Visiting faculty testimonial: Professor Eduardo Arriagada

Eduardo Arriagada
Periodista, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile; MBA en el Instituto de Empresa de Madrid

In Denmark I was able to work at several libraries to read and prepare contents for my master’s course in Chile and my presentation to Ass. Prof. Teke Jacob Ngomba’s students at Aarhus University...This work will be part of a new book manuscript I am currently working on.

I am grateful to the Erasmus Mundus programme to have had the opportunity to give the final lecture to the master students taking the Political Communication in Comparative Perspectives, directed by Prof. Teke Jacob Ngomba. 

The course ended with The Dynamics of Political Communication Beyond the West chapter, and my presentation was on Digital Media and the Changing Political Communications Landscape in Chile.

I took advantage of the visit to prepare that topic as an entirely new class. Since early 2014, I have been writing a weekly column for La Segunda, a major Chilean evening newspaper (part of El Mercurio newspaper chain) focusing on politics. The topic is the relation between local politics and social media.

I have also been conducting research on government’s use of social media. In Denmark I was able to work at several libraries to read and prepare contents for my master’s course in Chile and my presentation to Ass. Prof. Teke Jacob Ngomba’s students. His input and student participation were very valuable to the topic of my class. In fact, this work will be part of a new book manuscript that I am planning to send to the editors next September. 

My research also included valuable informal meetings with Ass. Profs. Teke Jacob Ngomba and Poul Erik Flyvholm, as well as productive conversations with Inger Munk about the Mundus programme and the possibility of joint projects between DMJX and the UC School of Journalism. 

Of course my visit to Aarhus was not only academic. I was also able to visit libraries and bookstores, enjoy both the beautiful and leafy campus with a stream running through it (right next to the university guestroom) and the city’s cafés, cinemas and parks. I especially liked rugbrød –I will try to make it at home.

The proximity of Aarhus and Frederikshavn enabled me to go to Gothenburg, Sweden, to visit Göteborg Posten, a newspaper that I have used in my media class for years to illustrate the case of a quality local newspaper. I had productive meetings with Ullastina Ewenfeldt, study counsellor and lecturer at the Unive sity of Gothenburg, and Cecilia Frisk, chief of digital at Göteborg-Posten.

I greatly appreciate the extraordinary hospitality that Ass. Prof. Teke Jacob Ngomba and the other professors I met in Aarhus, as well as Inger Munk, showed me during my entire stay. In my mind, any professor on the Erasmus faculty exchange would gain a lot academically and personally from a visit to DMJX.