See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/325341337 Journalism in the age of hybridization: Los vagabundos de la chatarra – Comics journalism, data, maps and advocacy Article in Catalan Journal of Communication and Cultural Studies · April 2018 DOI: 10.1386/cjcs.10.1.43_1 CITATIONS READS 4 367 3 authors, including: Miren Gutierrez University of Deusto 50 PUBLICATIONS 178 CITATIONS SEE PROFILE Some of the authors of this publication are also working on these related projects: climate change and environment View project China’s distant-water fishing fleetScale, impact and governance View project All content following this page was uploaded by Miren Gutierrez on 25 October 2018. The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file. CJCS 10 (1) pp. 43–62 Intellect Limited 2018 Catalan Journal of Communication & Cultural Studies Volume 10 Number 1 © 2018 Intellect Ltd Article. English language. doi: 10.1386/cjcs.10.1.43_1 Miren Gutiérrez, María Pilar Rodríguez and Juan Manuel Díaz de Guereñu Universidad de Deusto Journalism in the age of hybridization: Los vagabundos de la chatarra – comics journalism, data, maps and advocacy Abstract Keywords The process of hybridization has pervaded all fields of human communication; hybridization journalism and activism are no exceptions. An example is the graphic project Los data activism vagabundos de la chatarra, an editorial undertaking that comprises observations, graphic novel drawings, data, a map, a video and accounts of the people who gathered and sold maps scrap metal for a living on the edges of Barcelona during the economic crisis that journalism started in 2007. This exploration is conducted and communicated in an extremely comics journalism hybrid manner: it visualizes data on a map, it strives for social change, it is jour- critical cartography nalistic and it has a comic design face. Relying on media literature and critical data studies, discourse analysis and qualitative interviewing, this article examines the multifaceted shapes that activism and journalism are taking in complex times and explores the potential for subversion that such formats offer. The findings suggest that activists and journalists around the world are embarking on unapologetic hybridization, crossing lines between journalism, campaigning and art. 43 03_CJCS_10.1_Rodríguez_43-62.indd 43 5/18/18 1:51 PM Miren Gutiérrez | María Pilar Rodríguez ... Introduction The graphic non-fiction journalistic advocacy report Los vagabundos de la chatarra (Scrap Vagabonds) is the result of a year-long project, from 2012 to 2013, that has produced a graphic book and a website showing commen- tary, a video and a map visualizing geolocated data (Norma Editorial 2015). The editorial project by journalist Jorge Carrión and illustrator Sagar Forniés includes observations, interviews and accounts of people who gathered and sold scraps of metal for a living during the economic crisis on the edges of Barcelona. The heart of the graphic novel is an occupied warehouse in Puigcerdà street in Poblenou (a vast neighbourhood of Barcelona), where a metal scrapping community of about 300 people, both nationals and immi- grants, lived. In Spain the number of court-ordered home evictions for non-payment of mortgages, rent or other legal reasons reached 67,189 in 2013 (Hernández 2014). The repossession of homes by banks does not necessarily translate into a cancellation of the former owner’s debt, as in other countries. By 2012, Spain’s unemployment rate reached 24.4 per cent, doubling the eurozone average (House and Roman 2012). Hopeless nationals together with immi- grants, who had contributed to the previous welfare, started to leave by the hundreds of thousands. By 2011, the total number of people leaving the coun- try (Spaniards and non-Spaniards) had overtaken the number of arrivals, and Spain became a net emigrant country (Izquierdo et al. 2015). Those affected by the crisis who could not afford to leave had to fight for survival. Barcelona was heavily hit, and social gaps escalated. For example, neigh- bourhoods with very low incomes went from eight in 2007 to nineteen in 2014, and neighbourhoods with very high incomes went from five to eight (Ajuntament de Barcelona 2014). Although in Spain waste has been reduced Source: Norma Editorial (2015). Figure 1: Los vagabundos de la chatarra. 