RESEARCH LINE 1
RESEARCH LINE 1 – COMMUNICATION AND POWER
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 1 and their current research projects.
Cicilia Maria Krohling Peruzzo
Research interests: Popular, community and alternative communication; Independent media, Local and regional media; Public Relations from a critical perspective; Social movements, communication and citizenship; Epistemology of scientific research; Communication, decolonity and good living.
Research project: Intersections between social movement communication and post-development in the internet era
Summary: Research on the presence of social movements and community organizations on the internet, especially on their profiles and audiovisual products. The general objective is to analyze the communication of social movements and communities in order to observe the intersections between communicative praxis and the development of citizenship and the transformation of local realities. The theoretical framework articulates conceptual views on the modes of articulation of civil society constituted by segments of the population that recognize themselves as bearers of rights and organize themselves to claim them, on the communication processes triggered in specific contexts of social mobilization, as well as on how views of conventional development are subtracted from the dynamics constituted in favor of the construction of a civilizing process towards post-development, or at least another way of life, in harmony with a series of rights. and social, economic and environmental guarantees. The methodological framework is circumscribed in the epistemic position that understands knowledge as capable of being developed in the inseparable relationship between subject-object, therefore not as something already given and to be captured, but developed in an intersubjective relationship between researcher and investigated situation. The research will be developed through the application of bibliographical research and documentary research. The method for interpreting and analyzing observables is based on depth hermeneutics.
Emerson Campos Gonçalves
Research interests: Literary Journalism and Literature; Philosophy, Culture and Communication (Critical Theory of Society); Semiotics and Language Studies; Cultural Industry and semi-training processes; Social Networks and Media Convergence.
Research project: Addiction to social networks and the use of methylphenidate among university students in Espírito Santo
Abstract: This project brings together and intertwines the theses defended by Christoph Türcke (2002; 2012) about addiction to online social networks (especially from the multiplication of digital technical images) and the establishment of a true culture of attention deficit in today's society, in which a considerable number of people become dependent on large loads of image stimuli or medications, such as methylphenidate, to awaken increasingly saturated senses. The premise that supports the proposed investigation is that the advancement of the cultural industry through online social networks and smartphones has conditioned the formation of individuals who are increasingly dispersed and have difficulty concentrating. Consequently, the oversaturation of the senses in these individuals has fostered semi-formative processes (of Halbbildung), affecting human relationships in different social spaces. One of the most sensitive environments to this condition is the classroom. Formal space of education (Erziehung) and teaching-learning processes, this is where students are found, directly harmed by addiction to online social networks and the culture of attention deficit. In this scenario, the solution found by many university students (SAHAKIAN; MOREIN-ZAMIR, 2007), including in Brazil (MONTEIRO et al., 2017), has been the indiscriminate use of neurostimulators, such as the aforementioned methylphenidate. Methylphenidate (Ritalin) is a central nervous system stimulant whose mechanism of action indirectly contributes to the release of dopamine, a neurotransmitter related to mood, pleasure, cognition, among other functions (CHALLMAN; LIPSKY, 2000). This drug has been used as the first choice in the treatment of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), in addition to being used to treat other diseases such as depression, narcolepsy and cognitive disorders (CHALLMAN; LIPSKY, 2000). Because it amplifies the action of dopamine, methylphenidate can improve concentration and make cognitive tasks seem more rewarding. However, without qualified guidance, the medication can lead to abuse and addiction. Not to mention the adverse effects, mainly due to the lack of control over the dosage used and use by healthy people (not suffering from the disorders for which the medication is indicated). There are reports that methylphenidate presents adverse reactions such as headache, nervousness, dizziness, anxiety and its long-term use can trigger paranoia and schizophrenia (PASTURA; MATTOS, 2004). In this sense, considering the seriousness of the indiscriminate use of this drug, this study seeks to investigate what percentage of university students in Espírito Santo use the drug as a tool to improve concentration and, consequently, performance in studies. The objective is to develop a real and current panorama of the use of the drug among university students, through a broad questionnaire and interviews to be conducted with students from the main higher education institutions in ES. With this, we hope to produce a database on the real dimension of the problem that will allow us to advance discussions on public policies, especially those linked to education, that can address the different causes (such as the aforementioned addiction to social networks) that produce the culture of attention deficit.
Guillermo Mastrini (Voluntary Visiting Professor)
Research interests: Public communication policies. Platform regulation. Cultural Economy. Concentration of ownership of media and communication systems.
Research project: Structure and concentration of media in Brazil.
Summary: As Google's influence grows, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, Netflix, Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent are increasingly replacing common, open Internet protocols with their own standards, an oft-criticized trend known as “platforming the Internet.” Such processes result in changes to the Internet and its governance. Furthermore, as digital platforms aggregate and distribute cultural and media content, existing media groups also become more dependent on the platforms, compromising their own autonomy in exchange for uncertain benefits. The project has three objectives: (1) map and analyze developments in two dozen media industries in Brazil; (2) apply and adapt existing research tools and create new ones, as necessary, to improve understanding of concentration in the context of the media platform; (3) provide data that can serve as tools to influence policymaking and public debate on media concentration through open data.
