cristiane domingos de aquino teixeira & marcelo mendonça

THE TECHNOLOGICAL CONVERGENCE OF THE MASS MEDIA INSPAIN AND PORTUGAL: THE CASE STUDY OF UNIVERSITIES RADIO

Cristiane Domingos de Aquino Teixeira & Marcelo Mendonça Teixeira

Universidade Federal Rural de Pernambuco / Universidade de Pernambuco

DOI: 10.25768/21.04.01.011

ABSTRACT: A new social conscience is created, which will be used by an net society, atlocal and global levels, crossing both communication contexts, constituting a collaborativee interactive global network. In other sense, the geographical boundaries are diluted, theworld today is interconnected by the simultaneity of the new information and communicationtechnologies. Unlike conventional radio, Internet radio immediately sparked the interest of thebroadcasting companies, once it did not impose limits on the listener’s geographical range, noron the exclusive audio format programming. These radios have not delayed in employing thetechnological resources of web radio, fact that can be sustained by the quantitative growthof online platforms, through which people can have access to the ordinary programming inreal time by means of a great variety of devices connected to the Internet. This investigationconsidered it important to analyze the educational potentialities of web radios in the Spanishand Portuguese academic universe. For that purpose, given the characteristics of the study, theresearch methodology used was of qualitative and empirical-descriptive, from january 2018to january 2019.KEYWORDS: web radio; high education; interactivity; collaboration; online education.

Índice

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

1 The University Web Radio Stationsin Espain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

2 The University Web Radio Stationsin Portugal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

Introduction

IN the late 90’s and early 2000’s, a new sociocultural movement, originated by young

professionals in big American cities and uni-versities, reached a global dimension, andwith no agency to limit that process, the diffe-rent computer networks developed in the 70’sjoined together, while the number of peopleand computers connected to the network grewvery fast, says Vanassi in (Teixeira, 2014).

c© 2021, Cristiane Domingos de Aquino Teixeira & Mar-celo Mendonça Teixeira.c© 2021, Universidade da Beira Interior.

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Thirty years of continuous growth of societyand collective intelligence virtualization ledto the Millennial Generation (or GenerationY), going from the operating system Enquiredevelopment, by Timothy John Berners-Lee,and following Ted Nelson’s Xanadu and Hy-pertetx principles to culminate in the WorldWide Web, in 1989. Progressively, the Webevolved from a static guideline (1.0) to a colla-borative one (2.0), and after that to a guidelineof contents portability, information connecti-vity and programming languages integration(3.0). Experts already talk about an artificialintelligence Web (4.0), as foreseen by Anan-darajan and Anandarajan in Teixeira (Teixeira,2012a). At the same time, numerous interac-tive resources are developed for the Internetand media digitalization.

In other sense, Bauerlein (Bauerlein,2008) goes further in his “The dumbest ge-neration: How the digital age stupefies youngAmericans and jeopardizes our future”, by ac-cusing the digital era of stupefying and idio-tizing young people through anomy, isolation,addiction and cognitive overload. As well asin Portugal, in Spain also co-exists a reaso-nable number of academic broadcasters whichare primarily characterized by a great range ofvaried programming, including numerous fi-elds in which it is possible to find all kinds ofgenres and issues. In addition, university ra-dios are broadcasters that foster radio-creationbecoming themselves real alternatives to thegeneral radio dominant content, as they offera vast collection of Information, Culture andEntertainment. They are also a clear alterna-tive to those contents which have leading rolein the specialized offers field. We will pro-ceed with the presentation of the results in ac-cordance with the objectives of this research,now analyzing the web radios in the Spanishand Portuguese academic universe.

Similarly, Don Tapscott and Anthony D.Williams in (Teixeira, 2014) say that the glo-bal interaction, based on the sharing of infor-mation and knowledge, and the advances ofthe technologies of information and communi-

cation, modified the concept of economy andsociety for ever: The consumers become pro-ducers and the producers become consumersof contents, goods and services, in a new pla-netary economic model, without restrictionsor barriers, induced by a continuous processof massive collaboration. Is the open sourcetransmission, the free divulgation, the decen-tralized and multi-polarized information, thefortuitous interaction, the purposeful commu-nication, the shared, distributed creation andco-creation that find their maximum expres-sion on the virtual environment.

