of media channels through mobile technology. The multimedia content found on the news sites are also accessed on mobile devices in a device-specific approach, in a traditional-desktop approach, or in combination. However, because the border between convergence and cross-platform is difficult to define, it can be noticed that media companies have chosen both convergent and cross-platform solutions for their online products. Thus, several new sites adopted the cross-platform solution which is based on the desktop version of the news site on mobile devices, such as: gsp (Convergent Media Company), cancan (ProTV Company), and gandul, zf, prosport, descopera, mediafax (Mediafax Company). Other news sites have mobile versions that are appropriate for a convergent solution. In this case, different media channels (TV, publications, news agencies, and Web sites) are unified through the mobile technology in a specific mode. Such examples are given by news sites realitatea (m-realitat Company), stirileproTV, acasaTV, procinemaTV, sport.ro (ProTV Company), romaniaTV, money, cotidianul (Q2M Company), antena3 (Antena3 Company), primaTV (SBS Broadcasting Media Company), libertatea (Ringier Romania Company), adevarul, click (Adevarul Holding Company), evz, capital (Editura Evenimentul si Capital Company), romanialibera (Media Gamma Publishers Company), jurnalul (Intact Publishing Company), hotnews (Media Bit Software Company). It can be noticed that media industry and companies adopt both solutions for implementation of mobile technology for their products. Also, there are no differences of implementation the mobile technology depending on the type of mobile site, such as television channel or show, online publication, news agency or news portal. Also, groups of news sites on a specific category of media channel were not identified. The characteristics of mobile sites in the Romanian media landscape vary a lot from case to case. This conclusion shows that the convergence between online, tradition media channels and mobile technology is working. The differencies between them can not be clearly identified. Romanian media companies choose various solutions for the adoption of mobile technology for their media products (television channels, shows, online publications, news portals, news agencies). Users that access the mobile sites are conditioned by the mobile devices, phones or tablets. Thus, several mobile sites can be accessed only from a mobile device, and there is no possibility of using the desktop computer to access the mobile version (acasaTV, procinema, primaTV, sport, and gsp). Most news sites permit access to the mobile versions of sites from the desktop, too. 69

Another conclusion of this study shows that the characteristics of mobile sites do not influence the number of views and visitors. Audience come mainly from the news sites. The sites with many visitors and views on Internet also have visitors and views on mobile devices. This is the cases for the most visited sites both on Internet and on mobile devices, sport, prosport and gsp. Regarding the audience aspect of the mobile sites, and if we compare the usage of mobile technology with the traffic values on Internet and category of site, it can be concluded that sport and tabloid categories are very frequently read on mobile devices. The mobile and wireless technologies increased the forms of media convergence as we analyzed below. References 1. Ahonen, T.T. (2008), Mobile as 7th of the Mass Media: Cellphone, cameraphone, iPhone, smartphone. FutureText, retrieved from http://www.7thMassMedia.com, retrieved from http://mobilemarketingprofits.com/wp-content/uploads/tomiahonen-mobile7 thmassmedia-excerpt.pdf. 2. Cameron, D. & Sturt, C. (2009), Mobile journalism: A snapshot of current research and practice. The End of Journalism? Technology, Education and Ethics Conference 2008, University of Bedfordshire, UK, 17th-18th October 2008, retreived from http://theendofjournalism.wdfiles.com/local--files/davidcameron/David%20Cameron.pdf. 3. Erdal, I.J. (2013), Coming to Terms with Convergence Journalism: Cross-Media as a Theoretical and Analytical Concept. Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies 17(2), 213–223, doi: 10.1177/1354856510397109. 4. Erjavec, K. & Poler Kovacic, M. (2009), A Discursive Approach to Genre: Mobi News, in: European Journal of Communication 24(2), 147–164, doi: 10.1177/0267323108101829. 5. Humphreys, L., Von Pape, T., & Karnowski, V. (2013), Evolving Mobile Media: Uses and Conceptualizations of the Mobile Internet, in: Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 18, 491–507, doi: 10.1111/jcc4.12019. 6. Quinn, S. (2009), MoJo - Mobile Journalism in the Asian Region, Konrad-AdenauerStiftung Singapore, Media Programme Asia, retrieved from http://rasaneh.org/Images/News/AtachFile/16-11-1390/FILE634640278909958750.pdf. 7. Singer, J.B. (2009), Convergence and divergence. Journalism.10(3), 375–377. doi: 10.1177/ 1464884909102579. 8. Väätäjä, H., Koponen, T. & Roto, V. (2009), Developing Practical Tools for User Experience Evaluation – A Case from Mobile News Journalism, ECCE 2009, September 30 – October 2, 2009, Helsinki, retrieved from http://research.nokia.com/files/VaatajaKoponenRotoAttrakWork-Ecce2009.pdf. 9. Westlund, O. (2013), Mobile News: A review and model of journalism in an age of mobile media, in: Digital Journalism, 1(1), 6–26, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/21670811.2012.740273.

