This working area carries out applied research about the dynamics of the audiovisual sector, with a especial focus on the creation, production and distribution of contents. As a result, the Audiovisual Production Observatory (Observatori de la Producció Audiovisual - OPA) has been created. Its two main lines of activity are: on the one hand, the development of a website where its scientific production (mainly focused on the Catalan production sector) is made public. On the other hand, an Audiovisual Production Yearbook is published. OPA's main objective is to provide the market players with updated information about the situation of the audiovisual field on a regularly basis, paying special attention to the situation in Catalonia and Spain but also tracking the most relevant international issues.

This area is focused on researching and advising in two fields: 'education about media' and 'education with media'. In the first one, the researchers of UNIC analyse what role emotions and the subconscious have when receiving audiovisual messages. In that sense, and by means of applying integrated methodologies, results about how to turn emotions into reflection are produced. In the field of ‘education with media’, the main interest of the group is finding out a new communication style for cultural and educational audiovisual products. In order to do that, advertising is taken as a communication model. Its expressive parameters can be useful when trying to improve the communicative and didactic effectiveness of cultural and educational audiovisual contents.L'àrea de recerca en Comunicació i Educació es dedica a la investigació i l'assessorament en dos gran àmbits: l'educació en mitjans i l'educació amb mitjans. En l'àmbit de l'educació en mitjans el grup es concentra sobretot en l'anàlisi del paper de les emocions i de l'inconscient en la recepció de missatges audiovisuals, i en l'elaboració de materials basats en metodologies integradores, encaminades a convertir l'emoció en reflexió. En l'àmbit de l'educació amb mitjans, el principal centre d'interès rau en la recerca d'un nou estil comunicatiu en l'audiovisual educatiu i cultural, recorrent a la publicitat com a model comunicatiu; és a dir, cercant aquells paràmetres expressius de la publicitat que poden ser útils per incrementar l'eficàcia comunicativa i didàctica de l'audiovisual educatiu i cultural.

In recent years, interest groups, mostly lobbies and think tanks, have become one of the main actors within the field of public space communication. Essentially, they are an American phenomenon that has been rapidly introduced in Spain. Their communicative nature, their use of communication strategies and their real capacity of influencing the decisions of public authorities is a new object of study of UNIC. The main working lines of the researchers of this area are focused on identifying the organizational structures as well as the communication and influence models of these groups in Spain.

This research line currently has a strong relevance within the international media research community. It will be focused on the analysis of how mass media contribute to the identity creation processes by means of discourse, images and narration. The objective is to foster comparative research in collaboration with several South-american universities.

UNIC is currently paying attention to the transformations resulting from the deployment of digital networks and their impact on the communication market players. In that sense, the researchers working in this area are focused on the analysis of the new changes that affect many areas of communication, such as journalism data, big data or transmediality, all of them phenomena of the digital society.