ResumenEl presente trabajo busca identificar afinidades y disonancias entre el buen vivir, al que se dio prioridad jurídica y política en las recientes reformas constitucionales en Ecuador y Bolivia, y el bien común, que en paralelo está floreciendo en el debate público italiano -y más en general, europeo-a partir de algunas experiencias concretas de defensa y reapropiación de los recursos llamados "comunes". Tal perspectiva comparativa ha llevado a identificar dos posibles interpretaciones de la relación entre los conceptos en cuestión: considerar el bien común como concepto general del cual el buen vivir sería una especificación local o como elemento constitutivo del paradigma del buen vivir.Descriptores: buen vivir, bien común, movimientos, derechos fundamentales, bienes comunes. AbstractThe current work seeks to identify affinities and dissonance between buen vivir (good living) -to which legal and political priority was given in recent constitutional reforms in Ecuador and Bolivia-and common good, which in a parallel manner is flourishing in public debate in Italy and in Europe in general, given several concrete experiences in defending and re-appropriating resources identified as "commons." Such a comparative perspective has brought about two possible interpretations of the relationship between the concepts in question: We can consider the common good as a general concept from which buen vivir would be a local specificity or we can consider it as a constitutive element of the paradigm of buen vivir.

In the context of an international research project on older people’s relations with and through mobile telephony, Italian participants spontaneously provided narrations on mobile phones that appeared to be structured around strong stereotypes. Respondents show a twofold representation of mobile phones either as a simple communication tool or as a ‘hi-tech’ device, which generates multifaceted stereotypes. More specifically, when the mobile phone is considered as a simple communication tool, age-based stereotypes address younger people’s bad manners, while gendered stereotypes depict women as ‘chatterboxes’ or ‘social groomers’. On the other hand, when the mobile phone is considered a ‘hi-tech’ device, age-based stereotypes underline younger people’s advanced user skills, while gendered stereotypes focus on women’s lack of competencies. Based on that, we provide a conceptual framework for analysing such stereotyped – and apparently conflicting – representations. Interestingly, while some issues also emerged in other countries, the masculine assumption that women are less-skilled mobile phone users appears as a peculiarity of Italian respondents.

This article analyzes the Twitter conversations carrying the hashtag #NiUnaMenos produced in Argentina during the time of the marches in 2015, 2016, and 2017, by adopting a quali-quantitative method. After describing the origins of NiUnaMenos, we illustrate the mobilizing force of femicide in a context of technopolitical use of social media by women’s movements. Data analysis diachronically shows to what extent and in what terms conversations on NiUnaMenos refer to gender violence and femicide. The conclusions highlight the effective combination of femicide narrative, the Argentinean human rights tradition, and Twitter usages in transforming violence against women into a general civic matter.

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This article analyzes the idioms of practice and media ideologies of adolescents and older adults regarding mobile digital media usage, and how they are negotiated within and between age cohorts. We formed aged-based focus groups in Rome and Barcelona (four groups of 16- to 19-year-olds and four of 65- to 85-year-olds). The comparison provides new insights on older individuals’ communication practices, often overshadowed by the focus on youth. Participants of both age groups explained they do media in their own way, which is perceived as “the right” (or legitimate) way. Strategies and hierarchies differ with age, according to meanings and rankings attributed to media choices in a communicative environment of affordances, or polymedia. The results suggest that differentiated generation-based idioms of practice and media ideologies are in operation in each cohort while, in both cases, refer to adaptative and goal-oriented communications.

