This article discusses the concept of terroir in the light of the communication practices. It provides a literature review illustrated with a case observation. The author identifies three key stages ...in the constitution of the terroir through communication: organizational norms and interaction; the circulation of public relations, marketing and media messages, and promotion; and a meaningful consumer experience that closes the circle of a terroir-based storytelling. Here, communication processes play a leading role, which includes the agency of diverse stakeholders. The author argues that, among these stakeholders, geographical indication (GI) organizations are leading agents that build symbolic terroir practices. One of the text's principal theses is that terroir is a socio-cultural construction embedded in storytelling practices with a broad scientific, economic, social and cultural exchange. For this terroir to exist, there must be a collective will, driven by the interests of a wide range of stakeholders such as policymakers, local communities, vine growers, winemakers, marketers and consumers. The practice of defining, communicating and circulating this storytelling is what finally transfers agency to the narrative itself in what the author refers to as the will for terroir. The article illustrates the process with a case study of a wine GI in Catalonia (Spain) and discusses how the will for terroir is relevant at each stage.
•Terroir can be considered a communicative construction.•GI organizations are a leading part of a community that builds terroir symbolic practices.•There are three main fields for terroir storytelling: organizational practices, public communication and consumer experience.•The will for terroir demands that different agents and stakeholders collectively contribute to promote a notion of terroir.
In recent years, nations have regained prominence as central symbols of political unity and mobilization, and proved capable of serving political goals across the political spectrum. Yet, the current ...revival of the national extends well beyond the realm of politics; it is anchored in the logic of global capitalism, and has become inextricably intertwined with the practices of promotion and consumption. Our article seeks to map the interface between nationalism and economic life, and bring some clarity to the so far fragmented debate on the topic, which developed under diverse headings such as ‘economic nationalism’, ‘nation branding’, ‘consumer ethnocentrism’ and ‘commercial nationalism’. We focus more closely on developing the concept of consumer nationalism, which received little sustained attention in cultural studies and in social sciences and humanities more generally. We offer a definition of consumer nationalism, situate it vis-a-vis the broader phenomena of economic nationalism and political consumerism, and propose an analytical distinction between political consumer nationalism and symbolic consumer nationalism. Drawing on existing literature we then consider a range of examples and examine how these two forms of consumer nationalism become involved in the reproduction of nationalism, taking into account both consciously nationalist discourses and practices as well as the more banal, everyday forms of nationalism.
ABSTRACTThe controversies surrounding the rural have generated a lively discussion in Spain. Notions of “empty Spain” have gained momentum since the second half of the 2010s while the mainstream ...media have continued to replicate negative stereotypes and narratives about the countryside: the lack of opportunities, abandoned villages, economic depression and impoverished cultural life. These clichés, though grounded in the difficult realities of these spaces, come from a background of stigmatized depictions of the rural. However, these mainstream narratives may conceal alternative perspectives that allow new representations. The author proposes the notion of the resituated rural to refer to these new narratives and identifies three markers: the determination to leave behind victimization; the rejection of rural stereotyping; and the commitment to values rooted in cultural identities, sustainability concerns, social justice and gender equity. To illustrate this notion, the author reviews cultural works ranging from novels and feature films to documentaries about agriculture and nature, as well as magazines producing quality journalism on a variety of media platforms and social networks. The article argues that the resituated rural provides alternatives to hegemonic storytelling, avoids polarized apocalyptic or idyllic scenarios and explains the Spanish countryside as a “livable space”, thus offering critical insights for the construction of acceptable futures.
This article analyses rural representations in the documentary series Ruralitas (2020) on the Spanish TVE. The programme shows that the people living in the countryside have agency and do not conform ...to common rural stereotypes. Nevertheless, the stories flirt with ideas of the ‘rural idyll’ by focusing on the beauty of the landscape and traditional rural versus urban binaries. However, the series also develops what the author names an agentic rural. The agentic rural not only empowers countryside dwellers and portrays self-determined destinies in the countryside, but also highlights problems associated with depopulation.
•Media and communication play a major role in bear-human cohabitation contexts.•Local media covering the bear issue mostly rely on institutional and political sources.•Politicization and ...environmentalisation conceal the socioeconomic issues of rewilding.•Documentaries give agency to rural communities affected by rewilding policies.•Independent productions renew imaginaries of the rural in rewilding processes.