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Endnotes (1) Bosomworth, D. (June 10, 2013). Mobile Marketing Statistics 2013. Smart Insights site. Retrieved August 2013, from http://www.smartinsights.com/mobile-marketing/mobile-marketing-analytics/mobile-marketing-statistics/ (2) Think Insights Google. (May 2013). Our Mobile Planet: Romania. Undestanding the Mobile Consumer. Retrieved from http://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/ mobileplanet/en/downloads/ http://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/mobileplanet/ro/downloads/ http://services.google.com/fh/files/misc/omp-2013-ro-en.pdf http://services.google.com/fh/files/misc/omp-2013-ro-local.pdf (3 ITU (International Telecoms Union). Retrieved from http://www.itu.int/en/ITUD/Statistics/Pages/default.aspx (3) ITU. ICT Facts and Figures. Retrieved from http://www.itu.int/en/ITU-D/Statistics/Documents/facts/ICTFactsFigures2013.pdf (4) Eurostat. (14.06.2013). Individuals using selected mobile devices to access the Internet. [tin00083]. Retrieved from http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/tgm/table. do?tab=table&init=1&language=en&pcode=tin00083&plugin=0 (4) Eurostat. (12.09.2013). Purpose of mobile Internet use. [isoc_cimobi_purp]. Retrieved from http://appsso.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/nui/submitViewTableAction. do (4) Eurostat. (12.09.2013. Individuals - mobile Internet access [isoc_ci_im_i]. Retrieved from http://appsso.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/nui/show.do?dataset=isoc_ci_ im_i&lang=en (4) Eurostat. (12.09.2013). Frequency of mobile Internet use. [isoc_cimobi_frq]. Retrieved from http://appsso.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/nui/show.do?dataset=isoc_cimobi_frq&lang=en (5) Eurostat. (12.09.2013). Devices used for mobile connection to the Internet [isoc_ cimobi_dev]. Retrieved from http://appsso.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/nui/show. do?dataset=isoc_cimobi_dev&lang=en (6) Eurostat. (12.09.2013). Problems encountered when using mobile Internet [isoc_ cimobi_prb]. Retreived from http://appsso.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/nui/show. do?dataset=isoc_cimobi_prb&lang=en (7) Eurostat. (12.09.2013). Purpose of mobile Internet use [isoc_cimobi_purp]. Retrieved from http://appsso.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/nui/show.do?dataset=isoc_cimobi_purp&lang=en

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Progress and Control: Positivism and the European Epistemological Hegemony1 Radu MUREA Centre for Political Analysis, UBB E-mail:

Ion JOSAN Centre for Political Analysis,UBB E-mail:

Abstract. This article focuses on the way in which European colonial powers tried to extend their political and territorial grip on their colonial empires by imposing and actively promoting the cultural imperatives of European modernity. In particular we try to understand how positivism became an indispensable tool for the propagation and also legitimatization of their hegemonic project. The attention we give to the Islamic world ensures that our analysis is both historically and culturally grounded in a civilization that received the full force of the European modern narratives of progress and development. In our opinion positivism and its implicit depreciative orientalist discourse managed to reset the mindset of both political elites and inteligentsia convincing them of the urgency of adopting defensive modernization programs. From this perspective, in this paper we will try to examine how positivism fortified the belief in the superiority of Western civilization and how this discourse fueled colonialist mentalities. In the same time we will take a closer look at the limits of the positivist project by taking into account the postpositivist stance and their emphasis on culture, localism and historical context. Keywords:Epistemology, Positivism, European cultural hegemony, Islam, Orientalism, Multiple Modernities.

1 This work was supported by a grant of the Romanian National Authority for Scientific Research, CNCS – UEFISCDI, project number PN-II-ID-PCE-2011-3-0481.

Journal of Media Research, 3 (20) / 2014, pp. 72-88

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Introduction The traumatic experience of the twentieth century (see Badiou, 2007) has made researchers more conscious about the need to develop viable strategies in order to properly understand how the intricate mechanism of civilizational dialogue functions, in all its potentially conflictual stances, be they cultural, religious, demographic or ideological/institutional, and more precisely, how should such fierce civilizational contention be sublimated into stability or, at least, the intensity of its occurrences mitigated. To this end, scholars started to envision conflict as a scientific concept constructed in the theoretical debates that have been generated by the multiple, and indeed contradictory discourses and narratives which surrounds it. The complexity of conflict as a concept derives from the intricate relationship created between its fundamental constitutive elements. These elements, such as culture, religion, politics, geography or psychology demand a multidisciplinary approach in this demarche of constructing an explanatory theory of cultural interactions and conflicts between different cultures. Having in mind this heterogeneous nature of human reality, we can hardly find an exhaustive and all-encompassing understanding of it. Researchers, according to their fields of study, have each attempted to bestow their very own specific interpretation of human reality; for instance, psychologists have insisted on the relation between the conscious and unconscious, the Freudian school of thought being of major importance as an interpretational tool of human behavior (Brunner, 1995). Others have insisted on the cultural aspects that shape the nature and define our relationship with each other (the culturalist school). Yet another school of thought has insisted on the economical dimension in cultural interactions (Ryan, 1995). The development of modern sociology and psychology has brought a new understanding on human behavior from a positivistic standpoint. The logical and mathematical manipulation of data was became the only true mechanism for understanding and addressing social phenomena. Human behavior and human interaction were now to be envisioned as a mathematical equation, an impersonal and abstract relation between numbers (Putnam, 1975). In this brave new world2 of technology and computational perspectives, scholars have enlarged their understanding of reality by blindly accepting the output resulted from the huge amount of data that was to be processed by computers. These materialistic perspectives, enforced by their radical positivistic methodological reflexes, have consequently become normative in studying and understanding human societies. Because their focus has been, at 2 To some extent, the analogy we make to the utopian universe of Aldous Huxley’s book, Brave New World (1932), is intentional and, in our opinion, sheds another light on the impersonal data-collection and date-processing based methodologies which have now become a standard across the social sciences.