In fact, the need of new sociability beha-viors promoted new ways of technologicaldevelopment, changing, shifting and creatingunusual relations between Man and informa-tion and communication technologies (Lemos,2003). This was exactly what happened atthe turn of the 20th century to 21st centurywhen many revolutionary network communi-cation electronic devices were developed. ToTeixeira (Teixeira, 2012b), as a consequenceof globalization and technological growth, thesubsequent multiculturalism established a newsocial structure, consisting of different kindsof people and corporations, guided by interac-tions, collaborations and knowledge exchangein the newly adult virtual universe.

1 The University Web Radio Stationsin Espain

From 2015 to 2018, the Spanish academic sta-tions were characterized by presenting a pro-grammatic heterogeneous grid with respect tocontent, thus emerging as another option tothe ordinary programming of the major con-ventional broadcasters. In fact, among the ge-neralist Spanish radios, the information andthe entertaining and cultural magazines hold70% of the total offers, while sport only re-presents little more than 10%. The remai-ning percentage is reserved for Music and par-ticipation spaces and, to a lesser extent, forEducation, Religion and other minority gen-res, such as Fiction (20%), with only a spora-dic presence on university radio stations. This

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The technological convergence of the mass media in Spain and Portugal: the case study of universities radio

programmatic uniformity becomes even moreapparent if we bear in mind that the differentnetworks choose to transmit the same contents

at the same time schedule, affecting a vastmajority of broadcasters, including those thathave been managed in recent years.

Figure 1. Radio Universidad de NavarraSource: www.unav.edu/web/vida-universitaria/sociedad-y-comunicacion.

Programs with training characteristicsalso have a highlighted presence on Spanishacademic radios offer, especially on RadioUNED programming, through which it is pos-sible to have online access to spaces dedica-ted to people studying, among others, Hispa-nic and English Philosophy, Philology, Econo-mics, Business Administration, Tourism andBusiness Sciences and Law. They also pro-vide Continuous Education contents (Ponte alDía), access to the University (Access Course)and general information on higher education(University Newsletter).

In addition to the services offered by Ra-dio UNED, it is also possible to find, in theremaining academic broadcasters, educationalspaces, some of which are directed not onlyto the students themselves, but also to all peo-ple who are interested in accessing to the radioon a virtual level. As an example we indicatesome programs: Con Ciencia en los bolsillos yDon de lenguas (Universidad de Salamanca),Aula 21 (Universidad de León), Ona ciència

(Universitat Pompeu Fabra) Aula salud (Uni-versidad Autónoma de Madrid), Echando lavista atrás (an instruction space dedicated toHistory), Es de justicia (Law), Economía yempresa, Historia de las ideas (Phylosophy),La biblioteca (Literature), Tirando de la len-gua, Pensar la Fe (Theology), Nativos digita-les or A Ciencia Cierta (Universidad de Na-varra). Information about current events andnews produced by universities are also presentin the grid, with magazines such as Buenosdías (Universitad de Navarra) or El quioscde La Rambla (Universitat Pompeu Frabra).However, the most common are reports focu-sed on literature, theatre, music and, aboveall, on cinema, such as: Entrada Lliure (Uni-versitat Pompeu Fabra), La siesta del fauno(Univeridad Politécnica de Valencia), EfecteDominó (Universitat de Barcelona), Clásicosde cine, Carta de libros y Patio de butacas(Universidad de Navarra) or Buscando leonesentre las nubes (Universidad de Salamanca)(Teixeira & Perona Páez, 2010).


https://www.unav.edu/web/vida-universitaria/sociedad-y-comunicacion


According to Perona Páez (Perona Páez,2009), along with a worldwide trend and ac-cording to researches carried out within thisarea, online radios should not be restricted to“generalist” functions, but should also be acombining tool with a complementary inter-face aimed at people’s education, whether itis instructive or informative. Therefore, thealternative nature of the analysed broadcas-

ting companies is marked by the exploitationof contents that can hardly be found in othergrids, such as programs dealing with the pro-blem of social exclusion, those which makescience and knowledge popular, as well asthose that emphasize less commercial musicor that bring together cinema, literature andart (ibidem).

