Communication and work. The construction of meanings of work by media receptors

Year of Publishing: 2004
Category: Our Research

Abstract

The  research “The construction of meanings of work by media receptors” was conducted between 2002-2004 with Fapesp’s support. The objective is to analyse the construction of meanings by media receptors, including the conpany’s media, and see what is the role of  the working universe in the reception and construction of meanings.

The theoretical approach considers the communication as a mediation process and assume that the the contemporary communication is part of the productive force, in other words, it was incorporated by the working world. For this discussion, we deal with tha Communication Theories, in particular the Reception Studies, the Sociology of Work and the Philosophy of Language, through Discourse Analysis.

The empirical research is structured in the intersection of quantitative and qualitative methods of primary data mapping and in qualitative selection methods and secondary data analysis, with the procedure of thematic and discourse analysis of the object selected for the study. The general conclusion confirms the hypohesis that the working world is the mediation of comunication. It demonstrates the relevance of the quotidian in work and the interaction with co-workers to the reception of media, including the company’s one.

And it demonstrates how the homogeneization of cultural options provided by the receptors undermine critical positions about the changes in the working world. These constant changes create feelings of doubt, fear, stress, loneliness and counteract the feelings of achievement, self-esteem, acknowledgement and welfare that the work and the relationship with the workind world can convey. It is a dubious and conflictive relationship. The lack of access to different perspectives does not allow the receptor to have an explanation to the problems faced in the working world.

Objectives

The researches were intended to analyze and understand the meanings of work constructed by the media receptors, having the working world as mediation. In other words, we intend to understand how the workers of the two companies we investigated see the work from the information they obtain from media, including the company’s ones. Besides, we aimed to see how the work environment contributes to confirm or deny these impressions constructed by the workers.

Another objective was to question the theoretical concepts proposed by Habermas, who affirmed that the working relationships made way to the communication in the importance to the construction of social relationships. We intend to demonstrate that the communication, in fact, is incorporated to the work, being part of the productive powers, and that’s why the work is fundamental to understand the contemporary society. Understanding this question means to question the changes taken in the last decades and to perceive them specially as transformations in the working world with the introduction, in all stages and processes of the communicational conception.

Methodologically speaking, the research dealt with the communication from a new social place, in other words, from a locus where the communicative relations and the meaning production occur; it also proposes the reflection on the methodological practices adopted by the Reception Studies, highlighting the relevance of the intersection of qualitative and quantitative investigation procedures. The broad range of possibilities of the Reception Studies required that we must have addressed different elements of the communication process in the working world. The empirical material of the analysis was composed by the information of the companies profile and by the socioeconomic and sociocultural profile of the workers; by the discourses of these workers collected from interviews; by corporative journals and magazines of the companies; and by newspaper reports on different subjects, relevant for the workers and  published by the media they have mentioned.

The research have collected, analysed and interpreted an extensive set of information, which demanded specific methods of analysis and interpretation, whose results we have already presented.

Theoretical and Methodological Aspects

The universe we analysed was the group of employees of BCP and Siemens. The sample was delimited considering the social representativity,  constituting a significative sample of the tecnology sector and telecommunication services. The first one is  an  industrial unity from a technology company and the former is a telephone company headquarter. From both, we selected a sample of 10% of the employees, proportional to the different functions in the company, in which we did not include direction jobs. The sample was observed from quantitative and qualitative methods, so we could have a perspective closer to the universe we extracted in the sample and also trace a more refined  map of the cultural consumtion options, as well as obtaining refined information of the possible mediations that act in the communication process.

We used the technique of the multiple choice closed questionnaire, treated from quantitative interpretation of information. In this phase we applied 160 questionnaires that allowed us to  trace the map of cultural consumption of both companies’ employees. Subsequent to the closed questionnaire, we conducted, from a minor and significative sample, in-depth interviews, leaded by a guide with open questions, in order to collect the discourse, the personal narrative of respondents briefly reporting their history, their relationships at work, their perception of the transformations in the working world  and their options as receiver of media. Thus, we selected 16 employees who we conducted in-depth interviews.

Simultaneously to the interviews, we collected the corporate media, newspapers and media  programs most often cited by respondents, for further analysis. Following the stage of data collection, we made the discourse analysis of interviews, as well as the analysis of the messages from media, which have appeared more frequently in the daily life of respondants, as the map of cultural consumption  has  indicated.

Results

When we chose to understand the changes in the working world, based on the assertion that the communication was incorporated as part of the productive forces, as we have stated in the introduction of this text, the necessity to take the working world as the context for observation and as a problem to be studied has arised. However, in which sense should we study the working world (of economy, administration, sociology)? In the communication perspective, in the usage of reception studies. The working world is considered as the place for mediation in which the process of communication is established. Another point of view could be adopted, for example, the investigation of how the communication process exists in the working world further than the interpersonal face-to-face relationships, from the incorporation of technologies and software to persuasion strategies to organize and manage the relations in the working world. But this is not the objective of this research.

The selection we made, guided by the theoretical principles briefly outlined here allowed us  to put  the individual in the working world at the center of the research, due to our main questioning, the meanings of work for media receptors. Thus, the subject that we  are interested in in this reseatch – the media receptor – is the subject in the working world context.

Here it is another theoretical axis of this research, because it demand responding how to apprehend this individual in the working world from the communication perspective. Verbal language, through discourse analysis, proved to be the best indication, since it allows us to reflect on the subjectivity and the conformance of the social subject. It is also in the language sciences that we can find the source of the disagreement with Habermas’ concepts. These are, fundamentally, the theoretical aspects that shaped the research and will guide the methodological approach.