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least in their initial phases on native European societies, results and methodologies that were naturally evolved in a European ambience assumed a more or less paradigmatic standing. The imposition of such theories worldwide, in an age marked by the hegemony of the mighty European civilization, would set the roots for decades of misunderstanding, and eventually conflict between the West and the rest of the world. The western scientific obsession rooted in a largely secularized environment would, in time, give birth to serious preconceptions about societies unwilling or unprepared to accept this holistic perspective of confidence in progress, science and rationalism. In the same time it created a sort of blindness towards social and cultural phenomen rooted in the pre modern past, embedded by patriarchal symbols and spiritual itineraries. Thus, concealed and mislead by their methodological hegemony, many Western scholars created a simplistic and schematically flawed picture of the different human societies characteristic to other civilizations. What they failed to notice was that although these societies were developing in the shadow of the multiple manifestations which European modernity has assumed in various specific civilizational and social contexts, they were still retaining a surprisingly high degree of pre-modern traits. After all, it was in exactly in such confident circumstances that the modernization theory, one of the most comprehensive that ever took sway across the field of social sciences, crumbled and was largely disregarded after its blunt failures became evident in the second half of the 20th century. Up to that moment, in a true positivistic fashion, non-western societies were believed to follow the same Euro-Atlantic pattern of rationalization and industrial convergence (see Kaya, 2004; Halpern, 1963). Daniel Lerner for example believed that the traditional Islamic society was heading towards dissolution, because most Muslims found it unappealing to continue living in its boundaries. The evident choice in this context of continuous societal and institutional change and rearrangement under the aegis of European modernity was between “Mecca or mechanization” (Lerner,1958: 405). Nevertheless, as time proved, that long awaited paradise of technological and industrial convergence doubled by the rearrangement of social patterns, that was supposed to swipe the cultural remnants of the past, clearly deposing the arbitrary dominion of tradition, was failing to materialize. The failure of the modernization theory, and consequently of the entire inventory of methodological and epistemological positivistic certitudes that accompanied this sociological discourse, represented a clear disregard for European modernity, more specifically a sound defeat of the former metropolis cultural hegemony. The periphery was now challenging the center by selectively adopting parts of its modern experience, while disregarding others, and using tradition as a means of accommodating and legitimizing innovations and change in archaic social contexts (Salvatore, 2010). This was hardly a monochromatic image of failure, as some western scholars 74

would imply by relying on what they chose to term as „poor socio-cultural indicators of modernity” (Hunter, 2005:1-18; see Lewis, 2002). True enough, such data was compelling, and supplemented an extensive inventory of numerous regional malaises (Bellin, 2004: 139-141), though it could hardly account for the wide range of transformations that were reshaping the Muslim world. In order to fully understand these changes, as well as the failure of positivistic entrenched methodologies, we need to depart ourselves from the wide range of epistemological impulses generated by the austerity of an old scholarly Orientalist tradition. Thus, the global modern panorama that emerges lacks, in our opinion, both fluency and linearity, portraying instead an image where different societies show great institutional specificity and diversity based on particular intrinsic ideological premises and cultural dynamics. This is largely due to the conflictual and hegemonic characteristic of European modernity which, as S. N. Eisenstadt states, “challenged the symbolic and institutional premises of those societies that were incorporated into it, calling for responses from within them, opening up new options and possibilities” (Eisenstadt, 1987: 1-12; 5). By resorting to the multiple modernization theses (its liberating inclusive perspective on the global specific civilizational nature of modernity) we attempt to bypass the sterile hegemony of positivism, while also taking into account the importance of contextual factors and elements of local specificity in the articulation of indigenous narratives of modernity. We also want to portray the complex ways in which orientalist tradition, fuelled by European perspectives on progress and indeed colonial experiences, placed a depreciative Western view on Islam and the Muslim civilization. At a local level, this depreciative view corroborated with Europe’s impressive military and economic achievements, instilled on Muslim political elites a desire to emulate and appropriate the elements which appeared to give success to Western powers. In supporting such measures, and with the complete devotion of both Muslim political rulers and intelligentsia, the European model of modernity with its managed to hijack for two centuries the development of a specific form of Islamic modernity. We will also focus on the European obsession with progress and how the idea of progress prepared the way for holistic European epistemologies such as positivism. Our aim is to emphasize on the need to find a new way of understanding societies built on different fundaments than that of the western European predicaments. We suggest that the way in which Europeans see the conflict between civilizations is rooted in the belief of continuous and uninterrupted progress, in the conviction that the European society is the culmination of this progress. From this perspective, positivism is a discourse that only helps the spread and cementation of a global discourse that aims for hegemony, colonialism being only an element of a mindset faithful in its own superiority. Our paper will also point out to the limits of positivism examined by the post-positivist scholars broadening the picture of human society 75

