RESEARCH LINE 2
RESEARCH LINE 2 – COMMUNICATIONAL AESTHETICS AND LANGUAGES
Each PósCom faculty member is encouraged to develop a research plan aligned with the program’s two main research lines: Communication and Power and Communicational Aesthetics and Languages. Below is the list of faculty members associated with Line 2 and their current research projects.
Antônio Carlos Queiroz Filho
Research interests: Game Studies and Digital Territorialities Axis: Narrative and Narrativity in Games; Affective Cartography of Playing; Games and aesthetic experience; Interactive narratives; Transmedia Narratives in Videogames; In-Game Photography. GeoCommunicational Aesthetics and Languages Axis: Urban territorialities and their visual representations; Spatial politics of images and their territorial implications; Cinema Geographies and their territorial narratives; Poetic narratives of urban everyday life; Poetic narratives and cultural cartographies of territories; Bottom-up urbanisms as re-territorialization practices; Gamification and serious games as territorial engagement tools; Visualization technologies and the construction of territorial narratives; Artistic practices and locative media; Intersections between digital aesthetics and virtual territorialities.
Research Project: Between pixels: game studies and digital territorialities | Aesthetics and geocommunication languages
Abstract: This research project proposes a transdisciplinary investigation that intertwines “game studies and digital territorialities” with “geocommunicational aesthetics and languages”. Through an approach based on post-structuralist and decolonial theories, the project aims to investigate how cultural and artistic practices mediated by digital technologies and urban contexts can reconfigure notions of space, identity and community. The project is divided into two main lines of research. The first, focused on game studies, will investigate how video games serve as platforms for aesthetic and narrative experimentation, analyzing how they influence and reflect contemporary cultural and social dynamics. The second line of research will examine the interactions between urban artistic practices and media, seeking to understand how these practices can challenge existing power structures and foster new forms of expression and belonging in urban spaces. Methodologically, the project will combine content analyses, case studies, virtual and real ethnographies, and cultural and social cartography to provide a comprehensive understanding of the multiple layers of interaction between digital media and urban practices. The integration of qualitative and quantitative approaches will allow for a detailed analysis of the ways in which territorialities are constructed and narrated in the digital and urban spheres. This study is expected to contribute significantly to the field of cultural and media studies by offering new perspectives on the interaction between technology, art, and urbanism. Furthermore, the project results have the potential to inform public policies and artistic practices, promoting a deeper and more critical understanding of contemporary cultural dynamics.
Arthur Fiel
Research interests: Public policies and support for the audiovisual and cultural sectors; Audiovisual production; History and politics of Brazilian cinema and audiovisual media; children's content; film analysis; cinema, education, and human rights; media representations and sociocultural practices;
Research Project: Audiovisual/cultural history, policies, and poetics
Abstract: This research project proposes a three-dimensional approach to analyze the processes involved in the creation, implementation, and realization of public policies and audiovisual and cultural productions. It aims to explore the historical evolution of policies related to the audiovisual and cultural sectors, investigating the actors and political processes that influence their implementation and shape the conception of the poetic, aesthetic, and narrative dimensions of the works produced. By combining these historical, political, and poetic perspectives, we seek a deeper understanding of the interactions between historical contexts, political dynamics, and artistic expressions that shape the contemporary audiovisual and cultural landscape at both national and local levels.
Daniela Zanetti
Research interests: Audiovisual culture in digital networks; peripheral audiovisual narratives and minority discourse; communication and the platformization of culture; interactive and immersive media; communication and socio-environmental issues.
Research Project: Networked audiovisual culture and contested symbolic territories: videos on the climate crisis and new forms of cyber-activism.
Abstract: This research project investigates phenomena within the field of audiovisual media on digital platforms, focusing on the activism and forms of social interaction linked to the consumption of audiovisual products in this context. Contemporary audiovisual production involves the orchestration of resources and agents on digital platforms—with a particular emphasis on network culture—thereby shaping new discursive and aesthetic strategies. Video-hosting platforms (such as YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok) have become fertile ground for the emergence of diverse discourses, driven largely by the expansion of audiovisual content production and consumption tailored to these platforms—including documentaries, web series, short videos, and confessional formats like vlogs. This shift has enabled the emergence of new social actors within the sphere of public visibility, impacting the realms of politics, entertainment, and activism. It is within the context of cyberculture that many audiovisual materials gain traction among distinct audiences; these audiences often form communities shaped by the networked mediations that define these new audiovisual territories. These territories encompass content originating within digital networks, involving both production linked to media and information corporations and "bottom-up" production generated spontaneously by a vast number of ordinary individuals. However, this dynamic does not play out on the same level between these two (or more) types of production, as the cultural fields with which they are associated are constituted differently. Factors to consider include the weight given to the statements and agents within these fields (regarding their level of institutionalization, independence, etc.); the discursive exchanges between content creators and audiences; the varying degrees of definition regarding "speaking positions"; production conditions; aesthetic innovations; and mediation processes shaped by algorithmization, among others. Current research focuses on examining short-form videos on platforms like TikTok that address climate and socio-environmental issues, thereby observing new configurations of cyber-activism.
Fábio Gomes Goveia
Research interests: Image and technology. Communicational aesthetics in contemporary society. Datasphere, platformization, and data visualization. Relationships between aesthetics and power in data culture. Development of technologies and methodologies for social network analysis. Digital platforms and social behaviors. Technology and Culture.
