LIS: Letra. Imagen. Sonido. Ciudad Mediatizada
(FAIMA Business & Management Journal)

This article investigates the sonic dimensions of contemporary urban protests, focusing on the tactical use of noise as a primary mechanism for political disruption and spatial reclamation. By analyzing case studies from mass mobilizations in global capitals during the mid-2010s, this research explores how collective soundscapes—comprising synchronized chanting, percussive instruments, and improvised noisemakers—function as a vital form of affective infrastructure. Through a theoretical framework rigorously informed by acoustic ecology and radical urban geography, we argue that protest noise is not merely a chaotic byproduct of civic assembly, but a deliberate, highly organized communicative strategy designed to breach the acoustic boundaries of privatized urban spaces and state-controlled zones. The study employs mixed methodologies, combining ethnographic fieldwork, spectral analysis of audio recordings gathered at protest sites, and semi-structured interviews with grassroots organizers. Our findings indicate that these orchestrated sonic interventions create temporary autonomous zones that decisively disrupt the normative rhythms of the neoliberal city, forcing an unavoidable public recognition of marginalized political demands. Furthermore, we critically examine the state's reciprocal counter-tactics, including the deployment of Long Range Acoustic Devices (LRADs) and the literal weaponization of sound as a crowd control measure, highlighting an escalating 'sonic warfare' within the civic arena. Ultimately, this paper posits that understanding the acoustic dimensions of dissent is absolutely crucial for a comprehensive analysis of modern political movements. The battle for the right to the city is increasingly contested within the auditory domain, reshaping civic participation and emphasizing that the right to be heard is inextricably linked to the spatial politics of the contemporary metropolis, thereby demanding a radical recalibration of how media studies approach public resistance.

The global discourse surrounding the physical repatriation of looted cultural artifacts remains legally and diplomatically fraught, often stalling the restorative justice demanded by formerly colonized nations. In response, this paper examines the emerging practice of "virtual repatriation" through Augmented Reality (AR) interventions within Western institutional museum spaces. By utilizing AR applications, indigenous artists, activists, and digital humanists are successfully overlaying subversive, anti-colonial narratives, original contexts, and digital replicas directly onto the physical displays of contested artifacts in prominent European and North American museums. This research conducts a critical visual analysis of three major guerrilla AR campaigns launched between 2015 and 2017, documenting how these digital overlays disrupt the authoritative, sanitized curation of the ethnographic museum. Drawing upon the theories of visual sovereignty and digital decoloniality, we argue that AR technologies provide a potent, unauthorized spatial hack that destabilizes the hegemony of the institutional gaze. The study demonstrates that by recontextualizing artifacts within their violent histories of extraction—using spatial audio, 3D animations, and native linguistic text—these digital interventions transform passive viewing experiences into active sites of political confrontation and education. Furthermore, the paper interrogates the limitations of digital restitution, cautioning against the neoliberal tendency to accept virtual access as a sufficient substitute for the physical return of stolen heritage. Conclusively, we posit that while AR cannot replace material repatriation, it serves as an indispensable visual methodology for exposing the colonial foundations of the modern museum, fundamentally altering the semiotic landscape of cultural exhibition and expanding the boundaries of contemporary visual activism.

As traditional editorial judgment is rapidly supplanted by machine learning algorithms in the distribution of global news, the architectural biases inherent in these computational systems demand rigorous critical scrutiny. This article provides a comprehensive empirical and theoretical analysis of "algorithmic determinism" within programmatic news aggregation platforms. Utilizing a robust quantitative methodology, we reverse-engineered the content recommendation algorithms of three dominant social media and news aggregator applications over an eighteen-month period, tracking the dissemination patterns of political and social news across diverse demographic profiles. Our findings reveal a deeply entrenched structural bias that systematically privileges highly emotive, polarizing, and simplified narratives over nuanced, investigative journalism, driven entirely by engagement-optimization metrics. Drawing upon media ecology and critical algorithm studies, we argue that this automated curation fundamentally alters the epistemology of the public sphere. The algorithms do not merely reflect existing societal divisions; they actively manufacture and accelerate them by creating sealed informational architectures that insulate users from cognitive dissonance. Furthermore, the paper exposes how historical social biases regarding race, class, and gender are inadvertently encoded into the training data of these predictive models, resulting in the automated marginalization of minority perspectives in the digital news cycle. By demystifying the 'black box' of algorithmic news distribution, this research concludes that the outsourcing of editorial gatekeeping to proprietary algorithms represents a profound democratic vulnerability. We advocate for an urgent interdisciplinary approach to algorithmic accountability, demanding transparency mandates and the integration of ethical, public-interest imperatives into the foundational code of information distribution systems.