by taking into account contextual interpretations of modernity, shaped by specific cultures – taking by this a closer look at the validity of multiple modernity theory. Positivistic Certitudes: The Advent of Progress Islam and its civilization are hardly modern discoveries for the western European mind. For centuries Islam and its armies played the ultimate role of alterity(otherness) for the nascent European civilization. It was its enemy par excellence, not only in military or commercial terms but more dangerously in religious ones. Beginning with VIIth AD, Christianity and its professed universalism were finding themselves challenged and superseded by a new Middle Eastern Abrahamic religion. Indeed Christianity had always faced challenges, and it remained even after its Constantinian incorporation in the state apparatus (Cox, 2009: 5), a religion accustom to adversity. Still, the challenge posed by Islam went beyond anything Christianity had ever encountered. Despite its humble beginnings, the religion which once sought shelter in the Arabian city of Medina was at the beginning of the XVIth commanding the allegiance of most of the known world. Historian Marshall Hodgson aptly suggests that, seen from outside at this point, Islam was in no case falling short of its universalist claims (Hodgson, 1993: 97). It wasn’t only the huge geographical expansion, at times ranging from Indonesia to the heart of Central Europe, which gave credibility and confidence to both Islam and its adherents, but rather the impressive degree of cohesion that the Islamic civilization was able to instill upon its dominion (Stearns, 2007: 31-34). Except for the brief period of the Crusades, which can never be equated to a proto-colonial European endeavor as Amin Maalouf suggests (see Maalouf, 1984), Christianity has always been on the defensive whenever it was forced to military confront the Islamic civilization. On the other hand, it can be argued that it was exactly this unabated aggression, starting with the 7th century and advancing up to the dawn of the modern age, which solidified the identity and shared civilizational experience that would later materialize into the European civilization. In this regard, historian Franco Cardini considered that Islam acted as a “violent midwife” to the nascent Western European civilization (Cardini, 1999: 3). The old status quo between Islam and Christianity abruptly came to an end in 1683, when the Ottoman armies tried for the second time to conquer Vienne. Despite the resounding disaster and the following territorial loses which it implied, this was still a defeat that could be accepted by the Muslims because it was framed in religious terms. After all, the Polish King Jan III Sobieski declared after the forces of the Holy League destroyed the Ottoman Vizier’s Kara Mustafa Pashasiege on the Hapsburg imperial capital, that it was God who had won the day (Lane-Poole, 1893: 207-227). The situation changed dramatically, a century later, when Napoleon Bonaparte was obliterating in the Battle of the Pyramids the Egyptian Mamluk army. 76

What must have been a very troubling development for Muslims, apart from the defeat in itself, was that the representative of the French Directorate was apparently not acting on religious motivations. In fact, the scientific mission that accompanied his expeditionary force hoped to crack the hieroglyphs in order to question biblical chronology (Cavaliero, 2010: 127-130). Jan III Sobieski was, by all accounts, a representative of the old Europe, that Civitas Christiana and his action, as well as those of his contemporaries, were circumscribed to a bi-dimensional religious struggle. On the other hand, the future French Emperor(ironically) was the representative of the new modern Europe, for which past religious struggles were now becoming irrelevant. Medieval Islam, with its spiritual and imperial outlook, could make sense of a Christian Europe, or Christendom, but it could hardly muster any answer to a modern Europe which started to define itself less and less in spiritual terms. The shock induced by the new assertive modern Europe was to shaken the very basis of Muslims perception for which, as Bernard Lewis assures us, “…Islam itself was indeed coterminous with civilization, and beyond its borders there were only barbarians and infidels” (Lewis, 2002: 3). At the basis of this new assertive behavior that Europe starts displaying, lays a civilizational confidence that is tremendously influence by the specifically Western idea of progress. Robert A. Nisbet point out that progress is a concept that is strongly and uniquely embedded in the psyche of Western civilization. Up to the 20th century, when its triumphalist impetus lost its grip both on Western as well as on other civilizations that were until then influenced by the categories of Euro-Atlantic modernity, progress was considered as one of the major cultural and civilizational landmarks of Western (European) identity. Identifiable in the earliest intellectual achievements of the Greco-Roman world, the idea of progress continued to develop in the ambience of early Christian thought, when Greek ideas of growth were fused to the Jewish heritage of sacred history. The vision that prevailed was that of a world that was striving and also evolving towards its final chapter, while remaining centrally entangled between the contradictions of divine predestination and its immanent drives of self-realization (see Nisbet, 2009; Nisbet, 1979: 7-37) The famous querelle des Anciens et des Modernes, which shattered the literary certitudes of the AcadémieFrançaise at the end of 17th century, moved the idea of progress from Christian inspired intellectual instances, heavily dependent on Augustinian and Joachimian thought, into its rather tormented modern(secular) existence (de Benoist, 2002:55-62). Subsequently, through the Enlightened thinkers, the history of mankind stopped following a pattern of inescapable decrepitude, and acquired a new outline defined by a relentless belief in the realization of the highest human potentials. To some extent, some of the Christian messianic brushes that fueled Medieval conceptions of progress, were quickly drawn to placate a new, at the time foreseeable, golden epoch of humanity. Achieving it though would require 77

