Curation, Visualization, and Visibility
The first CUVICOM Conference was held on October 6, 2023 at Faculty of Information and Audiovisual Media (FIMA) The University of Barcelona, and it was broadcasted through the channel YouTube of said Faculty.
The conference is part of the research results dissemination activities of CUVICOM project, funded by Ministry of Science and Innovation Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (PID2021-123579OB-I00), and coordinated by researchers University of Barcelona, Javier Guallar and Mari Vállez.
The project has four research lines: content curation, information visualization, web visibility, and a cross-cutting line for monitoring trends in digital communication.
During the conference, presentations from each of these lines of work were featured, delivered both in person at the venue and online via Zoom.
After a brief introduction to the conference by the project's PI, Javier Guallar, the first session focused on the Web Visibility research line, featuring a presentation by Google And digital communication: Google News, Google Discover and Google Patents, delivered by researchers Carlos Lopezosa, Cristina I. Font-Julian, and Mari Vállez. Vállez presented and moderated the session, Lopezosa discussed Google News and Google Discover, and Font-Julian, of Google Patents. It was noted that it is sustainable from the media's standpoint to work with multiple platforms of Google, because they are complementary tools, although in response to the audience question about which of the two news aggregators Google (News or Discover) is currently the most useful for a journalistic company, Lopezosa responded unequivocally that, Discover, which represents the core of media strategies.
Carlos Lopezosa and Mari Vállez
Next was the turn of the Visualization line, featuring the presentation Evaluation of the quality of information visualization in news and data reports, the session was presented and moderated by Pedraza-Jiménez, and mostly delivered online by Morales from Chile. The group's work in developing a protocol or system to evaluate the quality of information visualization was showcased. As Pedraza-Jiménez pointed out, "the goal is to create a tool that allows us to analyze and study in depth the information visualizations published in the media and contribute to their improvement.
Rafael Pedraza moderates the presentation Alejandro Morales online from Chile
Thirdly, the speakers from the Content Curation line took the floor. The presentation was titled Content Curation in Newsletters of Music Centers and Scientific Journals on Social Media and was conducted by researchers Pere Franch, Montserrat Urpí, Jesús Cascon-Katchadourian, and Javier Guallar. Guallar introduced the session, outlining the methodology used by the group, called CAS (Curation Analysis System), and then Franch presented preliminary results from an ongoing study using the CAS method regarding curation in newsletters from The New York Timesand Urpí and Cascon-Katchadourian did the same regarding content curation on the social media of Spanish music conservatories and LIS journals in Ibero-America, respectively. Various examples of best practices in curation were also showcased.
(from left to right) Javier Guallar, Pere Franch, Montserrat Urpí and Jesús Cascon-Katchadourian
The last session of the conference was dedicated to the Cross-Cutting line of the project. Presented and moderated by Lluís Codina, the session featured Llúcia Castells-Fos, with the presentation titled MAREA Project: Models for activating audience relevance and engagement in media. and Elena Pastor, who announced and presented her doctoral thesis on academic communication. Castells-Fos pointed out that the objective of MAREA is to propose a model for evaluating the activation level of reputation, visibility, and audience loyalty for media outlets. On these topics, researchers in this line have recently published two articles in Doxa and the Studies on journalistic messaging.
Llúcia Castells-Fos and Lluís Codina
The conference was closed by the co-PI of the project, Mari Vállez, referring to future conferences.
Those interested in these topics can access the already published results of the project's research at CUVICOM publicationsMore information on the website CUVICOMand at X @cuvicom.
Javier Guallar
University of Barcelona