Figure 2. Radio UNEDSource: https://canal.uned.es/destacados/PUDERADIO/.

On the other hand, it presents a wide rangeof educational programs, ranging from formaland informal classes to professional and tech-nical training courses and languages, thus pro-viding an alternative and complementary tea-ching and learning background. For students,it represents an extension of knowledge and aninteractive room outside the traditional clas-srooms, approaching Lévy’s concept on “cy-berculture”, or even, on the virtualization pro-cess society faces nowadays, in which the vir-tual is not opposed to reality, but it comple-ments it (Lévy, 2010). Hence, the main ac-tivity yet to be developed by educators is toadvise educational institutions on the use ofNew Technologies of Information and Com-munication as a didactic support, promoting

and spreading their educative applications in-side and outside classrooms.

2 The University Web Radio Stationsin Portugal

According to research done on 1ST September2016, on ERC, “Entidade Reguladora Paraa Comunicação Social” (Media RegulatoryAuthority) Website – a Portuguese govern-ment agency that regulates and supervises en-tities media activities on that country – no spe-cific laws for Internet radio broadcasting werefound. Radio Law in Portugal draws a dis-tinction between generalist radios and thema-tic ones; the first ones are those whose con-tent includes a vast array of themes, and thesecond ones are those that simply obey to a


https://canal.uned.es/destacados/PUDERADIO/


certain model, addressing a specific content,such as music, information or other, beingERC responsibility their respective classifica-tion. Alongside with the radios already menti-oned, there are university radios produced forand aimed at university populations.

In Portugal, contrary to in other Europeancountries, the university radios on the web ap-peared at the end of the 90’s, and today, afteralmost two decades, few remain active in thenational scenario. In Portugal, there was fouruniversity radios with FM emission and fewprojects of university radios in the web, un-til 2016. Teixeira (2016) also shares the sameinformation, identifying the Rádio Universitá-ria de Coimbra – from Universidade de Coim-bra; the Rádio Universitária do Marão – fromthe Trás-os-Montes and Alto Douro Region;the Rádio Universitária do Algarve – from theUniversidade do Algarve; and the Rádio Uni-versitária do Minho – from the Universidade

do Minho, as the portuguese university webradios. Besides these, from the research per-formed for this work, we have identified thepresence of other two university radios – theRádio Universitária Beira do Interior – fromthe Universidade Beira do Interior, and the Ra-dio Zero – from the Instituto Superior Téc-nico. In global terms, it is possible to assertthat they share similar objectives, but have dif-ferent and heterogeneous structures and pro-gram typologies (Teixeira, 2009).

If for the advertisers the traditional ra-dio had a low financial cost and reached agreat number of people geographically disper-sed, the internet emissions further lowered thiscost, with a global level market share. So, theemissions began to operate on the hertz andweb formats, giving to the advertisements animpact much bigger than the isolated hearingstimulus and, thus, a virtually decisive influ-ence about the customer reaction.

Figure 3. Rádio Universidade de CoimbraSource: www.ruc.pt/informacao/.

However, among the mentioned radios,the Rádio Universitária do Minho stands outpresently for its diverse and segmented pro-gram on the web, dedicated to the promotionand divulgation of cultural, scientific and sup-

port activities to the lectures of the Univer-sidade do Minho, representing, at the sametime, some of its departments and academicunities, besides a strong cultural interventionin the local communities of the Braga and


https://www.ruc.pt/informacao/


Porto Districts. The Rádio Universitária doMinho (RUM) exists since 1989, and since2006 it started to transmit via web, with a cle-arly heterogeneous program offer, on whichspaces of purely formative-instructive charac-ter are mixed with others that explore diffe-rent categories and formats, closer to some on-going experiences in Europe. According toLeão (2007), the RUM launched two crucialinterfaces in the context of its strategy to con-quer and gain the loyalty of new public: thewebsite and the online emission. The consoli-dation of the online emission, particularly, re-vealed as an alternative to the “conventionalreceptors”, emphasizing culture, debates oneducation, science, economy, politics, news,local informs, chronicles, interviews, and spe-cialized reports (Teixeira, 2012a).

