PPGCOM |
RESEARCH GROUPS
CAC- Communication, Art, and the City
FORMATION YEAR: 2004
Founded in 2004 by the esteemed Professor João Maia; established as a Research Group and UDT (Innovation Laboratory) in 2018.
GROUP LEADERS:
Cíntia Sanmartin Fernandes (Coordinator) and Erick Felinto (Deputy Coordinator)
labcacfcs@gmail.com
Website
CNPq Link:
LINES OF RESEARCH:
Media Culture, Imaginary, and City
DESCRIPTION:
Study of the city and its communicative dynamics. It investigates the multiple communication phenomena present in urban space, particularly those relating to the arts, bodies, technicalities, cultures, and their associated imaginaries. It involves the study of urban territorialities, atmospheres, and imaginaries. It seeks to understand the forms of sociality and the artistic-cultural and intercultural practices—manifested through bodily, musical, sonic, and visual performances such as dance, graffiti, and fashion—that inhabit contemporary urban spaces.
TRAMA – Communication, Art, and Sociotechnical Networks
FORMATION YEAR: 2010
GROUP LEADER:
Fernando Gonçalves
Link:
WEBSITE:
LINES OF RESEARCH:
– Technology and Forms of Social Bonding
– Technology, Aesthetics, and Production of Subjectivity
– Theories of Image, Art, and Visual Culture
DESCRIPTION:
The TRAMA Research Group (Communication, Art, and Sociotechnical Networks) investigates the historical, aesthetic, and political dimensions of sociotechnical networks—understood as webs of mediation between humans and non-humans that produce subjectivities, narratives, imaginaries, and power relations. It conducts research on communicative and artistic practices involving the image, visual culture, digital technologies, the body, territory, the archive, and memory. The group articulates critical perspectives—particularly counter-colonial ones—to investigate forms of appropriating technologies and images that challenge worldviews, forms of social bonding, and contemporary hegemonic regimes of representation and visibility.
Communication, Entertainment, and Cognition
FORMATION YEAR: 2007
GROUP LEADER:
Fátima Regis de Oliveira
fatimaregisoliveira@gmail.com
Blog:
entretenimentoecognicao.wordpress.com
Link:
DESCRIPTION:
The group includes graduate students Raquel Timponi, Renata Silva, and João Ventura and scientific initiation fellows José Messias Franco and Alessandra Maia. The group studies articulations between communication practices and contemporary culture. Its research focuses on the transformations of the production, distribution, and consumption processes in contemporary media and entertainment systems, favoring their cognitive, ethical, and subjective aspects. This group is articulated with the “Communication Technology and Culture” line of research of the UERJ Graduate Program in Communication.
Urban Communication, Consumption, and Events
FORMATION YEAR: 2010
GROUP LEADER:
Ricardo Freitas
rfreitas@uerj.br
Link:
DESCRIPTION:
Given that the city is the locus par excellence for the circulation of social representations, the aim is to consider how such phenomena delimit the imaginary space and condition the generation of meanings in urban environments. Thus, the group investigates the multiple communication phenomena that punctuate the urban space, especially those related to art, science, the body, popular culture, consumption, sports, and their representations. The group is particularly interested in investigating the so-called “mega-events”, thus producing a greater theoretical framework for this urban phenomenon. Throughout each year, Brazilian mega-events will be studied and presented to society in the form of presentations at conferences and scientific articles.
CORPS – Body, Representations, And Urban Space
FORMATION YEAR: 2012
GROUP LEADER:
Denise da Costa Oliveira Siqueira
denisedacosta@ig.com.br
Link:
DESCRIPTION:
The Corps research group: body, representation, and urban space centralizes the discussions that deal with the theme of the urban body in contemporary times. A focus is given to the mediatized body and its representations in spaces, in which different mediums – such as comic books, magazines, cinema, postcards, video clips – translate the production of difference in the city. Another focus is given to the body as an object of art, especially within contemporary dance in its urban and experimental character. Spaces, velocities, mediums, and representations thus seek to account for how different languages and systems of thought create and recreate meanings for something that has nothing natural, as noted by anthropologist Marcel Mauss, one of the sources of the theoretical framework that underlies the group’s work.
LABIM – Images, Imaginaries, and Technological Materialities
FORMATION YEAR: 2022
GROUP LEADER:
Erick Felinto de Oliveira
erickfelinto@gmail.com
Blog:
poshumano.wordpress.com
Link:
DESCRIPTION:
The concept of the imaginary and the set of notions often associated with it (myth, imagination, symbol, etc.) are among the most ambiguous and difficult to define in the instrumental repertoire of the human sciences. This has remained so despite the continuous attention of researchers, particularly in the last 30 years, in which digital technologies consolidated themselves in everyday life. Today, the use of the imaginary takes place in fields as different as the political sciences, anthropology, the science of images (Bildwissenschaft), and the study of new media. The Images, Imaginaries, and Technological Materialities Research Group aims to constitute a reference center to investigate the impacts of images and the importance of the imaginary in contemporary societies. As the group works with this hazy concept and seeks multiple perspectives of approximation to the phenomena it implies, it also aims to investigate the connections between images and imagination and its related theoretical domains, such as the study of “atmospheres” or “ambiences” in the horizon of a new aesthetic, of the “materialities of communication” in the field of media and visual culture theories in a decolonial context. More specifically, it aims to investigate the profitability of these theoretical tools in politics and culture within Latin America and their historical, regional, and civilizational peculiarities. Parallel to the elaboration of authors’ bibliographies and inventories, the laboratory proposes to develop new methodologies and forms of investigating these fields, taking special inspiration from alternative epistemologies and practices which are still rarely disseminated in the academic domain, such as “fictocriticism,” “hyperstition,” and “Southern epistemologies.”