the relentless process of accumulation, advance and development of science, education and arts, of material progress, and ultimately the complete discarding of past epochs’ social and cultural remnants. Politically, the blessings of this “positive and scientific age” of human progress would not stand without its necessary placement under the aegis of the political state, considered by many to be the most perfect accomplishment of progress in history (Nisbet, 1979: 24-7). Still, on a cultural level, this belief in a process of irreversible changes towards improvement, of cumulative and imperturbable progress, was taken at face value and transformed during the 19th century into a secular Western religion, which, in part at least, managed to replace the receding Christian faith. English writer Andrew Norman Wilson, in his seminal book, The Victorians, manages to catch a glimpse of this new generation and its historically conscious worldview which strongly believed that “…it was different, that its achievements, its metaphysical self-understanding, marked it out from anything which had gone before…”(Wilson, 2003:98-99). Progress was elevated to a new secular religion, and as Ronal Wright notes, was enforced in an anthropological sense by its own mythology, eventually being used as a cultural map to navigate through time/history, and on a larger scale to evaluate other civilizations that the expanding European world was encountering (Wright, 2005: 4-5). European Colonial Modernity and the Discursive Subtleties of Orientalism Out of all the civilizations that during the 19th century became the focus and subject of what can be termed as European colonial modernity, none received the full force of the secular religion of progress like the one built upon the Islamic revelation. European perception on Islamic civilization largely depicts the manner in which Europe was seeing itself in relation to other, more powerful or, during its modern success, weaker civilizations. During the Renaissance period a mixed feeling of fear, inferiority and true admiration towards the Islamic world triggered the European inquisitive humanistic interest to focus on the philological study of Arabic sources. While these studies began under different agendas, having initially religious motivations, the mass of European knowledge about the Orient, accumulated enough momentum to insure the establishment of a new discipline in itself later called Orientalism(Lewis, 1993: 101; 14; Hoeppner and Cruz, 1999: 71-72). Later on, when the European perspective was transformed by a secularized modern optic, the scholarly discourse on Islam became permeated by new conceptual categories which, though not entirely divorced from earlier spiritual preconceptions, relegated Islam, and the Islamic civilization to the unjust status of a study object. A study object that was now becoming an active part, though a silent one in the ever-developing methodological and epistemological inventory of European nascent social sciences. 78

In order to understand this modern development it is of great use to analyze the extremely influential work of American cultural critic Edward Said, Orientalism. His theorization of the concept of orientalism continues to be considered as an analytical standard when approaching such a cultural and intellectually fluid area of research. For E. Said, orientalism represents the enormous corpus of European writings and knowledge concerning the Orient(Islam), which despite its multiple levels of complexity and ambivalence, acted as a medium through which all associated with the East was being evaluated and understood. At its most basic form, Orientalism operated by navigating the patterns of a profound dichotomy between a European civilization defined in the Enlightened modern positivistic terms of progress, reason, secularity and an external Oriental world(civilization) which was still clinging to mysticism, patrimonialism and stagnation. This view, seconded by the scholarly authority that it commanded and the knowledge it bestowed upon its students, placed the West and the westerner in particular, on a position of domination and superiority when faced with the realities of the Eastern world. Once the colonial project was well on its way, European Orientalism became a necessary tool in the arsenal of any self-conscious colonial administrator. His task would have been made easy by the structure of Orientalist knowledge, which was organized and transformed into a systemized and efficient pedagogical structure under the guidance of linguists and orientalists such as Silvestre de Sacy and Ernest Renan (see Said, 1979). It was of little importance that this discourse was ultimately subjecting entire cultures and civilizations to a reductionist exercise in which the elements that were too complicated or complex to be understood, fell victim to its key selective methodology. The symbiotic relationship that occurred between orientalism and colonial endeavors is best illustrated by the enormous quantity of works that were produced during the 19th century and early 20th century. Without any doubt this relationship was extremely beneficial to both their narrative and practical manifestations, most likely because of the extremely coordinated way in which both discourses and practices were complementing each other. The colonial could not rule the colonized without the power given to him by the orientalist knowledge and the methodological certainty. Discourse, knowledge and practice offered to the European mind the comfort of superiority, while also exonerating its shadier motives and actions. The impact of this colonial-orientalist perspective was not reduced to the cultural and civilizational outlook that produced them, but went far beyond rooting itself in the discourse and views of the indigenous intellectual elite. From here, this intellectual discourse filled with the vast array of colonial argumentation, permeated in times both political and social spheres, inducing a motivation and a societal ideal that was actually connected to European social ideals. Thus in their attempt to fend of colonial encroachment, first the indigenous religious intelligentsia and 79

