José Carlos del Ama

Creative Activity

My research agenda has been determined by the research studies I started at the Latin American, Latino and Caribbean Center at Central Connecticut State University, which I directed for over two years. Supported by the office of the provost, the LALCC designed and carried out a research project to identify possible factors that may explain the so-called achievement gap among Latino students, and based on factual knowledge, develop effective strategies to improve retention and graduation rates among our Latino student population.  This project initiated a research dynamic based on quantitative methods and focused on education that allowed me to work with an interdisciplinary team of researchers from different academic fields: Dr. Yaci Moni (psychology), Dr. Marisa Mealy (Social-Psychology), Dr. Yeojin Kim (Communication). As a communication scholar, I have been particularly interested in finding out the actual impact of media consumption habits – with special emphasis on social media – on the cultural level and academic performance of our current college student generation. In addition to this focus, I kept studying the nature of public opinion, its effects on individuals and society, and its social function. This main emphasis, public opinion, has opened for me two well-defined research directions: Public opinion in literature and philosophy and public opinion research. Finally, I always try to include projects in my research agenda on Mass Communication, with special emphasis on narrative storytelling. 

Public Opinion 

Public Opinion Research has been the pivot around which my whole academic career revolves. For several decades, I have been exploring the triangular relationship between public opinion, mass media and political power. I connect the study of mass media with my main emphasis of research: the study of public opinion contents and dynamics. I find it particularly fascinating how mass media and public opinion, through a complex system of mutual influences, determine the political and economic fate of individual, political or corporate actors. In recent years, my research has focused on how political actors try to extract political capital from issues and the role media play in this game for power. The three articles published in this direction: 

One of my main sources of academic pride has been my ability to publish in three main Western Languages: English, Spanish and German. I am always trying to find topics that would allow me to stay fit in the use of those languages. My project in German has been a study of how the human social nature appears as a weakness in three human ideals: Socrates, Jesus, and Friedrich Nietzsche’s Übermensch. The social nature of the human being is an essential element in the study of public opinion dynamics. The title of the article:

The manuscript is now in the phase of revision. At the same time, I am exploring possible journals that specialize in interdisciplinary studies (sociology, philosophy, history) for submission.

Mass media and Education

Different outcomes of our original study on the achievement gap among Latina/o students have been accepted in national and international conferences: the annual conference of the Association for Psychological Science, the Biennial Congress of the International Academy for Intercultural Research and the International Social Sciences, Humanities and Education Research Conference. The research group has also published an article in the “Journal of Latina/o Psychology”, which is issued by the American Psychological Association:

Other papers published in the area of education:

Audiovisual Narrative

The social-psychological dimension of the concept of honor, which is the reason why I study it as an epiphenomenon of public opinion, has occupied me for years. This was the topic of my doctoral dissertation and the focus of the book I published at the Universidad de Navarra Press in 2012. I recently published an article focusing on the concept of honor in three popular criminal sagas: The Wire, The Sopranos, and Sons of Anarchy. Honor has been, for centuries, one of the most effective themes in narrative. Authors of fiction use frequently honor conflicts in order to create dramatic scenarios. Honor works as an effective catalysator of the action, for it originates conflicts the audience could easily identify themselves with. The effectiveness of honor as a narrative factor goes over time and space. This study analyzes the narrative function of honor in the above-mentioned TV shows. Since honor codes always have a moral content, the study also allows us to analyze the effect of the individual experience of honor on the whole group: the social function of honor. Finally, the success and popularity of the three criminal sagas also invite us to reflect on the relationship between the values protected by the honor codes in those criminal groups and the moral sentiments of the large audience of those shows:

Online Content Creation

As I mentioned in the Credit Load section of the narrative, I have created Web-sites for all my online or hybrid courses. Those online platforms include original content for the classes that students use as effective learning material. Such content is delivered in different formats: textual, audio and audiovisual. I have written learning units focusing on public opinion theory, filmic narrative or mass media effects and produced close to 100 video lectures. I wanted to include in this section some examples of those creative efforts:

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