Research Project: Social Network Data Visualization Laboratory
This research project aims to produce data visualization technologies through the development of software, scripts, interfaces, and analyses designed to visualize conversations, actor networks, and posts disseminated on social media platforms. The laboratory's innovation process will focus on five social areas: health, climate, online advertising, democracy, and public policy. The methodological process driving this innovation is structured to promote and develop technologies for extracting data from social media platforms; this involves data collection from these platforms and subsequent data processing, structured around: (1) building intelligence to generate information and statistics from raw data; (2) creating databases to systematize information, build archives, and develop proprietary APIs for generating outputs tailored to customized digital services; (3) creating and maintaining digital dashboards to monitor public conversations on social media platforms; (4) producing customized data visualizations for the massive analysis of text, images, and video; (5) producing reports and analyses on discourse and image patterns using data visualization technologies; and (6) applying artificial intelligence, machine learning, and LLM techniques to adapt automated models for interpreting social phenomena.
Flávia Mayer dos Santos Souza
Research interests: Communication, advertising and meaning production; Advertising and city; The territoriality of consumption; The speech of brands.
Research Project: Territorialities of communication and consumption
Summary: It proposes reflection on the territorialities of communication and consumption, understanding territorialities as the modes of organization in space and attribution of meaning, so that the study is interested, especially, in the symbolic-cultural aspect (Haesbaert, 2005; Haesbaert, Limonad, 2007). It thus embarks on territorialities that, increasingly, have participated in the historical, social, economic, political and cultural contexts of society, causing reconfigurations in ways of living and bringing new dynamics to the organization of life. It privileges the relationship between territorialities, communication and consumption based on the configurations, discourses and interactions present in communication practices, processes and products, which leads to an encounter with sociosemiotics.
Gabriela Santos Alves
Research interests: Female identities and audiovisual culture; representation in audiovisual media; contemporary feminist theory and criticism; gender and raciality.
Research Project: *Clausuras* [Confinements]: territories and meanings of female cloisters.
Abstract: This research project aims to reflect on the territories and meanings of female cloisters using a methodology that combines a theoretical analysis grounded in contemporary feminist theory with a filmic analysis of productions—spanning both fiction and documentary—that highlight female stories and characters and are preferably directed by women. These cloisters are and will be analyzed through six specific territories over the course of the project's twenty-year span (2016–2036). These territories engage with the meanings produced from and/or by them, always with the aim of questioning female presence and participation—or exclusion. They are: *presas* [female prisoners] (addressing the institutional imprisonment of women by the State); *loucas* [madwomen] (questioning and analyzing female hysteria); *putas* [whores] (female sexuality); *santas* [saints] (the paradoxical pairing of sanctification and violence against women's bodies); *donas de casa e mães* [housewives and mothers] (politicizing the domestic space); and *drogadas* [drug users] (investigating the medicalization of female bodies). Based on this methodology, the project has produced—and will continue to produce—book chapters, papers for academic conferences and scholarly journals, as well as interviews, newspaper articles, and discussion circles both within and outside the academic sphere. Alongside its academic output, “Clausuras” also encompasses artistic production through the creation of films addressing the aforementioned themes—such as the short film *C(elas)* [2017], written and directed by Gabriela, which explores the relationship between motherhood and the prison environment, and *Riscadas* [2019], a short film on which she served as associate producer and researcher, focusing on visual artists from Espírito Santo and their work confronting or questioning violence against women in the state. Beyond filmmaking itself, the project involves showcasing these productions at festivals and film screenings, as well as providing consultancy and curatorial services.
Livia Silva Souza
Research interests: Material culture, consumption and its rituals. Brands and their links of meaning in the mediatized society. Advertising and representations of consumption.
Research Project: Mediatized aesthetics of consumption: brands, meanings and territorialities
How do brands build links of meaning in communication manifestations that territorialize consumption rituals? This research project aims to analyze visual, sound and tactile manifestations in advertising campaigns and other contemporary expressions of brands, investigating how the aesthetic links that territorialize meanings in the material culture of consumption are produced. Consumption as material culture is the central theoretical axis, starting from the understanding of things as active agents in the construction of meanings and territorialities. Other theoretical axes are consumption and its rituals; the “biography” of things and the global-local flows of goods; the tactics of everyday consumption; and advertising semiosis and territoriality.
Pedro Marra
Research interests: Sounds and Spaces; Sound and social mobilization; Communication and Urban Cultures; Communication and Sport; Popular Music: Genres and scenes; Sound Technologies: Music, Sound Art, Radio and Sound for audiovisual.
Research Project: Canta que sai Gol: sounds, communicative ambiances and football performances in the production of contemporary sports spectacle
Abstract: This research project investigates the ways in which sounds participate intensely in the sensory conditions that frame football performances and produce a communicative ambience necessary for the sporting spectacle. The proposal revisits issues addressed in a doctorate defended in November 2016, which researched football's sonic techniques: the repertoire of sounds and their uses and manipulations by football agents in order to carry out a series of actions and objectives in the context of this sport. The work understands the sporting spectacle and football performance as the result of a complex intertwining between different performances; but especially the athletic performances of the players on the field and the spectatorial performances of the fans in the stands. It takes as an assumption the belief of fans in the power of the sounds they produce to lead the team they support to victory. The sounds produced during the match act as a means of communication between the agents involved in this event and promote interaction between them. This new stage of research will update data relating to the sounds of Clube Atlético Mineiro games and expand the analyzes based on the transformations that have taken place at this club in recent years, namely: the inauguration of a new football arena and the consequent transfer of the team's games to this space; the transformation of its management model from a sports association to a Sociedade Anônima de Futebol (SAF). Founded on March 25, 1908, the club is one of the three mass teams in Belo Horizonte, capital of Minas Gerais, and one of the 13 biggest football clubs in the country. The work will employ and develop the methodology designed especially for doctoral research, which involves field research with audio recording and editing. As results of the work, the project proposes the systematization of data and discoveries from this new stage of research into two academic articles, the publication of a book on the topic and the creation of a piece or sound performance composed from the material recorded throughout the research and which will seek to make its discoveries audible to a wider audience.
