Objectives

This IV Forum wants to focus the main aspect of communication on the city and so, it is interested on promoting essays about the following issues:

• Studies on urban communication projects from the comparative perspective between different cities. Examples of this would be the observation of the changes from the point of view of communication, the methodological analysis of how communication took part, the procedures or the results of these experiences. Our intention is to create applicable communication models and define the basic elements and concepts for future applications of the investigations.
• Researches on the communicational dynamic on the city: searching of indicatives of "communicated cities" as models which allow the monitoring of the public management of the city, always in a communicative fashion. These city models should also become a reference to understand the concept of "communicated city". To see the application of this model on different cities would help us to evaluate their degree of communication and how it is related with urban life quality.
• Conceptual investigation on the subject urban communication. Once seen the previous two proposals, and from the point of view of culture, we should ask ourselves in which theoretical tradition could this field of urban communication be included, if it is possible to consider it as an autonomous academic object and find out its functions and its methods.
• Theoretical and practical studies on public opinion: the building of citizenship as a part of the process of consolidation of democracy is a real task. This building of citizenship can be achieved through dynamic processes of public opinion on controversial subjects of the current urban life. It is also very important to get to know the citizens’ profile, their opinions and proposals on their collective problems. It is also worth to study civic journalism in depth and consider it as an educator in citizen public opinion. It is convenient as well to establish two more equally important fields of analysis: the field of citizen perceptions and that of the consumer habits on collective services.
• Building of a public communication model: it corresponds with a first inventory of the transformation experiences on the communicative practices of local and regional governments who carried out intervention projects in case of disaster. The investigation would consist on the comparison of collective interests and people’s expectations. The goal is to achieve the consolidation of a formal model of communication units which could easily be applied to other regional and local governments.
• Model of urban journalism: to improve the journalistic work on the city, by searching for an urban journalistic model that could be transferred to different media of the same field.
• Internet and the public opinion. One of the keys to the communicated city is the existence of a democratic and dynamic public opinion. The building of public opinion through the internet on the urban environments is one of the biggest challenges nowadays. The crux on these researches should revolve around the new ways of "inhabiting" the city, the perceptions and consensus of opinion, the direct and plebiscitary democracy, and the projects without territory.
• The building of citizen public opinion from the TV and the radio. The abilities of these two media to influence people and the power of the imagery they use constitute a reference point over the images of the cities on the citizen’s mind. This is especially true on the case of television because it reaches to all the society layers and its capacity of being the main source of information to most of the urban population.
• The search of new formats created specifically to build a well informed public opinion with deliberation capacity and able also for the permanent dialogue with the actors of urban development should be encouraged. Such formats could be used with commercial or public aims.

All these subjects are present on the complicated itineraries of the cities and their inhabitants and we expect you to present an interesting essay or experience about them.

Thus, we also invite you to search with us into the communicative practices produced on the cities, bearing in mind the following subjects:

• The crisis of communication in the city: causes, effects and possible solutions. Some keys to the relationship between communicative processes and information over the city and live quality.
• The effects of communication on the urban process: incorporation of the communication on the local government’s urban politics what will mean to introduce the communicative dimension to the politics and organization plans of the public spaces in the city, to the public services, the urban soil managements, architectonic designs and the preservation of the cultural and historical patrimony.
• The role of the media in the city: the role and the use of the media in the city should be to help to a harmonic urban development and promote the civic friendship. The media should also contribute to build a culture of preservation of the urban patrimony, improve life quality, provide spaces for communication and claim the right to the city.
• The information and administrative communication (mechanisms, systems and contents) to achieve a real democracy: the information and administrative communication should play a main role on the clearout of local governments to reach this real democracy.