In its relationship to the Universidade doMinho, the RUM makes available the virtual

space and a group of technological interfa-ces for the lecturers to divulge their scienti-fic works, suggest readings, stimulate the de-bate on themes related to their disciplines (dis-cussion forums), to inform grades, tests, in-terviews, divulge local, national and internati-onal academic events (congresses, seminars,talks, colloquiums, meetings...), store lectu-res in podcast (in a way that the student canhave access to the discipline contents in anypart of the world), besides the possibilitiesof synchronous and asynchronous communi-cation with the broadcasting station, throughE-mail, Blog, Messenger, Twitter, Facebook,Hi5 or Myspace (ibdem). Besides, it is onthe program grid that the RUM is most diffe-rent from other Portuguese university radios,for its thematic diversity and of the programsdedicated to the educational-cultural and jour-nalistic categories.

Figure 4. Rádio Universitária do MinhoSource: https://rum.pt/shows/campus-verbal.

This is the RUM online, functioning as asocial communication vehicle of local com-munities and as a valuable space for the di-vulgation, socialization and popularization ofscience and technology, produced by differentdepartments at the teaching institutions. Ac-cording with the researcher (Cordeiro, 2010),

the contribution and influence of university ra-dios in the development of the future professi-onals’ formation, allied to the importance inthe context of radio-phonic communication ingeneral are incontestable, and, in a contextwhere the main concern is the profit-makingof the station, university radios appear as ele-


https://rum.pt/shows/campus-verbal


ments that offer alternatives of program andformation.

It is also reasonable to argue that teachers’new space and time perceptions, as well asthose of the teaching and learning process asa whole, are of a crucial importance in esta-blishing a school under new paradigms, achie-vable through the application of electronic ageconcepts, such as E-learning, Open School,University Without Walls (UWW) and SocialWeb, i.e. the socialization phenomenon alre-ady taking place at a global scale in an envi-ronment of sharing experiences, informationand online learning (Correia & Tomé, 2007).Over the years, the media gradually adapteditself to the technological development and thesocial changes of each period, so much in theprogram schedule format, as in the genres andin the segmentation of the audience, transfor-mations which ensured its continuity on thecontemporary times. Provided with historicalfacts, (Teixeira, 2013) explains that is possibleto see clearly that happened important chan-ges on the hearing habits of the people.

The technological convergence of themass media is the result of a long adapta-

tion process of their communicative resour-ces to the evolutionary changes of each his-torical moment. Thus, the new media became(plurally) an extension of the traditional me-dia, allowing to the public access informationin a wide range of digital devices (Macquail,2017). In this sense, our qualitative study withempirical-descriptive nature focuses on a lite-rature review about Web Radio and its educa-tive strand. This is an innovator and incipientissue on literature when investigating the po-tentialities of the radiophonic universe to theonline educative process.

By itself, the fruitful study follows thepath of the radiophonic evolution integratingthe online education on the media sphere, es-pecially on the production of educational con-tent to the programs, and the conception ofa new language to the environment, a promi-sing ambience to the contemporary radiopho-nic culture. From this scenario, we contextua-lize with the case study of the web universityradios on Spain, showing its educative contri-butions to the Spanish academic community,like Radio ECCA.

Figure 5. Radio ECCASource: www2.radioecca.org/.


http://www2.radioecca.org/


Figure 6. Radio ECCA (Courses)Soure: www2.radioecca.org/estudiar/aula-abierta/destacados.

Due to the unusual nature of this investi-gation, we intend to promote the phenomenonof the “Educative Modalities of Radio on theDigital Era”, that makes itself present on manyEuropean countries, at the same time, expan-ding the debate among the international scien-tific community. Such information offers usconsistent elements to move from the tacit tothe explicit knowledge, with property of cau-ses and consequences, going beyond the bibli-ographic limitations.

