The Use of Generic Frames in Elite Press: Between Conflict,Neutrality, and an Empowered Journalist

ABSTRACT

We propose to submit the existence of the five generic frames advanced by Semetko and Valkenburg [2000. “Framing European Politics: A Content Analysis of Press and Television News.” Journal of Communication 50 (2): 93–109. doi:10.1111/j.1460-2466.2000.tb02843.x] to a qualitative validation test. We strive to enrich this theory, given its potential to do comparative research across borders, testing it outside the cultural context where it was created, and thus contributing to perfecting its research methods and application, with the inclusion of local frames, better adapted to the Latin American cultural space. A three-year sample of political coverage was analyzed in two Chilean mainstream newspapers often accused of uniform ideological perspective. Although the five frames are used, a simplified form of the conflict frame practically eclipses the other four in use. Two others were identified (“defense” and “informative”), as well a narrative perspective, almost like a meta-frame, which installs the perception that the journalist knows more than ordinary citizens, their colleagues and other political actors.     

Black women’s bodies,ideology, and the public curriculum of the pro- and anti-choice movements in the US

This paper explores how opposite sides of the abortion debate employ a discourse of endangerment to mobilise political support for their ideologies about black women’s bodies. I examine the role of black women within that rhetorical strategy through various rhetorical artefacts. To analyse these artefacts, I employ the theoretical framework of ideological or ideographic criticism. This framework helps us see how the artefacts used by both pro and anti-choice movements ‘condition’ the audience not merely to adopt a set of ‘beliefs and behavior, but a vocabulary of concepts that function as guides, warrants, reasons, or excuses for behavior and belief’. Though the two sides of the abortion debate differ in their overt political views, they turn out to share an implicit ideology about black women. This ideology prevents the voices of black women from being heard and valued in a debate that is nonetheless focused on black women’s bodies.     

NATSUM: Narrative abstractive summarization through cross-document timeline generation

A new approach to narrative abstractive summarization (NATSUM) is presented in this paper. NATSUM is centered on generating a narrative chronologically ordered summary about a target entity from several news documents related to the same topic. To achieve this, first, our system creates a cross-document timeline where a time point contains all the event mentions that refer to the same event. This timeline is enriched with all the arguments of the events that are extracted from different documents. Secondly, using natural language generation techniques, one sentence for each event is produced using the arguments involved in the event. Specifically, a hybrid surface realization approach is used, based on over-generation and ranking techniques. The evaluation demonstrates that NATSUM performed better than extractive summarization approaches and competitive abstractive baselines, improving the F1-measure at least by 50%, when a real scenario is simulated.     

Designing an accompanying ecosystem to foster entrepreneurship among agronomic and forestry engineering students. Opinion and commitment of university lecturers

In the Higher School of Agronomic and Forestry Engineering of the University of Cordoba, a collective project conceived as an ‘ecosystem to support and accompany entrepreneurs’ has been proposed. The approach aims to spread and consolidate the entrepreneurial spirit and to respond to the demands of possible stakeholders involved in the whole process of training, as well as the subsequent integration of graduates into the labour market. Putting into practice this initiative, which involves multiple actors, is a complex and difficult task. For this reason, prior to its implementation, the authors considered it necessary to listen to main stakeholders' opinions and evaluate their degree of commitment and the requirements they consider important for the viability and sustainability of the initiative. This paper focuses on the faculty's opinions, gathered by means of a survey conducted with the entire faculty (N?=?128, response rate?=?45%) and semi-structured interviews held with 20 members of the School board. The results suggest that there is a general consensus on the suitability of this collective project and that there is a core of teachers willing to get involved. Evidently, guidelines need to be produced to facilitate taking on such tasks. However, the main drawbacks are related with the conflict between formal requirements of professor professional profile and the steps needed to establish the ecosystem.     

Identification of histological threshold concepts in health sciences curricula: Students' perception

Students' metacognitive skills and perceptions are considered important variables for high-quality learning. In this study, students' perceptions were used to identify histological threshold concepts (integrative, irreversible, transformative, and troublesome) in three health sciences curricula. A specific questionnaire was developed and validated to characterize students' perceptions of histological threshold concepts. A sample of 410 undergraduate students enrolled in the dentistry, medicine, and pharmacy degree programs participated in the study. Concepts assessed in the study were clustered to ten categories (factors) by exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis. Concepts linked to tissue organization and tissue functional states received the highest scores from students in all degree programs, suggesting that the process of learning histology requires the integration of both static concepts related to the constituent elements of tissues and dynamic concepts such as stem cells as a tissue renewal substrate, or the euplasic, proplasic and retroplasic states of tissues. The complexity of integrating static and dynamic concepts may pose a challenging barrier to the comprehension of histology. In addition, several differences were detected among the students in different degree programs. Dentistry students more often perceived morphostructural concepts as threshold concepts, whereas medical students highlighted concepts related to two-dimensional microscopic identification. Lastly, pharmacy students identified concepts related to tissue general activity as critical for the comprehension and learning of histology. The identification of threshold concepts through students' perceptions is potentially useful to improve the teaching and learning process in health sciences curricula.     

Scale of attitudes of schoolchildren towards immigrant pupils

In the academic year 2004–2005, approximately 400,000 immigrant pupils were enrolled in Spanish schools and six-form colleges. The racial and ethnic diversity that Spanish society and schools present could be a source of new opportunities and social enrichment, for the national as well as the immigrant population. However, this contact between nationals and immigrants is not free of problems. School is one of the areas where attitudes towards different social groups begin to be formed, while at the same time being the main opportunity that our society has to create an environment of coexistence and attitudinal change. The first step to look at such a complex phenomenon in more detail is to have evaluation tools available that allow us to measure it. In this article we present the results referring to psychometric features, and we carry out a differential analysis of the Scale of attitudes of school-children towards immigrant pupils.     

Proyecto Mercurio: un instrumento institucional para impulsar la introducción de los medios audiovisuales en el currículo

No basta regalar la caña para formar un pescador ni el lápiz para enseñar a escribir. La introducción de la tecnología audiovisual, basada en medios más aparatosos que la lectoescritura, ha podido confundir medios y sistemas de representación, instrumento y código. La información precisa y de primera mano sobre el proyecto Mercurio del M.E.C. que se da en este artículo define un programa que va mucho más allá de los tradicionales objetivos de enseñar a utilizar los aparatos.     

Qué se puede hacer con lo audiovisual en la educación La imagen: un problema trivial con implicaciones básicas

Lo audiovisual está vinculado a dos grandes y graves problemas de la cultura y la educación actuales: la continua renovación en el proceso de estructurar los significados, y las nuevas vías que buscan niños y jóvenes para identificarse y situarse en el mundo, para construir el sentido. Se aboga desde ahí por una renovación profunda de toda la educación y no por la incorporación de un tópico más al diseño curricular.