ECREA16-Abstract

129

Friday, November 11

1 4 : 3 0 – 1 6 : 0 0

PS 023

The Death and Funeral of the Great Father Figure Kekkonen. The Premodern Implications of the Rituals in the Finnish Media in 1986

L. Lounasmeri

University of Helsinki, Social Research, Helsinki, Finland

The paper analyzes the media rituals of the death and funeral of the Finnish president Urho Kekkonen in 1986. Certain features of the Finnish political

culture are revealed in these rituals. Media plays a significant part in constructing the common national rituals, at the same time reflecting the culture and

also re-creating it. Kekkonen is portrayed and was also seen by the people and the political elite as a father figure who protected his family and children from

threats of foreign powers and conquerors. He represents the last figure in the long chain in political history, drawing from the Swedish kings and Russian tsar

Alexander to the first leaders of the independent nation and particularly Mannerheim. As the premodern leaders, Kekkonen portrayed as an authoritarian

father figure who loved his people and rose above the petty quarrels of the elite circles. The Finnish political tradition dating back to Snellman emphasizes

the nation as having one mind. When Kekkonen died he had been out of office already five years, but in the symbolic level the nation lost a leader who had

personified the mind and will of the nation. In him, also the trust of the nation and its elites was personified. His funeral symbolized the end of an era in

the history of the Finnish nation. The empirical material of this analysis consists of media texts and images collected from Finnish newspapers, electronic

media, online search engines and social media sites, such as Google and YouTube. The paper draws from the perspectives of media history, political culture

and media anthropology.

PS 024

Research Focus and Methods in Spanish Communication Studies. A Longitudinal Content Analysis of Five Top Spanish Communication

Journals (1990–2014)

M. Martínez-Nicolás

, E. Saperas-Lapiedra

, Á. Carrasco-Campos

Rey Juan Carlos University, Communication Sciences and Sociology, Fuenlabrada-Madrid, Spain

University of Valladolid, Sociology and Social Work, Segovia, Spain

In the last quarter century, communication research has been one of the most dynamic and productive areas of social sciences and humanities in Spain. In

this period the research community has experimented an intense growth, due to the increase of the variety and quantity of university studies in communi‑

cation since the early nineties, and the institutionalization of the field has been strengthened by means of the emergence of numerous academic societies

and scientific journals. Probably as a result of this consolidation process, during the last decade the scientific community has developed a great interest

on projecting a thoughtful look on their own practices in order to analyse and evaluate the research done in this field and to identify their strengths and

weaknesses.This type of meta-analysis usually focuses on scientific production published in academic journals, but it mostly caters for short periods of time,

so till the date it is not possible to have a complete overview of the Spanish communication research in the last 25 years of consolidation and maturation.

This paper is part of a broad ongoing research project (funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness) that aims to fill this gap by study‑

ing the development of communication research in Spain during the last 25 years. Specifically, this work focuses on the evolution of the objects of study,

methodologies and techniques in the Spanish communication research during the period 1990–2014. For this purpose, a longitudinal content analysis was

applied to the papers published by five Spanish top journals in the field of communication (Anàlisi, Comunicación y Sociedad, Estudios sobre el Mensaje

Periodístico, Revista Latina de Comunicación Social and Zer) by authors working in Spanish research centres. The corpus was defined by selecting a sample

of years within the period analysed, and includes all the papers published in a half of those 25 years (1990, 1993, 1995, 1997, 1998, 2003, 2004, 2007,

2008, 2010, 2012 and 2014). A code sheet was designed including six variables, four of them on the objects of study and two on the methodological aspects

(methods and research techniques), and applied to a final total corpus of 1,050 papers. Results reveal i) the centrality of journalism studies in the Spanish

communication research, especially of those focused on the analysis of news and information contents; ii) a progressive decay of theoretical research for

the benefit of empirical works; iii) a continuing improvement of methodological rigour; iv) the preeminence of quantitative research comparing to qualita‑

tive studies, which are practically non-existent at the beginning of the analysed period; and v) the predominance of quantitative content analysis applied

to the study of news and journalistic coverages, with a very little presence of works based on surveys, experimental research and, of course, qualitative

methods (focus groups, in-depth interviews or direct observation).

PS 025

The Early Days of Radio: Explaining the Transition from Point-To-Point Media to Broadcasting

A. Rosa

Universidade do Porto, Departamento de Ciências da Comunicação e da Informação, Porto, Portugal

This communication presents an explanatory theory about the transition from point-to-point electronic media, such as the telegraph and the telephone,

to radio as a mass media broadcast. Our main focus will be United States. We argue that there are four factors, all interdependent, to explain this transition:

technological factors, economic factors, factors relating to government regulations as well as social factors. The technology of radio will be presented in

the context of an economic dynamics that lead to the creation of a market structure founded on expensive and complex send out devices and in increasingly

cheaper and simpler receiving devices. Based on the research of authors such as Erik Barnouw and Yochai Benkler, we will analyse the role of patents and

state regulation in building the new radio market. The keystone of our communication is to make evidence of how radio technology was an instrument