It has been more than a year without posting. As time keeps flowing I feel the urgent need to break the radio silence. Things have gotten hectic with work, parenting, and life in general and I have prioritized other kinds of writing over blogging. Academic papers, reports, grant proposals, conference presentations, public talks, and a book manuscript have filled my writing space-time. However, I come back now to this blog to reclaim this creative and public space, allowing myself to reflect, in a sort of to-do list, on the posts I wish I had written and published during this year.
– Motorbike Sounds, Pollution and Incivility in Bogota: A reflection on the collapse of urban space and mobility as motorbikes have flooded the city breaking cultural norms and traffic rules. From crossing red lights, to riding over sidewalks and going the wrong way, motorcyclists breaking of rules has changed urban mobility, safety and well-being.
– Undisciplined, Interdisciplinary or Anti-disciplinary?: Based on the talk “Connections, networks, and fugues: Interdisciplinary paths of research and research-creation in the social sciences and humanities” I gave at the School of Arts and Humanities of Universidad de los Andes, I elaborate a reflection on research and research-creation practices, and the methods that I have embraced during my academic trajectory.
– Earworms on Social Media : An earworm is a catchy piece of music that continually repeats through a person’s mind after it is no longer playing. Typically, earworms are short segments of a song—like a chorus or a few lines—that loop involuntarily and persistently, often without conscious effort. Although earworms are usually harmless and fade over time, they can sometimes be mildly distracting or annoying, depending on their persistence and the individual’s sensitivity. Internet Pop Global Culture earworms on social media become multimodal worms, engaging all communication modalities. What happens when memes meet earworms and become audiovisual memes?
– Research with Social Media Data: Confronting Dilemmas and Advancing Public Interest. Based on a workshop I prepared and facilitated at the Universidad Javeriana MAGIS School Research Data Management Program, I reflect on the opportunities and challenges that digital traces offer to advance digital methods practice, teaching, and research.
– Building Public Infrastructure in Bogota: After 80 years of promises, designs and political controversies, the urban train system is finally being built in the city and is changing the urban landscape and imagination. Seeing and experience such radical transformation has been a unique experience, particularly in relationship to how public physical infrastructure is built while creating gaps, closures, and openness in the urban space.
– Digital Citizenship: Still Under Construction: Reflecting on a master class about Digital Literacies and Citizenship I delivered at the Universidad Católica del Uruguay Digital Rights Observatory training program I reflect on the changes in the exercise of rights, responsibilities, participation repertoires, and the development of civic competencies as datafication and digitization processes advance in Latin American contemporary democratic societies. Traditional notions of citizenship—centered on legal status, civic duties, and political engagement—have expanded with the rise of digital technologies, reshaping the ways in which people express and exercise their rights and fulfill their responsibilities. Digital citizenship now extends beyond adults to include children and young people, who engage with digital spaces from an early age, shaping their identities, relationships, and civic participation online. Although ICTs have enabled greater participation, access to information, and new forms of collective action, they have also created risks for democratic societies, such as information disorder, privacy violations, digital repression, and deepening inequalities. To address these challenges, continuous training is needed to ensure that people of all ages can participate effectively and responsibly in the digital society, taking advantage of opportunities and minimizing risks.
– Minds Over AI – MIL in Digital Spaces: I attended the Global Media and Information Literacy Week 2025 in Cartagena de Indias and have a first hand experience of UNESCO MIL movement, alliance, and efforts to promote literacy training. Such experience has allowed me to better understand the work of UNESCO and the multiple actors that it has articulated to position MIL as a global initiative. This year, those efforts could not avoid embracing the IA hype, with all its contradictions and promises.
– A book in-progress: Writing the book “Expanded Media Education” is an endeavor that has taken me longer than expected. The book synthesizes two decades of research and practice at the intersection of new literacies, citizenship, innovative pedagogies and the hybrid media ecosystem. Written from a Latin American perspective, the book provides an interdisciplinary framework to understand the present and future of participation and learning in datafied societies. It is a book for the general public, with national and regional scope, aimed at a wide audience (the educational community, public policy makers, academics, parents, and young people).
Coda: As a matter of fact, through the year I started drafting these posts with some initial ideas and tentative titles. Sooner or later I will finish writing and publishing them. In that case, perhaps I will keep the date stamp of the original draft and this post will become a sort of belated commentary. The hiatus will mutate into a parenthesis.