The unprecedented exponential growth of Korean Pop (K-Pop) music across Latin America represents a profound shift in the dynamics of global cultural flows, moving away from traditional US-centric cultural imperialism toward complex, multi-nodal transnational exchanges. This article explores the localized reception, adaptation, and affective economy of K-Pop fandoms in Mexico, Brazil, and Chile. Utilizing digital ethnography, participatory observation in fan conventions, and qualitative interviews with fan-club organizers, the research investigates how Latin American youth actively consume and re-signify the highly polished aesthetic and sonic products of the South Korean entertainment industry. We propose that these fandoms operate not merely as consumer demographics, but as sophisticated, self-organized digital communities that generate intensive affective labor. Fans routinely engage in unauthorized subtitling, digital activism, and synchronized streaming campaigns that mimic professional public relations strategies, creating a powerful, localized infrastructure for transnational cultural dissemination. Drawing on cultural hybridization theories, the study analyzes how the aspirational modernity and complex gender performances inherent in K-Pop idols resonate deeply with Latin American audiences, offering an alternative model of globalized pop culture that contrasts sharply with established Western tropes. Furthermore, the paper examines the political mobilization of these fan networks, documenting instances where the organizational architecture of K-Pop fandoms has been rapidly repurposed for local civic activism and protests. Ultimately, this research demonstrates that the phenomenon of K-Pop in Latin America is a critical site for understanding the decentralized nature of contemporary global media, highlighting the agency of audiences in forging new, cross-cultural affective alliances in the digital age.

As literature increasingly migrates from the bound codex to dynamic, algorithmic, and screen-based environments, the fundamental ontological status of the "text" requires urgent critical reevaluation. This paper investigates the rapidly evolving field of electronic literature—specifically focusing on generative poetry, hypertext narratives, and kinetic typography—to articulate a new theory of post-digital poetics. By closely reading selected works from prominent digital authors who utilize coding languages (such as JavaScript and Python) as their primary artistic medium, this research explores how the computational architecture of these texts fundamentally disrupts traditional literary conventions of linearity, authorial control, and readerly passivity. Relying on the media theories of N. Katherine Hayles and Lev Manovich, the study argues that electronic literature represents a profound dematerialization of the literary object; the text is no longer a static inscription, but a temporal, performative event generated in real-time through the interaction of human input, hardware capabilities, and algorithmic logic. We analyze the aesthetic implications of code-based writing, demonstrating how the visibility of the source code itself often functions as a secondary narrative layer, revealing the underlying mechanics of digital construction. Furthermore, the paper addresses the acute archival challenges inherent to electronic literature, noting how the planned obsolescence of software and hardware threatens these works with rapid digital decay. Ultimately, this article concludes that post-digital literature successfully bridges the historic divide between the humanities and computer science, offering a vital creative laboratory where the complex intersection of human language, machine cognition, and digital temporality can be rigorously explored and aestheticized.