José Edgard Rebouças
Research interests: Cultural and media industries; Communication policies; Political economy of communications; Media and human rights; Democratization of the media; Tackling misinformation.
Research project: Public policies and communications regulation in Brazil since the 1988 Federal Constitution
Summary: The study covers a 40-year period, from the initiatives of the National Constituent Assembly, installed on February 1, 1987, to 2027. Over these years, several legal instruments for the area of communication were established at the federal level; among them, in the Federal Constitution of 1988, the entire chapter V of title VIII and several other articles ranging from the 5th, dealing with fundamental rights and guarantees, to 227, on the protection of children and young people; and in infraconstitutional texts such as pay TV; community broadcasting; digital TV; the indicative rating of games, films and TV programs; public radio and TV; the National Cinema and Audiovisual Agency; professional qualification and the Federal Journalism Council; the Press Law; electoral propaganda; the civil framework of the internet; laws on access to information, data protection, responsibility and transparency on the Internet, protection of children and adolescents in digital environments; the regulation of digital platforms; and, at the beginning of 2026, the decree creating the profession of multimedia/digital influencer. In short, an entire set of regulations that deals with topics that are so important and present in everyday life, but that require greater depth, analysis, interpretation and qualified comments. During this period, there was also no effective participation of society in debates on communications policies, which were deliberated without due involvement by experts, users, managers, or professionals in the field.
Patrícia Cardoso D'Abreu
Research interests: media issues; journalism; feminist epistemology, representations of women in media texts
Research project: Episfeme: media issues
The proposal is for a practice of scientific investigation into the objects of communication that, based on a feminist epistemology, systematizes the questioning of the representations of women in media texts. This proposal is in line with the participation of the author of this research as one of the coordinators, in Brazil, of the Global Media Monitoring Project (GMMP) 2020. Created in 1995, the GMMP is one of the consequences of the Fourth World Conference on Women, held in Beijing, which established proposals, strategic objectives, actions and measures to implement the human rights of women and girls as an inalienable part of human rights and fundamental freedoms (UN: 1995). This document allowed the feminist agenda to definitively articulate media representations with the historical struggles for knowledge, citizenship, representation, work and decision-making autonomy over one's own body. Like the GMMP, important developments of this achievement warned against the invisibility and silencing of women in media production. Thus, the proposal of the research Episfeme: media issues is, based on the arduous monitoring methodology with which we worked at GMMP 2020, to analyze media discourse and content in the light of different currents of feminist thought.
Rafael Bellan Rodrigues de Souza
Research interests: Communication and Work; Theory of Journalism; Media and Hegemony; Social Movements and media activism
Research project: Critical-emancipatory journalism and the formation of historical subjects
Abstract: This research project aims to evaluate the irrationalist inlays in the subjectivist defenses of activist journalism. Thus, we seek to dialectically tension the proposal of a journalism focused on the subjectivity of reporters and subjects framed in their places of speech, exploring its ontological cement of invisibilization of the world of capital and also demonstrating how a certain irrationalism guides part of this thought that, without necessarily having nefarious intentions, places post-modern ideologies as the guiding principle of combat journalism. The research also aims to highlight how critical-emancipatory journalism, based on the studies of Genro Filho (2012), distances itself from this subjectivist reading and positions itself ontologically as a response to the strategy of transition to another possible and necessary world (MÉSZÁROS, 2004).
Rafael da Silva Paes Henriques
Research interests: Theories of Journalism; News coverage analysis.
Research project: Decoding journalistic texts: analysis of public interest coverage
Abstract: This research project investigates the ways in which meanings are produced by journalism when covering events of public interest. We want to decode and critically analyze the choices made by information professionals and expressed in published texts and images. The idea is to reveal how, and with what consequences, journalism carries out the operation of “translating” what happens; what are their discursive strategies, their journalistic frameworks, and how this work is usually carried out. As a result, we intend to find the possible effects of meaning, the voices, the ways of defining and proposing a solution to the reported problems, and, ultimately, we will seek to identify the extratextual factors that serve as a basis for the reading of the world carried out when covering the events. Our main hypothesis is that, instead of a mere objective description of facts, journalism always interprets events, based on the majority readings that circulate in society. In this way, we propose to explain the choices and origins of the perspectives adopted by one of the most important institutions for the production and circulation of meanings in contemporary society.
Ruth de Cássia dos Reis
Research interests: Digital social networks; Journalism; Organizational communication; Public communication; Narratives and speeches.
Research project: Discourse and narrative studies in contemporary communication processes
Abstract: The transformations that communication has undergone since the beginning of the digital era bring new questions about the appropriations produced in the communication mediation systems currently available, configured as a distributed network that allows countless connections at different levels and scales, involving humans and things. Part of these questions concerns the meanings produced by the actors who move in this plot, where the most diverse signs circulate that configure questions, themes, agendas, ideas and where everyday life takes place in its multiple dimensions. We start from the conception that these elements are not given in advance, but that they result from discursive processes in dispute and always seeking to constitute a hegemony that stabilizes them temporarily. Discourse is understood as a device through which the subject and the social are established in language. This project proposes to research theoretical and methodological contributions within the scope of Discourse Studies that promote the understanding of contemporary communication networks and their communication occurrences.
