Some exemples of the Academy connection with sociomediatic reality from the paradigm of applied audiovisual investigation

Abstract

Does academia connect with reality or does it continue to look at reality from the medieval theoretical watchtower? Is it an academia that interprets reality from the traditional essayistic subjective apriorism or does it conceive of reality from the starting point of daily life, from reality itself? This article discusses a few examples from the audiovisual area that show how some theoretical-practical experiments of interaction between academia and social reality have been taking place. It concretely describes three examples of projects that the author has been coordinating at the Autonomous University of Barcelona: MIGRACOM (www.migracom.org), the Observatory and Research Group on Migration and Communication; the Laboratory for TV productions; and the graduate program seminar on “Methodologies of the Use of Audiovisual Media for the Research of Social Reality.”