then the political elites were forced to transform themselves into the mouthpiece of modernization and progress. Positivism as a Hegemonic Discourse Understanding the Middle Eastern mind, in our case the Islamic psyche, necessitates a solid process of analysis. In recent decades, western scholars have opted for a mainstream realist, or liberal approach in schematizing and explaining the “Islamic behavior”. As for the results of these academically directions, one might say they oversimplify realities and impose a western-centric perspective. Thus, to have a more authentic picture on the Islamic World we should use a constructivist approach that deals with categories such as culture, religion and identity (Amitav, Buzan, 2010: 174). In our view weunderstand as appropriate for our goals a methodological perspective that can be circumscribed to a post-positivist direction. Thus, we find it useful to follow a perspective that can illustrate the multiplicity of layers that form what is perceived as the” Muslim thought”.In this respect we try to overcome the positivist perspective which is a reduction to the observable and the measurable. Comte’s aim was to develop a science based on the methodsof the natural sciences, namely observation. Its purpose was to reveal the “evolutionary causal laws” that explained observable phenomena”. In Comte’s view, “positive science was a distinct third stage in the development of knowledge, which progressed first from theological to metaphysical knowledge and then to positivist knowledge. For him the sciences are hierarchically arranged, “with mathematics at the base and sociology at the top, and thought that each of the sciences passed through the three stages of knowledge” (Smith, Both, Zalewski, 2005: 14). Positivism was influential for intellectuals such as Marx, Engels or Durkheim shaping their materialistic perspective on human society and human progress. Following this direction, in the 1920’s emerged the so called Vienna Circle, or second school of positivism (Logical Positivism). The central idea of the members of this circle was that science was the only true form of knowledge and that there was nothing that could be known outside of what could be known scientifically. For them moral and aesthetic statements were seen as cognitively meaningless since they could not be in principle verified or falsified by experience. By this, human society was put under the dominance of science and every aspect of human life had to be validated thru scientific inquiry. The faith in progress, science and technology changed the overall perception of human society that was becoming more and more technologized. Following the“human theory of causation”, articulated by the Vienna Circle“the idea that establishing a causal relationship is a matter of discoveringthe invariant temporal relationship between observed events” the view that the physical world was onewhich could be accurately observed prevailed. From this perspective positiv80

ism is a methodological scheme that combines naturalism with a belief in regularities, emphasizing a strict empiricist epistemology committed to a radical objectivism concerned with the relationship between theory and evidence.In this respect our knowledge of the world is based onbruteevidence (Smith, Both, Zalewski, 2005: 15-16).This secular faith in progress believed with fervor in its exceptionality and ultimate rightness. The technological advancement of the West was seen as a result of a European cultural model that was supposed to be superior to other civilizational models. According to this vision, in order to achieve and sustain progress one had to adhere to this European model of civilization, one had to westernize. Going hand in hand with colonialism, European epistemologies entangled and absorbed cultural spaces that were perceived as marginal, integrating them into a broader cultural system that was aiming for the universal. Positivism as a holistic theory is precisely the result of this striving for the universal so characteristic for the European civilization. In the positivist paradigm, reality is reduced to what is quantifiable, the complex phenomena of human life being understood as a mathematical algorithm, always repeating it according to rules that are unchangeable and eternal. Through positivism the West tried to build a theoretical scheme that would bring the ultimate explanation to social phenomena, to human life as a hole. This epistemological direction had the assumption to be the culmination of a process of cumulative knowledge that found its best form in positivism. By fostering this “technical” superiority of its scheme based on logic and reason, positivism disowned all other assumptions and theories about human being. From a certain point of view, positivism was meant to be the triumph of occidental thought, a way of ending history and establishing a universal framework in which all humanity would function. This new universal reality had to be purged by all other cultural influences that were considered obsolete for this grandiose project. The Islamic culture and Muslim identities were seen as an impediment for the implementation of progressist policies. The abolishment of the Caliphate in 1924 by Mustafa Kemal, followed by the establishment of the Turkish Republic, and the rise of Arab nationalism (with a very secular agenda) represented strong signals that the Muslim world was at this point completely adopting the western political narratives of modernity. Though projects of European emulation were by all accounts impressive, still most Muslim societies were already accustom to one version or another of the different modernization programs that the Muslim leaders were attempting since the first decades of the 19th century. In this regard the most successful rulers were by far the Ottoman Sultan Mahmud II (1785-839) and his vassal and later great adversary, Muhammad Ali Pasha (1769-1849) of Egypt. Both the Ottoman Sultan and the founder of the Egyptian Khedivate can be credited with the first comprehensive attempts at modernization, and although their stance was defensive, they were trying to retain as much of the indigenous culture as possible. 81

If the colonial system integrated the Muslim civilization in the global market, positivism and European epistemologies in general colonized the intellectual world as well, they created local intellectuals committed to westernization and standardization with the aim of progress. But what seemed to be going without doubt in the direction of westernization ended in the years following the Second World War in the turmoil of an identitarian crisis. The rise of radical Islam as a response to western ideologies that ruled the Muslim World changed the political realities and the expectations of the Muslim communities. Western ideologies were little by little perceived as tools of subduing the World to colonialist interests. In time it was clear that the positivist utopia was meeting with new challenges and that reality was more complex than the rigid schemes of this ideology. Even in the European context, scholars tried to gain a deeper understanding of the elements and forces that shape human reality so that modernity could be understood also from different perspectives. In this way post-positivism or the multiple modernity theory emerged as dissident discourses that challenged the hegemony and arrogance of positivism. Post-positivism, a Critical Perspective on Westernism Post-positivism emerged from the splitters of positivism raising the problematic of knowledge. Handling with our perspectives on knowledge, exploring our limitations towards the knowable. Scholars such as Kuhn, Feyerabend, Hanson or Toulmin have highlighted the relationship between scientific knowledge and historical contexts. For them knowledge is historically and socially conditioned so that its nature is not absolute (Francese, 2009: 15-17). As Jung stated in his “Psychological Types”, “An intellectual formula never has been and never will be discovered which could embrace the manifold possibilities of life” (Jung, 1921: 437). For this “historical relativists”, every historical manifestation has its own sets of values and ways of dealing with knowledge, its own epistemology. Michel Foucault follows Kuhn in assuming that there are unnumbered discursive regimes “each supported by its own correlated matrix of practices”, “each regime includes its own distinctive objects of inquiry, its own criteria of well-formedness for statements admitted to candidacy for truth and falsity, its own procedures for generating, storing, and arranging data, its own institutional sanctions and matrices” (Alvesson, Skoldberg: 2009). Foucault understands this phenomenon of multiplicity of knowledge from the perspective of power introducing the concept of power/knowledge. For Foucault power is not an institution as it is rather “a complex strategical situation in a particular society”. He argues that power relations and scientific discourses mutually constitute one another and power/ knowledge is a knot that is not meant to be unraveled. Foucault has an “ascending analysis of power”, analyzing the “infinitesimal mechanisms, which each have their own history, their own trajectory, their own 82

