Seminar Discusses the Impacts of Media Transformations on Society
Traditional mass media – e.g., television, radio, cinema and the press – provide collective communication experiences. The computer, through the Internet, provides an individualized experience, fragmenting not only the platform but also the direction of communication (i.e., where the message comes from and where it goes). Thus, it fragments the very experience of communication, which becomes not a collective, but individual and personal sentiment.
“What kind of informative environment would we have in this totally fragmented scenario? What kind of impact can this have on information mediation and on public debate? How will democratic societies be impacted by this trend? And what can happen to the business models that support professional journalism?”
These are some questions raised by political scientist José Álvaro Moisés, coordinator of IEA’s Quality of Democracy Research Group and USP’s Public Policies Research Center (NUPPS), organizers of the symposium Transformations and Fragmentation of the Structures of Traditional Media, with journalist Ricardo Gandour, content director of the Estado Group.
The debate will take place on November 25, from 10 am to 12 pm, at the IEA’s Events Room, with commentary by political scientist Marco Aurélio Nogueira, professor at São Paulo State University (UNESP), Araraquara campus, and by social scientist Marco Antônio Carvalho Teixeira, from EAESP-FGV (São Paulo School of Business Administration of the Getúlio Vargas Foundation).
The event will be broadcast live on the web.
The new digital world is transforming not only the form and the content of information, but also the production processes of communication and journalism, says Moisés. “The traditional organization of newsrooms may be waning, giving rise to scattered communication initiatives, such as blogs, groups, nuclei and other structures deemed alternative until recently,” in his view.
The speaker
Ricardo Gandour graduated in Journalism from Casper Líbero and in Civil Engineering from USP’s São Carlos School of Engineering (EESC). He has worked in several newsrooms of the mainstream press, including Folha de S. Paulo, Editora Globo and Diário de S. Paulo, before becoming content director of the Estado Group.
He has remained associated with academic life and has worked in prestigious schools of communications, including USP’s School of Communications and Arts (ECA), Casper Líbero and Escola Superior de Propaganda e Marketing (ESPM).
Recently, Gandour accepted an invitation by dean Ernest Sotomayor and will become a Visiting Research Fellow at Columbia University’s School of Journalism, taking leave from the Estado Group. At Columbia University, from January to June 2016, he will carry out a research project on the risks for democracy of the fragmentation of the press.