The escalating frequency and severity of extreme weather events attributed to anthropogenic climate change pose an unprecedented challenge to the paradigms of traditional crisis communication and disaster journalism. This paper presents a comparative longitudinal study analyzing how global news media conglomerates frame climate-related disasters, specifically contrasting the coverage of hurricanes in North America with catastrophic flooding events in Southeast Asia between 2012 and 2016. Utilizing automated textual analysis and qualitative framing theory, the research dissects a dataset of over 10,000 news articles and broadcast transcripts to identify prevailing narrative structures. Our findings reveal a persistent epistemological failure within mainstream media: disasters are overwhelmingly framed as isolated, unpredictable "acts of God" or acute humanitarian emergencies, rather than predictable symptoms of systemic ecological collapse. This episodic framing effectively decouples the immediate catastrophe from the broader scientific reality of climate change, thereby neutralizing the potential for urgent political mobilization. Furthermore, the study highlights a stark geopolitical asymmetry in coverage; disasters impacting the Global South are routinely underreported and framed through tropes of helplessness and infrastructural inevitability, whereas events in the Global North emphasize resilience, economic recovery, and technological intervention. We argue that this systemic failure in environmental communication acts as a form of cultural pacification. The paper concludes by advocating for a radical shift toward "systemic framing" in environmental journalism—a communicative strategy that explicitly links localized devastation to global carbon emissions and policy failures, thereby fostering the critical public literacy required to navigate the existential threats of the Anthropocene era.

Despite the decline of traditional television broadcasting, the music video remains a highly potent, heavily capitalized medium for the rapid dissemination of visual culture, fashion, and identity politics in the digital sphere. This article critically examines the contemporary music video as a sophisticated site of visual negotiation, where marginalized identities are simultaneously commodified for mass consumption and asserted as forms of subversive political resistance. Focusing on the visual output of major African American and queer artists between 2014 and 2017, the research employs a methodology bridging visual semiotics, feminist film theory, and cultural studies. We meticulously analyze the "choreography of the gaze"—how camera angles, rapid montage editing, lighting design, and spatial framing are utilized to challenge or reinforce historical regimes of representation. The study argues that contemporary artists are increasingly deploying the music video format to construct complex, counter-hegemonic visual narratives that directly address systemic violence, intersectionality, and historical erasure. By intentionally appropriating the aesthetics of surveillance camera footage, luxury advertising, and historical portraiture, these videos operate as dense, intertextual manifestos that demand high levels of visual literacy from the viewer. However, the paper also interrogates the inherent contradictions of this cultural form, questioning whether radical political aesthetics can maintain their subversive integrity when distributed through algorithmically governed, corporate-owned streaming platforms like YouTube. Ultimately, this research affirms the music video as a crucial, dynamic text for understanding the modern mediatization of the body and the ongoing cultural struggles for visual autonomy and authentic representation in globalized media spaces.

The rapid advancement of artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms has ushered in an era of hyper-realistic synthetic media, colloquially known as "deepfakes," fundamentally destabilizing the historical indexicality of photographic and cinematic evidence. This article provides a critical ontological analysis of AI-generated media, exploring its profound implications for visual culture, political discourse, and legal frameworks in a post-truth era. By tracing the technological genealogy of digital manipulation from early Photoshop to contemporary Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs), the research demonstrates how synthetic media represents an unprecedented qualitative rupture; it entirely severs the causal link between the captured image and physical reality. Utilizing media theory and digital forensics, the study analyzes the distinct visual artifacts and phenomenological uncanny valleys inherent in early deepfake texts, arguing that these media artifacts require a completely new vocabulary of visual literacy. We examine the immediate societal impacts of this technology, focusing primarily on its weaponization in non-consensual pornography and its emerging role in sophisticated geopolitical disinformation campaigns. The paper posits that the true danger of deepfakes lies not merely in the deception of individual users, but in the creation of a pervasive "liar's dividend"—a cultural environment where the sheer existence of synthetic media allows political actors to plausibly deny authentic, incriminating visual evidence. Ultimately, this research argues that society is facing an epistemological crisis; to navigate the synthetic visual economy, media scholars, technologists, and policymakers must collaborate to establish robust, blockchain-verified provenance systems, fundamentally shifting our trust from the image itself to the verified architecture of its digital transmission.