techniques and tactics” that are integrated “by ever more general mechanisms and forms of global domination” (Foucault, 1980: 98-99). Power is the “production of instruments” that allows for the production of knowledge with the desire to control (Foucault, 1980:102). Knowledge produced by power utilizes concepts of knowledge as tools for its circulation in the social body. Power is a network of perpetual changing forces that compete and collide, in the struggle for hegemony. In the social system there is a multiplicity of forces, each of them affected by interchangeable roles, either active or reactive “active in the way they affect and passive in the way they are being affected” (Mureșan, 2005: 164). The work of Michel Foucault is important for political science because it concerns the way in which the “new thruth” and social practices emerge in the context of power relations. For him, power relations, struggle for a globalistic, total discourse creating „subjugated knowledges”, we are as he says „subjected to the production of truth through power and we cannot exercise power except through the production of truth”. Multiple truths compete for hegemony (Foucault, 1980: 93). In this respect Foucault can be related with Antonio Gramsci and his concept ofegemoniaor hegemony which is closely linked the intellectual leadership, the sources of knowledge. In his prison writings, Gramsci often portraitshegemony as a moral, intellectual leadership that seeks political power. He sees the supremacy of a social group either as a manifestation of “domination”, which is realized through the coercive organs of the state, or “consent” of an intellectual and moral leadership, exercised through the institutions of civil society, the ensemble of educational, religious and associational institutions. This makes Giuseppe Tamburrano claim that consent, as understood by Gramsci, is an “expression ... of intellectual and moral direction through which the masses feel permanently tied to the ideology and political leadership of the State as the expression of their beliefs and aspiration” (Femia, 1981: 42). For Gramsci “philosophyis an intrinsic part of social activity” (Adamson, 1980: 169). He sees the politicalchange in terms of a “dialectical interactionbetween organic intellectuals and ordinary people” (Adamson, 1980: 173). Gramsci conceptualizes education as a collective action that creates an “intellectual and moral bloc”. When he looked to the larger implications of such a bloc, mainly to its capacity to create historical events, Gramsci reffered to it as a “historical bloc” (Gramsci, 1971: 168). The “historical bloc” as an effect of social interactions and consent between various segments of society brought together by intellectual formulation is the tool by which hegemony can be established. The historical bloc in the Gramscian sense is a “social ensemble involving dominant strata and a social base beyond the ruling group, and in which one group exercises leadership and imposes its project through the consent of those drawn into the bloc” (Robinson, 2005: 1-16). Both Gramsci and Foucault see the role of intellectuals in power formation as quintessential. The relation between power and knowledge produces the “histori83

cal blocs” that facilitate the formulation of hegemony. For Gramsci hegemony is not a static concept “but a process of continuous creation which, given its massive scale, is bound to be uneven in the degree of legitimacy it commands and to leave some room for antagonistic cultural expressions to develop” (Adamson, 1980: 174). Hegemony encompasses elements of the particular that convey for the universal. Robert Cox stresses the fact that „hegemony is in its beginnings an outward expansion of the internal (national) established by a dominant social class…the culture, the technology associated with this national hegemony become patterns for emulation abroad” (Cox, 1996: 137). In this vision of the trajectory of hegemony we meet again Foucault. This is very clearly explained by Wolfgang Detel, who argues that there can be no “power form or global power structure without local power relations. Historically, power never occurs in a space without order, but the social orders and structures are always tied to their actualization by means of local power relations. Epistemically it seems to be clear that the global apparatus “dispositive” can be ‘derived’ from local forms of power” (Detel, 2005: 21). From this perspective, positivism is a local, European discourse created by the intellectual class. The logical apparatus and clear structure of positivism as a theoretical framework for explaining the world, created the circumstances for the articulation of hegemonies that strives for broader and broader spaces of dominance. Positivism becomes a “technological” discourse, the ideas of progress and modernization being fundamental for the understanding of western European thought and the relationship between them and colonialism. According to Arthur Bordier the conceptualization of French colonial politics is based on the determinism of science – because science provided the rational model of a productive colonial model (Sefa Dei, Kempf, 2008: 28). Alexis de Tocqueville for example, in his Travail surl’Algérie written in 1841, was diligently one can say almost scientifically developing, what can only be described as a French colonial catechism in Algeria. The focus of his work was entirely on the efficiency and success of the French colonial enterprise, hardly showing any sign for those whose lives were destroyed by the conflict between the French forces and those of Abd al-Qadir (de Tocqueville, 1841 [2002]). This rational model was meant to be exported and implemented all over the World as the expression of a civilization that had to become universal and unchallenged. As a culmination of progress, positivism was meant to replace all other existing paradigms, from this perspective, the Muslim civilization had to be seen as a thing of the past. The progressist obsession with efficiency and technologization had no time for metaphysics or religion, stages of history that had to be overcome. But the outcome of history, at least in the Muslim World challenged directly the core of positivism, nowadays Arab states value Islam as an important identitarian element – after decades of Kemalist policies modern Turkey experiences the revival of Islamic values cherished by a society for which (at least for a numerous segment) 84

