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New Technologies for the Practice of Specialized Communication

New Technologies for the Practice of Specialized Communication

The practice of specialized communication requires the necessary skills, attitudes, guidelines, and keys to produce clear, comprehensive and informative texts that allow a lay audience to understand what is happening. In the profession, new technologies and new digital resources contribute to the classic structures used for the elaboration of informative messages in the media.

Sources are the essence of the work of a specialized journalist. Thus, in view of the constant need to be up-to-date with search strategies that allow access to reliable sources, this monograph focuses on the analysis, identification, access and description of qualified documentation techniques (specialized sources hosted in the digital environment) that are useful in the elaboration of informative messages in any of the areas of specialized communication (science, sports, economics, current events, politics, environment, law, education, etc.) of a media outlet. Selection, cross-checking and identification of sources are essential to avoid biased information and fake news.

In addition, the aim is to investigate the contribution that new technologies offer to classic lexical (such as synonymy, paraphrasing, and metaphors) and discursive (contextualization) strategies to improve audiences' comprehension of specialized information, such as hypertexts and other elements. However, the intention is to focus particularly on technologies that are useful to explain technical terms, understood as terminological units (TUs), "whose structure corresponds to a lexical unit of origin or product of the lexicalization of a syntagm, which has a specific meaning in the field to which it is associated" (Cabré and Estopa, 2005, p.10). The prestigious journalist, Ritchie Calder, rates this task as one of the most difficult, (quoted in Wolf, 1983). The information professional must adapt the specialized jargon to the level of the audience "without lowering the quality of the informative content" (Del Moral and Ramírez, 1993, p. 86), nor the precision of the specialized terminology.

Furthermore, the digital environment provides new visual aids allowing news to be reported through images. Knowledge of images is of great interest given their increasing relevance in the elaboration of an informative message and it is a necessary element in social media. Hence, it is relevant to address the possibilities offered by the digital environment to access images, as well as the new tools that have emerged to explain, show, influence, attract and make understandable an aspect, detail, or part of the event that is elaborated for the specialized news piece.

The following questions are raised in this context: How to access specialized sources on the Internet? What are the technological resources used to access sources in specialized communication? What are the digital resources offered by the Internet to define and explain the technical terms in informative pieces? Where can royalty-free visual sources be accessed? What strategies does the Internet provide for the elaboration of specialized texts for a lay audience? What new tools does the Internet provide to inform an audience using images in specialized communication?

Internet potential has been under investigation since the arrival of the digital revolution. This monograph aims to provide an update on the resources provided by the Internet (textual and visual sources as well as informative strategies) to the different areas of specialized communication aimed at contributing to the understanding of the informative message. The participation in empirical and theoretical research on the following topics is welcomed, although other approaches related to the subject matter presented may be accepted:

  • - Digital sources for specialized communication: websites, social profiles, podcasts, YouTube, expert guides, thematic blogs, etc.
  • - Specialized virtual sources.
  • - Specialized servers.
  • - Digital sources to access images.
  • - Informational textual strategies.
  • - Informational visual strategies.
  • - Visual sources.
  • - Digital databases.
  • - Data visualization techniques for specialized communication.
  • - Reading comprehension digital resources.

Coordinators:

Monograph Editor: Javier Herrero (javiherrero82@usal.es)

DATES:

Submission deadline for articles:  May 15 to June 30, 2022

Deadline for authors to receive a response:  During the month of September 2022 (depending on the number of items received, these dates could be extended by a few days).

Monograph publication date: December 1, 2022

SUBMISSION METHOD AND RULES:

1) Articles must be submitted through the OJS platform, they must follow the journal's rules and ensure that a blind version is submitted.

Articles will be blind peer-reviewed and must comply with the journal's guidelines, which are available through the following link: http://revistas.usal.es/cuatro/index.php/2172-9077/about/submissions#onlineSubmissions

The following conditions must be met for the article to be reviewed:

- The article received must be adapted to the template.

- The article received must be a blind version.

- The rights assignment document must be attached.

- The article must be accompanied by a Turnitin Report (or similar), prepared by the author (articles with a similarity of over 35%, excluding the bibliography, will not be accepted).

2) Once submitted through OJS, an email will be sent to the editor of the monograph. The editor must acknowledge receipt of the email in a maximum period of one week.

Further clarifications on this monograph can be requested by writing to the precedingail addresses. 

A maximum of 7 articles will be published.