In the methodological aspect, we selected the universe of the research, focusing on the two companies whose businesses are directly linked to communication as technologies and services. We studied the context of both companies in order to provide an understanding of who are their employees and how they organize themselves. It is worth noting that the research itself has suffered from the volatility of the actions and situations, one of the typical characteristic of the transformations in the working world.

During the research, Siemens went through a new re-engineering process (although this nomenclature is no longer used, because it is considered outdated). All the human resource management was reorganized, having a unique direction for Latin America, with an Argentine director. The executive who held the job and made ​​a career within the company was invited to retire and his closer assistants that were not retired were dismissed. The direction of the company in Lapa, where we conducted the research, was also changed.

The other company, BCP, have changed so much that changed hands. It was completely incorporated by Telecom America and has changed its name to Claro. Also the former human resources director was fired, and until the date of last contact in November/2003, his advisers remained in the company. The media and communication policies have also changed during the transformations. The person responsible for the internal communication of ex-BCP could not tell if their communication policy and media would be maintained. And said that she was unable to make any statement about how the new directives would be, when we requested an interview for the research.

This is an overview of the labor market. The strategies changes, the mergers and the transformations in the market are constant, turning the space and the relationship with the companies unstable. Imagine how the employees feel in such unstable environment. As one interviewee has told us, it is not even possible to make plans for next month.

The context of both companies and the aspects we have highlighted above constituted the selection of main receptors of our investigation, as well as the selection of companies’ media.

The reception research was made ​​from two forms of data collection: closed questionnaire for the quantitative phase of research, aiming to construct the socio-cultural profile of receptors; and the qualitative phase, from in-depth interviews with a sample of respondents smaller that the one in the quantitative phase.

At the same time, we selected, during the research, the companies’ medium and then we performed with them a discourse analysis. From the results of the profile of cultural consumption, provided by the quantitative phase of research, we selected the medium most often cited by the respondents. We selected the medium during the period of the qualitative phase of research, and from these selection we collected the most often cited themes. The set of objects of study and the volume of information collected constituted a challenge for the research and, indeed,  can be used in other researches, contributing to the deepening and extension of the results.

Publications

Complete papers published in journals

  • PAULINO, R. A. Figaro . O desafio teórico-metodológico nas pesquisas de recepção. e-compós Revista da Associação Nacional dos Programas de Pós-Graduação em Comunicação, n. ago/2005, 2005.
  • PAULINO, R. A. Figaro . Considerações sobre os resultados da pesquisa de recepção: a construção dos sentidos do trabalho pelos receptores dos meios de comunicação. Revista Latinoamericana de Ciencias de la Comunicación, São Paulo, v. 2, p. 138-148, 2005.
  • PAULINO, R. A. Figaro . Crítica à ação comunicativa e à razão comunicativa: para entender a comunicação no mundo do trabalho. Revista de Economia Política de las Tecnologias de la Informaión Y comunicación, v. VI, n. n. 2, p. 54-64, 2004.
  • PAULINO, R. A. Figaro . Reception study: the labor world as a communication mediaor. Corporate Communication an International Journal, West Yorkshire, England, v. 9, n. n.2, p. 104-117, 2004.
  • PAULINO, R. A. Figaro . A comunicação no mundo do trabalho: da racionalidade comunicativa à racionalidade do consumo. ANAGRAMAS, RUMBOS Y SENTIDOS DE LA COMUNICACIÓN, Univ. de Medelin – Bogotá, v. n.4, n. enero-jun, p. 63-76, 2004.
  • PAULINO, R. A. Figaro . Recepção da comunicação no mundo do trabalho: uma crítica à ação comunicativa. Ciberlegenda – número 9, 2002, site da Univ.Fedral Fluminense, v. 1, n. 9, p. 1-19, 2002.
    http://www.uff.br/mestcii/roseli1.htm
  • PAULINO, R. A. Figaro . Estudo de Recepção: o mundo do trabalho como mediação da comunicação.. Revista Novos Olhares, São Paulo, v. ano 3, n. n .6, p. 38-51, 2002.
  • PAULINO, R. A. Figaro . Comunicação e a mediação com o trabalho. Debate Sindical, São Paulo, v. ano 15, n. n.39, p. 33-335, 2001.

Published/organized boooks or editions

  • PAULINO, R. A. Figaro (Org.). Gestão da comunicação no mundo do trabalho, educação, terceiro setor e cooperativismo. 1. ed. São Paulo: Atlas, 2005. v. 1. 166 p.
  • PAULINO, R. A. Figaro . COMUNICAÇÃO E TRABALHO – ESTUDO DE RECEPÇÃO O MUNDO DO TRABALHO COMO MEDIAÇÃO DA COMUNICAÇÃO. 1. ed. SÃO PAULO – SP: ANITA/FAPESP, 2001. v. 1. 330 p.
  • Chapters in published books
  • PAULINO, R. A. Figaro . Comunicação no mundo do trabalho: instrumentalizando a razão comunicativa. In: Roseli Figaro. (Org.). Gestão da Comunicação no mundo do trabalho, educação, terceiro setor e cooperativismo. 1. ed. São Paulo: Atlas, 2005, v. , p. 105-116.
  • PAULINO, R. A. Figaro . Sujeitos da comunicação no mundo do trabalho. In: Alberto Dines. (Org.). A mídia e os dilemas da transparência. 1 ed. Brasília: Banco do Brasil, 2002, v. 1, p. 74-82.
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