Conclusions

The universities and schools through a WebRadio can provide educational programs inPodcast with different themes for differentcourses or areas of knowledge, which will beavailable online and can be accessed at any-time and anywhere in the world. Through thistechnological resource, there is no possibilityof losing the program if the person is busy, theprograms are available online and can be ac-cessed when necessary or possible. The Pod-cast integrated in the Web Radio brought theease of access to fast information and collabo-ration between people around the world.

According to the preliminary results ofthis investigation, the university radios are not

restricted to generalist or informative func-tions anymore, but figure as a complemen-tary or alternative mean for people’s forma-tion. However, the understanding of the webradio as an educational-communicative mediahas been followed by some difficulties relatedto the international academic community, inface of the still restricted investigation aboutthe potentialities of online radio. Besides that,due to the similarity of its basic characteris-tics, it is common for the student public toconfound podcast with web radio. Anotherquestion to be considered is the need to createits own identity as a means of mass communi-cation on the web, once it comes from a tra-ditional media format. Even though it is stillin need of a solid methodological-theoreticalbasis, the use of the web radio as a formativeinterface has been expanding significantly inthe world.

In Spain, the university broadcasters havebeen converted into real alternatives to the biggeneralist radio stations programming, extre-mely motivated by a huge expertise and ho-mogeneity which prevails in relation to thecontents to which they refer. In this way, theanalysis made has revealed that Spanish aca-demic radios clearly have a heterogeneous of-fer, in which programs of educational and ins-


http://www2.radioecca.org/estudiar/aula-abierta/destacados


tructive character are mixed with others explo-ring different genres and formats. Consequen-tly, emerges a range of options, in which to-pics are dealt under different approaches thatare dominant in the conventional model, fa-vouring the development of a critical and soli-dary perspective.

Taking advantage of the Internet interac-tive potentials, university radio stations seemto demonstrate a certain sensitivity in ensu-ring the rights of access and participation, so-mething that has been increasingly neglectedin other communicative fields. Is possible toclearly observe the benefits that the techno-logical advances are meaning to the develop-ment of the radio communication, when mee-ting the experimentation with new sound for-mats, the mediated interaction and the com-municative complimentarity which come fromdifferent digital interfaces on the Internet. Weadd the fact that the students seek ever moretime flexibility, low cost to access the infor-mation, mobility and communication in realtime with their peers. So, this is a wise in-vestment for the universities, with guaranteedreturn on the production of knowledge on theteaching perspective, reality that we knew inSpain with their University radios. Is a cultu-ral question that transcends the “want to do”,the “want to implement”. Ahead of the pos-sibilities, if the characteristics of teaching andlearning be oriented in the way of incorporatethe Web University Radio as an educative te-chnology on the higher education; it will bea very interesting option for the online educa-tion (Teixeira, 2016).

In general, we believe that the radio webuse as an educational interface has beingsignificantly expanded throughout the world,though there is still a lack of a solid theore-tical and methodological basis. In this sense,it becomes evident the need to more fully in-vestigate the teaching and learning process th-rough the web radio in educational instituti-ons. In the Portuguese case, more specifically,it is crucial to deepen studies on the academicradio educational and training potentials and

their contributions to the country. In the con-temporary context, exploring web radio edu-cational potentials seems to be a new chal-lenge for educators.

The integration of the university radiosin learning platforms deserves to be imple-mented, being through partnerships with theeducation institutions, being by initiative ofthe own university radio, potential doesn’tlack for this. When introducing the educativestrand, new horizons are established and newpossibilities are evidenced toward the class-room and online education. However, onceconsolidated, is necessary to investigate theimpacts of this integration on the teachingpractice and the contributions to the academiccommunity “in loco”. This is one of the refe-rences for future studies.

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Teixeira, M. (2012a). Cyberculture: FromPlato to the virtual universe. The Ar-chitectute of collective intelligence. GrinVerlag.

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