As aggressive gentrification rapidly transforms the architectural and demographic landscapes of major global cities, the cultural memory of displaced working-class and minority communities is increasingly relegated to digital archives. This article investigates the complex interplay between physical urban erasure and digital memory preservation, focusing on the visual aesthetics of gentrification in Brooklyn (New York) and the Raval neighborhood (Barcelona). Utilizing a mixed-methods approach that combines visual ethnography, spatial analysis, and archival research of community-led Instagram accounts, the study documents the systematic removal of vernacular visual culture—such as independent storefront signage, street murals, and informal gathering spaces. We argue that this physical "whitewashing" operates as an aesthetic violence that sanitizes the urban environment to appeal to transnational capital, effectively erasing the historical legibility of marginalized groups. In response, displaced residents are increasingly leveraging digital platforms to construct geolocated, alternative visual histories that actively contest the official, sanitized narratives promoted by real estate developers and municipal tourism boards. Drawing upon theories of spatial justice and digital memory, the paper analyzes how these online visual repositories function as melancholic but resistant counter-archives, preserving the sensory and social textures of lost neighborhoods. However, the study also issues a critical warning regarding the precarity of relying on corporate-owned social media platforms for the preservation of vulnerable cultural heritage, highlighting the risks of data loss and algorithmic suppression. Conclusively, this research demonstrates that the fight against gentrification is not solely an economic struggle, but a profound visual and mnemonic conflict over who possesses the right to script the historical narrative of the modern city.

The pervasive integration of emojis into daily digital correspondence represents one of the most significant linguistic shifts of the 21st century, fundamentally altering the tenor, brevity, and emotional complexity of text-based communication. This paper provides a rigorous semiotic and sociological analysis of emoji usage, moving beyond their classification as mere decorative pictograms to analyze them as crucial paralanguage necessary for navigating the affective void of the digital screen. Through an extensive quantitative and qualitative study of messaging data across diverse demographic cohorts in Japan and the United Kingdom, the research establishes a taxonomy of emoji functions: mitigating tone, expressing irony, maintaining conversational flow, and performing emotional labor. Relying on Peircean semiotics and the affect theories of Sara Ahmed, the study argues that emojis operate as standardized emotional currency, forcing users to compress complex human feelings into a highly regulated, corporately designed visual lexicon managed by the Unicode Consortium. We critically examine the political implications of this standardized digital vocabulary, particularly focusing on the delayed introduction of diverse skin tones and non-normative gender representations, demonstrating how the digital character set historically normalized whiteness and heterosexuality as default states. Furthermore, the paper investigates the escalating pressure of "digital emotional labor," noting how the mandatory inclusion of positive emojis in professional communication serves to enforce a performative, frictionless corporate cheerfulness. Ultimately, this research concludes that emojis are deeply ideological texts; they are essential tools for digital empathy, yet they simultaneously constrain human expression within the commercial and aesthetic boundaries established by multinational technology conglomerates.

In response to escalating environmental degradation, resource extraction, and climate volatility, contemporary Latin American literature has witnessed a pronounced surge in speculative fiction that vividly imagines dystopian, post-collapse ecological futures. This article applies a rigorously ecocritical framework to analyze the recent narrative trajectories of prominent authors from Argentina, Chile, and Peru, specifically focusing on texts published between 2010 and 2017. By closely reading these novels, the research explores how Latin American writers are moving away from traditional magical realism to adopt a bleak, hyper-realistic "eco-gothic" aesthetic that directly addresses the trauma of the Anthropocene. The study posits that these literary landscapes of ruin—characterized by toxic rivers, mutated fauna, and brutal struggles for potable water—serve as powerful allegories for the region's enduring legacy of colonial exploitation and unchecked neoliberal extractivism. Drawing upon the theories of Rob Nixon regarding "slow violence," we examine how these authors textually render the often invisible, gradual accumulation of environmental toxins and their disproportionate impact on indigenous and working-class populations. Furthermore, the paper analyzes the narrative strategies employed to decenter the human subject, highlighting how the non-human world (flora, fauna, and geology) is increasingly granted narrative agency, striking back against human hubris. Ultimately, this research concludes that contemporary Latin American speculative fiction functions as a vital, prophetic form of environmental activism. By confronting the reader with vivid, localized scenarios of ecological collapse, these texts dismantle the myth of infinite capitalist progress, demanding a radical ethical reckoning with our relationship to the fragile ecologies of the Global South.