Sports and Culture
FORMATION YEAR: 1997
GROUP LEADERS:
Ronaldo George Helal
ronaldo.helal@pq.cnpq.br
Hugo Rodolfo Lovisolo
hugo.lovisolo@pq.cnpq.br
Blog:
comunicacaoeesporte.wordpress.com
Link:
LINE OF RESEARCH:
– Cultural Manifestations of Modern Sports
DESCRIPTION:
The study group “Sports and Culture” was formed in 1997, with a line of research on Cultural Manifestations of Modern Sports. It aims to investigate sports in its multiple cultural dimensions, including analysis of the various media discourses surrounding it. The projects linked to this line of research deal with issues related to the construction of local and national identities and the mythical narratives of sports idols and their relations with culture.
During the last five years of its activities, the group has produced several publications: In 2001 they published “The Invention of the ‘Soccer Country.’” The book deals with how Brazil built its identity via soccer as well as the resources the media triggered in the “construction” of sports idols. Helal and Gordon presented a study at X COMPÓS, held at UNB in 2001 on “The Crisis of Brazilian Football,” the English version of which was published in Mangan and DaCosta’s 2001 book, “Sport in Latin American Society.” In 2001, Lovisolo and Soares participated in CLACSO’s meeting for the “Deporte y Sociedad” research group in Quito and were interviewed on local radio programs. Lovisolo became an editorialist of the online journal Polêmica Imagem/UERJ. Since 2002, Helal and Vieira have coordinated the study group “Sports and Politics” at ANPOCS. Helal and Soares presented their study on “Media, Soccer, and National identity” at Compós 2003, at UFPE.
That study stems from an analysis of journalistic material about the 2002 World Cup. Helal, Soares, and Salles wrote the entry for “football” in the Atlas of Sport in Brazil, org. by DaCosta. Also in 2003, Helal, Gastaldo, and Vieira participated in INTERCOM, in Belo Horizonte, with studies related to the intersection between media, identity, and sport. Soares, Helal, and Santoro presented a study on memory and soccer at ANPOCS 2003. Helal and Cataldo presented an article at INTERCOM 2004 regarding the journalistic narratives surrounding the death of Ayrton Senna. Soares, Helal, Bartholo, and Salles participated in ALAIC 2004 with an article on media and modern athletes’ identity dilemmas.
Currently, the group dedicates itself to comparatively analyzing Brazilian and Argentinian newspapers. Thus, Helal conducted a postdoctoral research at Universidad de Buenos Aires. It investigated the image of Brazilian football in the Argentinian press. In 2006, the group organized, in partnership with the UERJ Faculty of Communication and the daily Lance!, the seminar “Copa do Mundo: tendências e perspectivas” (World Cup: trends and perspectives).
Geographies of Communication
FORMATION YEAR: 2008
WEBSITE:
Link:
GROUP LEADERS:
Sonia Virginia Moreira
soniavm@gmail.com
DESCRIPTION:
The research group Geographies of Communication assembles scientific production regarding local, regional, international, and intercultural communication within the context of an information and knowledge society. In 2012, the group published its first book, available at //www.intercom.org.br/e-book/colecao-gps-3.pdf.
The group’s production includes studies on local, national, regional, and international communication; frontiers (media, digital, geographical, disciplinary), the media, and culture. Its interdisciplinary characteristic brings together researchers, in Brazil and abroad, who are interested in promoting dialogues and exchanging knowledge between the fields of Communication and Human Geography. It favors public, private, and independent media analyses (local, regional, national, and international); comparative analyses of media systems; media technology and legislation; communication and space studies, specifically those regarding local spheres, convergence, mobility, and media interactivity. The group includes researchers and students from the following institutions: Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro, Universidade Federal de Sergipe, Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul, Universidade Federal do ABC, Universidade Federal de Mato Grosso do Sul, Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Universidade de Sorocaba, University do Texas em Austin, and California State University – Long Beach.
Media and Language
FORMATION YEAR: 2021
GROUP LEADER:
Leticia Cantarela Matheus
leticia_matheus@yahoo.com.br
Links:
DESCRIPTION:
It investigates multiple languages and power relations from a broad set of methodological tools. It welcomes projects seeking to understand the power dynamics taking place in communication processes, understood as the social production of meaning. It treats verbal and non-verbal languages as actions in the world and, dialectically, social actions as communicational acts. The third axis of their research – the event –mediates the production of meaning, considering that the dispute takes place in its surroundings. The groups finds no unique empirical object since it welcomes multiple interests in medium- and long-term research. However, it has a greater affinity with studies on journalistic practices and interactions via social networks. Methodologically, the laboratory is mainly supported by Discourse Analysis and Narrative Analysis and may eventually adhere to Semiotics. Reflections on aesthetics are welcome as long as they are observed as a field of dispute.
POPMID – Reflections on Genre and Trends in Media Productions
FORMATION YEAR: 2021
GROUP LEADER:
Yuri Garcia
DESCRIPTION:
The current project has an interdisciplinary character, addressing varied themes which dialogue with massive media productions. Their investigation favors an immersion in a theoretical reference dealing with epistemological issues in the communication field and sociopolitical philosophical reflections. We favor a framing around products which reflects the mainstream scope of contemporary culture such as Hollywood cinema, comic books, television, streaming series, etc. Thus, our group focuses on conducting analyses on issues such as representativeness, social inequalities, colonialism, and other similar agendas within our media imagery.