secularism is no longer an option. In this context scholars need to acknowledge the fluid nature of human society and the importance of culture in defining political mentalities. Conclusion Throughout history, every political system had to develop a coherent discourse in order to mobilize and strengthen the social body that was meant to be used for its own goals. The nature of these political discourses has to be understood from an utilitaristic point of view, because politics are based on interest and pragmatical goals. From this perspective we can argue that every discourse used by politics is basically meant to be a tool that is employed to fulfill carefully planned agendas. In order to benefit from these discursive tools the political elite had to rely on intellectuals, on the so called intelligentsia that has a crucial role in formulating the ideologies that sustain power. We might say that“the metaphysical idea of the world produced by a certain epoch has the same structure as the form of its unquestioned political organization” (Schmitt, Hoetzel, Ward, 2008: 6). As a result, the relationship between the political and the intellectual life is a knot that can’t be unbound. By this we can state that positivism is as well an intellectual formulation that can’t be and shouldn’t be seen outside the goals and interest of the political. In our article we tried to elaborate on how this discourse legitimized the colonialist actions of the western political powers. Even if at a basic level positivism wasn’t meant for this clear purpose, its circulation and usage in the public sphere can’t be understood without the role played by politics. The rise oforientalism, the large corpus of knowledge and practice that the West thought it managed to amass on the Orient(Islam), provided the western powers with a moral alibi for their colonial undertakings. Positivism and orientalism see the other as stacked in a backward historical phase that can be only overcome by applying the principles of rationality, secularism and technologization. Playing on the excuse of implementing his more successful civilizational model, the West fortified its position of dominance and mastery over the other. The aim of our article was to show the foundations of the post-positivist critique on positivism and the intellectual trajectories that can develop from this debate, namely a reshaped image of the global political and cultural landscape that should be understood as a multipolar environment with endless epistemological possibilities. The rise of holistic epistemologies, such as positivism describes in fact a political reality that strives for hegemony, a state that is ephemeral because of the fluid nature of human societies. From this perspective we have to be open to new interpretations and to new epistemologies that follow the political realities of our world.

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Review

What Every Body Is Saying. An Ex-FBI Agent’s Guide to Speed-Reading People Joe Navarro, Marvin Collins Ed. Meteor Press, 2008

Coming from a former FBI agent, the explained techniques of reading people may seem a part of a movie plot, but the present book turns them into an extremely realistic and accessible skill everyone can learn and use in a correct manner even without the certain amount of talent needed to glitter. An FBI agent and supervisor for non-verbal communication for 25 years, Joe Navarro first experienced “reading other people’s mind” as an immigrant child striving to adapt and get accepted with no language knowledge. Going through the book, we get convinced that these are the best circumstances to learn the secrets of body language and get to master non-verbal communication. The complete absence of verbal communication skills allows humans to rediscover their lost talent of real communication. Far from being a pure scientific research, the book named „What Every Body Is Saying. An Ex-FBI Agent’s Guide to Speed-Reading People” is more a confession where the theoretical aspects mingle with practical examples, leading thus the reader towards a better understanding and an easier achievement of the techniques presented. Besides simply describing the techniques of a successful non-verbal communication, the author unveils some secrets of it as a process. This is how the reader finds out that the non-verbal communicational efforts are useless outside a real partnership to validate them. In addition to presenting his own personal experience with non-verbal communication, the author of the book sets up a set of rules for successfully observing and correctly interpreting the non-verbal and body languages. 89

Journal of Media Research, 3(20)/2014, pp. 89-90

He also presents and explains different types of reaction according to different situations and emotions. Nothing new so far. So many have done it before. But the most useful thing about Joe Navaro’s book is that every single theory is closely accompanied by a practical, real example from the author’s personal life and work experience as an FBI agent. The practical details are in fact the ones that give a huge value to this book. They lead the reader through to a successful body language interpretation and non-verbal messages. Apart from all of these, the author also presents a scientific theory explaining why humans have certain unconscious and unintentional reactions due to brain structure and activity. The book is not only easy to follow, but it is also a very practical guide to controlling our body language, being, from this point of view, not only an essential handbook for specialists and specialists-to be in communication and many other fields, but also a useful reference for any person that wants to be in control when sending a message and / or being involved in any communicational or social process.

Laura Maruşca Babes-Bolyai University, Communication and Public Relation Department Cluj-Napoca, Romania. E-mail: [email protected]

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