In Trentino and the Pyrenees, the population of bears has grown since the 1990s, when new specimens were released into the wild to recover this endangered species. The reintroduction generated a conflictive cohabitation with village dwellers, the shepherding sector, and rural initiatives in both areas. The aim of this research is to evaluate how local media and two audiovisual documentaries covered the bear issue in both regions. The researchers analysed the content of 86 articles from two newspapers in 2022, conducted a narrative analysis of the documentaries and interviewed their directors. The results reveal that the documentaries created a counter-narrative to politicisation, in the Italian case, and to environmentalisation, in the Catalan. Because both documentaries paid attention to rural communities, they contributed to increasing rural agency, an aspect aligned with the filmmakers’ motivations at the inception of both productions. The authors argue that the circulation of these narratives diversely expresses renewed imaginaries of rural societies in both contexts.
This article discusses the practices of representing shepherd women in Spain, who have recently become more visible. New representations challenge stereotyped concepts of gender roles and rurality in ...such a masculinized context as the livestock sector. One of the main arguments of the article is that shepherdesses narratives and visuals connect with the sustainable agro-social development of the economy from an ecofeminist perspective. The authors conducted a close reading of a selection of productions, including short videos and media interventions about shepherdesses. Among the conclusions, they argue that shepherdesses' media productions and interventions put women at the center of local development processes, with particular emphasis on their role and leadership qualities. Their activities promote and maintain a networked sisterhood that activates intersectional approaches in favor of alternative structures to farming and life in rural areas.
This article focuses on the processes of sense-making of forest fires in a Mediterranean context. The authors use a textual approach to compare media framing with activist organizational ...storytelling. The authors conducted a frame analysis in two major daily newspapers in Catalonia (La Vanguardia and El Periódico de Catalunya) during three summers and compared the results with the stories from four leading activist and volunteering organizations that came out of in-depth interviews with their members, one focus group and published materials. The results identified up to five major mainstream media frames, among which were stories focusing on agricultural risk, climate change and weather conditions; imprudent and negligent attitudes; inappropriate fuel management and woodland conditions; and arson. The natural self-regulatory frame was present as part of the discourse of resilience but almost residual. Some journalism focused on the spectacular nature of the events and their dramatic impact, which led to some degree of mediatization of wildfires. The organizations problematized these frames and discussed about the appropriateness of human intervention to prevent forest fires. The results also revealed that activists observed the issue from a broader complexity, replicating frames on "structural responsibility" instead of "individual responsibility" allocation. The authors point out that if wildfires are to be better understood and dealt with more in-depth knowledge is required of different stakeholders' approaches to preventing forest fires.
This is a brief note on Benedict Anderson’s influence and more specifically, on his concept of ‘Imagined Communities’ and its impact on the media. The author reviews the concept in relation to ...national construction through the media, noting key reasons why Anderson’s ideas either took hold or were passed over. The text pays tribute to Anderson’s remarkable contribution to the theory of and ideas on national identity and the sway held by culture and media in fostering this identity.
Masking Political Engagement Castelló, Enric
Television & new media,
09/2015, Letnik:
16, Številka:
6
Journal Article
Recenzirano
This article analyzes how statewide and regional public television in Spain handled the demonstration held on September 11, 2012 (the National Day of Catalonia), in Barcelona under the slogan ...“Catalonia, a New European State.” The author performed a content analysis of fifty-eight news programs and a narrative analysis of eighty-nine stories. The results indicate that the majority of the channels offered limited coverage of the demonstration. The television narratives also minimized the role of citizen agency in the achievement of goals through democratic participation and displayed a depoliticized account. The author argues that the coverage of the march and its consequences resulted in a masking of citizens’ political engagement; far from promoting an understanding of why the march was so massively supported, it instead presented a story on politicians’ strategy. The author relates this case to a wider trend of media coverage of citizens’ protests in a Western, post-democratic context.
There is a growing research that considers the geographical indications (GIs) of agricultural products and foodstuffs as commons. However, narrative approaches exploring this relationship are scarce. ...This research analyzed stories attached to twelve Catalan and Swedish products within the European Union's Protected Designation of Origin (PDO), and Protected Geographical Indication (PGI) schemes to map out how narratives of commons are articulated. The analysis raised four key aspects of the narratives of GIs as commons: i) historical constitution; ii) collective efforts as a driving force behind their value; iii) co-responsibility of the community of producers and related actors; and iv) intangible outputs and focus on heritage. The results show that the narratives of GIs as commons have a stronger presence in Catalonia and more clearly address issues of social engagement and cultural heritage than in Sweden. Internal differences were noted in the two countries and some GIs are more commercially oriented and cater for world markets while others are noncommercial and only regionally consumed. The article contributes to the research on GIs, better connecting their complexities throughout their communicative and narrative constitution and articulation as commons.
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