The explosive popularity of the true crime podcast genre has profoundly reshaped the landscape of digital audio consumption, merging the investigative rigor of journalism with the sensationalist narrative arcs of fiction. This paper critically examines the acoustic properties and ethical implications of this phenomenon, focusing on how the medium structurally commodifies trauma through the deployment of highly engineered "intimate acoustics." Through a comprehensive auditory analysis of five globally leading true crime series, the research dissects the specific sonic techniques utilized by producers—such as ASMR-adjacent vocal fry, prolonged pauses, low-frequency drones, and the deliberate inclusion of unedited, raw audio clips from police interrogations or 911 calls. We argue that this curated acoustic environment exploits the inherent biological intimacy of headphone listening, simulating a private, voyeuristic complicity between the host and the listener. Drawing upon trauma theory and the ethics of documentary media, the study highlights the profound moral ambiguity of transforming real-world violence, often predominantly affecting marginalized women, into serialized, ad-supported audio entertainment. The paper further investigates the phenomenon of "amateur sleuthing," wherein podcast audiences utilize the sonic clues presented to conduct parallel, often disruptive, online investigations, thereby blurring the lines between media consumption and vigilante justice. Conclusively, this research establishes that the success of true crime podcasting relies on a perilous aestheticization of suffering; by wrapping profound human tragedy in the comforting, immersive warmth of high-fidelity audio production, the medium risks completely desensitizing its audience to the grim realities of systemic violence and judicial failure.

The widespread commercial availability of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), or drones, has democratized aerial photography, previously the exclusive domain of military surveillance and well-funded mapping agencies. This technological shift has generated a massive proliferation of "vertical imagery," fundamentally altering modern visual culture and our spatial comprehension of the environment. This article provides a comprehensive critical analysis of drone photography aesthetics, exploring how this disembodied, non-human perspective reinvigorates the classical artistic concept of the 'sublime' for the digital age. By examining award-winning contemporary drone art and popular social media feeds dedicated to aerial landscapes, the research dissects the recurring visual tropes of the medium: hyper-geometric urban grids, abstract patterns of environmental destruction, and the sheer scale of human infrastructure rendered miniscule from above. Drawing upon the spatial theories of Michel de Certeau and the visual philosophy of Paul Virilio, the study argues that the drone's "god's-eye view" induces a state of cognitive detachment and awe, transforming lived, political spaces into pure, graphic data. While acknowledging the breathtaking visual appeal of these images, the paper critically interrogates the inherent politics of the vertical gaze, noting its direct lineage from militarized target acquisition. We argue that this aesthetic detachment can dangerously sanitize scenes of ecological devastation or urban inequality, turning them into beautiful, consumable abstractions. Ultimately, this research concludes that drone photography is a deeply paradoxical medium; it offers an unprecedented, omniscient expansion of human vision, yet relies on a mechanized detachment that threatens to alienate the viewer from the grounded realities of the subjects it captures.

The rapid expansion of the global "gig economy," facilitated by dominant digital platforms such as Uber, Deliveroo, and TaskRabbit, has fundamentally restructured traditional labor relations. Central to the success of these platforms is an aggressive, highly calibrated communicative strategy that actively rebrands precarious, unregulated labor as entrepreneurial empowerment. This article employs Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) to examine the corporate rhetoric, marketing materials, and internal app interface language used by leading gig platforms operating within the Global South, specifically India and Mexico. The research investigates how platforms deploy the language of "flexibility," "being your own boss," and the "hustle" to systematically mask the complete absence of employee benefits, wage security, and collective bargaining rights. Drawing upon theories of communicative capitalism and digital labor, the study argues that this linguistic framing functions as a powerful ideological tool that shifts all financial and physical risk from the corporation directly onto the atomized individual worker. Furthermore, we analyze how the platforms' gamified user interfaces—utilizing algorithmic nudges, dynamic pricing charts, and rating systems—act as a form of automated, coercive communication that subtly disciplines worker behavior while maintaining the illusion of autonomy. By decoding the sophisticated public relations narratives of platform capitalism, this paper concludes that the rhetoric of the gig economy constitutes a profound linguistic manipulation. It demonstrates how contemporary tech monopolies weaponize the language of empowerment to legally and ethically circumvent established labor laws, ultimately normalizing a new, hyper-modern iteration of digital indentured servitude across the developing world.