Recent Latin American reforms in the field of communication reshape and strengthen the role and challenges of the popular, alternative and community media. This paper analyzes different experiences arising from the results of two pieces of research, one in Argentina and another one in Ecuador, both carried out through a qualitative methodology, namely in-depth interviews. The theoretical framework mainly draws upon the grounded tradition of Latin American studies on popular and alternative communication for social change, and it also includes recent contributions from European studies. The objective of both research projects was to account for the communities-media relationship, by unveiling the existence of mutual bonds between social organization and content generation.’ Analysis of results shows that communities’ direct participation in the foundation, management and sustainability of such media reverberates in the production of organic content related to their own interests and needs –usually neglected both by public and commercial media– and also in a greater media pluralism and media supply diversity. Moreover, results allow considering popular, alternative and community media as key environments both for democratizing communication and shaping communicative citizenship. Both studies highlight a common challenge, that is, the need to consolidate trans-local and trans-national networks in order to establish a common action at the level of the media global order, thus enabling to measure their influence on the public agenda. Las recientes reformas latinoamericanas en el ámbito de la comunicación reconfiguran el rol y los desafíos de los medios populares, alternativos y comunitarios. El presente trabajo, basado en dos investigaciones de tipo cualitativo, una en Argentina y otra en Ecuador, analiza algunas experiencias concretas en este campo. El marco teórico de referencia se inscribe en la larga tradición de estudios latinoamericanos en torno a la comunicación popular para el cambio social, integrado también con aportes recientes de estudios europeos. El objetivo de las indagaciones era dar cuenta de la articulación comunidades-medios, intentando mostrar la existencia de vínculos recíprocos entre organización social y generación de contenidos. El análisis de los resultados evidencia que la participación directa en la fundación, gestión y sostenibilidad de estos medios por parte de la comunidad repercute en la generación de contenidos orgánicos a sus intereses y necesidades –normalmente desatendidos por los medios públicos y comerciales– y también en una mayor pluralidad y diversidad de la oferta mediática. Además, los resultados permiten avizorar que los medios populares, alternativos y comunitarios son espacios fundamentales para la democratización de la comunicación y para la construcción de una ciudadanía comunicativa. Un desafío que se desprende de las investigaciones es la necesidad de consolidar redes transnacionales para una acción concertada en el plano del orden global de la comunicación mediática, pudiendo medir su potencial incidencia en la agenda pública.

The study focuses on indigenous radio practices in Argentina under the implementation of the 2009 Law 26.522 on Audiovisual Communication Services, currently undergoing reform. This pioneering law recognised indigenous broadcasters, thereby satisfying the call of indigenous organisations, during the legislative process, for their right to ‘communication with identity’ to be included. Nevertheless, we believe that the application of the law has been weak overall, and that the legal definition of media is questionable. Furthermore, we have hypothesised that indigenous media are caught between de jure public ownership and de facto communal belonging. This hypothesis derives from a comparative analysis of the Argentinian legal framework and similar reforms implemented throughout Latin America, as well as from a dialogue between international studies on community media and the literature on indigenous media. In order to determine whether and in what terms indigenous media can be considered as community media, we carried out semi-structured interviews with key informants from indigenous communities who had been authorised to broadcast under the law’s implementation. We explored the genesis and objectives of their communication projects; programming and agendas; external relationships; internal organisation (with a focus on the sustainability strategies adopted); respondents’ definitions of ‘community communication’, ‘indigenous communication’ and ‘communication with identity’; and respondents’ opinions on the application of the law and its media definition. We found that many indigenous broadcasters in Argentina act as community media and resemble them ontically – that is to say, in how and why they remain in the (mediatised) public space. Nevertheless, indigenous radio is ontologically different from community media because it is often shaped by its ethnic identity, namely, who the indigenous peoples are and how they represent themselves in the (mediatised) public space.

In this paper, we explore ageist depictions of both young and older people as they emerge from discourses addressing ‘other people's’ digital media usage practices. We carried out eight focus groups (four with teenagers, four with people aged 65 or older) in two southern European cities (Rome and Barcelona). By negotiating the affordances and constraints of (digital) tools and platforms, people develop their own usage norms and strategies, which might – or might not – be intersubjectively shared. Discourses surrounding usage practices and norms tend to refer to what people understand as an appropriate way of using digital platforms: these discourses proved to be powerful triggers for expressing ageist stereotypes; ‘the others’ were depicted, by both teenage and older participants, as adopting inappropriate usage practices (with regard to content, form, skills and adherence to social norms). These reflections proved to have broader implications on how other age cohorts are perceived: participants tended to take discourses on digital media usage as an opportunity for making generalised judgements about ‘the others’, which address their manners, as well as their attitude towards communication and social life. Inter-group discrimination processes and ageist stereotypes play a major role in shaping the strong moralistic and patronising judgements expressed by older and younger participants towards ‘the other’ age cohort.