Description

« (…) a decisive shift has occurred in the emerging
conception of communication as a trans-discipline. Within
this new perspective the culture industries and mass
communications are identified with the new processes of
production and circulation of culture, which coincide with
technological innovations but also with new sensibilities,
forms of leisure and appropriation. (…) the expansion and
inter-penetration of cultural studies and communication is
not a fortuitous development. It responds to the
centrality of communication within processes of cultural
re-conversion associated to the new phase of
modernization in our countries as well as the crisis of
modernity experienced in the advanced industrial nations.
(…) There has been a rethinking of the relations between
politics and culture, linking the question of cultural
policies and the transformations in cultural politics at a
time when the latter play a significant role in the
constitution of social actors. In light of these
developments, the study of mass communication is no
longer a question of analyzing markets and consumption.
Rather, it is conceived as a strategic site for the
redefinition of the public and the construction of
democracy. »