Comunicación, violencia cultural y Alianza de Civilizaciones tras el 11-S. De la Espiral del Silencio de Noelle- Neumann y el Cultivo de Gerbner a las Espirales de Paz como entendimiento intercultural

The following thesis has a multidisciplinary approach and its objective is to study the role of communication in the processes of violence and peace building in a context marked by the massive flow of information that permeates daily life and by the processes unleashed by the attacks on September 11th, 2001 in New York. One of the starting points of this research was to analyse if after September 11 there were communicative actions that generated or promoted violence (especially what we call cultural violence) and if these actions constructed the idea of ¿the enemy¿ to legitimate the subsequent armed attack against Afghanistan. This initial objective led me to explore whether the spirals of cultural violence and the mechanisms described by Gerbner and Noelle-Neumann in their communication theories of Cultivation and Spiral of Silence, respectively, could be transformed towards the reconstruction of peace through the prism of communication literacy. The selection of the subject of this thesis and its interdisciplinary approach were motivated by several factors. First, one of the motivations is derived from my academic background and work as a journalist since 1999. During this period I became aware of the importance of media representations in perception construction, social development, intercultural coexistence, human rights, and the processes of violence and peace. It is for this reason that I decided to start a dual path pursuing a PhD in communication, which will culminate in this thesis, and a complementary specialization in peace, conflict and development studies. This duality has been crucial to my work as a journalist for the newspaper Levante de Castelló and has led me to connect the communication field with human rights and peace work with the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations (UNAOC) in New York, the Red Cross in Spain, The Fellowship of Reconciliation in New York, the NGO Communicators for Peace, the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID), Amnesty International, the UNHCR Spanish Committee, UNESCO-UNAOC UNITWIN Global Chair on Media and Information Literacy and Intercultural Dialogue and the European Union¿s program Youth in Action, among others. This journey gave me the opportunity to broaden my experience as a journalist and researcher of communication for peace in contexts such as the UN Secretariat in New York, the Palestinian Territories, Israel, Western Saharan refugee camps, Morocco and Mexico, among othe