44 Catalan Journal of Communication & Cultural Studies 03_CJCS_10.1_Rodríguez_43-62.indd 44 5/18/18 1:51 PM Journalism in the age of hybridization since 2003, we still produce about 460 kilograms of garbage per inhabitant per year (Cerezo 2015), of which nearly 3 per cent are metals (UNED 2002). Metal scrapping was precisely one of the activities that thrived in Barcelona during the crisis (Blanchar 2012). Being a semi-clandestine occupation, there is no official information about the number of people dedicated to this activity, but police reports on eviction operations in occupied buildings across Barcelona – such as the warehouse in Puigcerdà street that is the focus of Carrión’s and Forniés’s book – quoted by media, point to about 600 people solely to metal scrapping in 2015 (Altimira 2015). The recycling of metal scraps is a significant activity in Spain, and Barcelona is a crucial enclave regarding the numbers of companies dedicated to it, sales volume and people employed (UGT and MCA 2010). Los vagabundos de la chatarra was produced using journalistic techniques, including interviews, observations from reality and investigative techniques. However, the way of communicating the results of journalistic research is innovative because it incorporates a map geolocating and sorting the scener- ies of the graphic novel, pioneering the fusion of data and cartoons in Spanish (see Figure 4). As a result, the project can be interpreted through several approaches: the journalistic angle, the comic design angle and the activist angle. This article looks at the different readings that this work offers, focusing on the following research questions: RQ1: what does hybridization mean for journalism today? RQ2: how is hybridization found in ‘comics journalism’ and other close activities such as advocacy? This study’s methodology includes: a content and discursive analysis of the book that is the centre of the article, and qualitative interviewing of the authors of the book to probe the formula proposed by their work and ponder about its effectiveness and replicability. Accordingly, semi-structured interviews with open-ended queries were fashioned about the RQs and sent to the authors of the book (Flyvbjerg 2000). For example, one of the questions was ‘how have you mixed the methods from “comics journalism”, interactive mapping and advocacy in this book?’. The book is examined from the perspectives of jour- nalism, comics and activism in three separate sections. This article includes an analysis of the book’s ‘Epilogue’ and reflects on the power of graphic expres- sion and art to develop critical thinking and to promote social transformation in times of crisis. The conclusions bring the article to an end. The age of hybridization In genetics, hybridization means crossbreeding, mixing different species; in the context of this article, hybridization refers to the crossing of lines dividing genres, styles, repertoires of action and methods from journalism and activ- ism. The result of hybridization is a cross-genre. Hybrid types are not new in literature; one of the most quoted examples is William Blake´s Marriage of Heaven and Hell (Blake [1790] 1975), composed in the early 1790s, which mergers engravings, poetry and prose. Although there is no consensus, hybridization in journalism could have emerged in the United States with the rise of the docu-soap (a portmanteau of ‘documentary’ and ‘soap opera’) in the 1990s (McNair 2009), which not only www.intellectbooks.com 45 03_CJCS_10.1_Rodríguez_43-62.indd 45 5/18/18 1:51 PM Miren Gutiérrez | María Pilar Rodríguez ... integrated the language of TV dramatization into journalism, but also blurred the lines dividing fiction and non-fiction, producing a ‘bastard union of several forms’ (Lünenborg 2002: 2). Since the 1990s, many forms of hybridization have been tried with the intention of communicating journalistic truths more effi- ciently, among them comics journalism. Dan Archer, a pioneer, is currently experimenting with immersive techniques, such as virtual reality (2017). The multifaceted nature of Los vagabundos de la chatarra calls for a theoretical examination of hybridization in different fields. First, hybridization in narrative and graphic genres has been linked to the crisis of news media organizations, the overlapping global socio-economic crisis and the technological progress. From this point of view, hybridization has been seen as a digital technology-related phenomenon (Madeira 2012: 87); as a product of the creative processes unleashed by crises (European Association of Social Anthropologists 2010); and as the result of cultural amal- gamation and globalization (European Commission 2014). Second, although Los vagabundos de la chatarra is not a data activist project, it shows some characteristics of data activism. Hybridization is one of the attributes found in ‘proactive data activism’ – understood as activism that uses the data infrastructure (i.e. interactive cartography) politically and proactively to foster social change (Milan and Gutierrez 2015). A study based on 40 cases and 30 qualitative interviews concludes that proactive