Communication goes far beyond the mass means of (dis)information that we currently consume. The word communication derives from the Latin comunicare which means to share something or put in common. It is, therefore, an inherent characteristic of human beings and their relationships. Perhaps this is precisely what differentiates us from other living beings: language.
Since the beginning of cinema, at the beginning of the twentieth century, societies have been concerned about mass communication but intercultural communication began to take center stage during the 60s in the United States. It was the decade of the “independence” of many countries of the African continent such as Zaire, Chad or Nigeria and the West, which needed to get out of successive economic crises since the Second World War – the need arose to use the media and communication in general to extend their capitalist policies to new markets.
Thus, thinking of communication as a possibility for intercultural exchanges was also fostered by the demands of some minorities of their own: an example would be that of African-Americans within the United States or that of immigrants and refugees who settled in the country, partly because of the wars carried out in Southeast Asia. These same wars meant for Americans contact with the cultures of countries like Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam. Another important flow of immigration to the United States was, obviously, that of Latin American countries.
In the 70s she began to speak academically about Intercultural Communication as a specialization. However, Michael Prosser (1974) expressed concern that the role of the media was not sufficiently taken into account in the investigations of the time. Already in the 80s, new subcategories appeared: the intercultural interpersonal communication of Gudykunst and Ting-Tooney (1988), the transcultural communication of Brislin (1986), the international communication of Hamelink (1994), and the shared mass communication of Blumler, McLeod and Rosengren (1992), which today Rodrigo Alsina (1995) would summarize in two types of intercultural communication: interpersonal and mediated.
Finally, in the 90s Thomas Fitzgerald invited us to review the concept of identity as a possible meeting place between individual and mass intercultural communication studies, since the media provide different identity models, while helping to construct stereotypes and prejudices about diversity and/or cultural identity.
On these social imaginaries, prejudices and stereotypes we work in the i+ Collective, with the aim of raising awareness about the multiple, diverse and constantly transforming origins of our own identities.
(Photo: YAMARÓ Project of the elParlant Collective)
Bibliography:
ALSINA, Rodrigo. (1999). Intercultural communication. Barcelona: Editorial Anthropos.
ALSINA, Rodrigo. (2001). Communication theories: areas, methods and perspectives. 1st ed. Barcelona: Autonomous University of Barcelona, 2001.
BLUMLER, Jay; MCLEOD, Jack and ROSENGREN, Karl. (1992). Comparatively speaking: communication and culture across speace and time. Publisher: Sage publications. London.
BRISLIN, Richard W. (1986). Transcultural communication. New York: Pergamon Press, (is the 4th reprint, the 1st edition is from 1981).
GUDYKUNST, William B.y TING-TOOMEY, Stella (1988). Interpersonal intercultural communication. London.
HAMELINK, Cees J. (1994). The Politics of World Communication. Publisher: Sage publications.