Postgraduate Program in Communication of the Federal University of Ouro Preto

INTRODUCTION

The Postgraduate Program in Communication at UFOP, Master Degree, seeks to provide theoretical, technical and applied qualification for communicators, researchers and teachers. It is proper for a longstanding academic formation, as it offers space for problematization and scientific production on knowledges and achievements from communicational field. Since it  develops studies from the scopes related to "Communication and Temporalities", it aims to provide reflection and criticism, absorbing concrete demands, understanding multiple identities (national, regional, local, etc.), as well as seeking articulation between different geographical and institutional scopes. It intends to contribute to the improvement of professionals either from their first scope or related areas, collaborating to the autonomous and emancipatory formation of researchers.

The Master's Degree aims to receive not only communication students, but graduates from various backgrounds, who have interests in research in the area of Communication and its interfaces, such as Education, Philosophy, Literature, History, Social Sciences, Architecture, Information, Museology, Tourism and others.

HISTORY

PPGCOM-UFOP is located at the Institute of Applied Social Sciences (ICSA), and it was born within the Journalism Graduation course, next to the Department of Social Sciences, Journalism and Social Work, DECSO. The undergraduate course in Journalism at UFOP was created in 2008, in the context of the expansion of higher education in the country, based on the Program of Support to Restructuring and Expansion Plans of Federal Universities (Reuni). Its installation in the advanced campus of Mariana has integrated the structure of ICSA, and recalls the university policy to consolidate the area of Applied Social Sciences, emphasizing an explicit desire of UFOP to diversify its fields of scientific and teaching activity, besides to deeply understand regional and local demands for training professionals from other fields of knowledge.

UFOP Journalism undergraduate is ranked among the 10 best courses in the country according to the Ministry of Education, and has received several students’ and professors’ awards. In 2015, the Graduation-Post-graduation in Journalism/Communication group from UFOP received Luiz Beltrão Award, granted by INTERCOM (Brazilian Society of Interdisciplinary Communication Studies), in the category of Innovative Group.

AREA OF CONCENTRATION: Communication and Temporalities

Starting from communication and temporality as constructs, it brings together lines of research which undertake a double movement: how communication, in its different manifestations, socially works and constructs meanings about time and, on another bias, how time interferes and raises forms, systems and logics of communication. The interactions and media devices, crossed by the present, past and future, or through the articulation of temporalities, call for interdisciplinary approaches in order to produce theoretical, empirical and applied knowledge about the specificity of processes and communicational experiences in contemporary society and culture. Temporal ordination, its fractures and double implications specify a particular aim to reach the objects of interest of the Program, since it understands the central role of communication in the daily life of social life.

LINES OF RESEARCH AND PROFESSORS:

Line 1 - Communication practices and social time

Processes of meaning production and the communication role in the configuration of temporality and memory. Forms to recognize and mediate time. Critical reading on tensions and discourses which circulate in communication and journalism, their emergence, solidification and ruptures. It includes research on journalistic and communication practices, and its linkage with culture, politics, experience and central issues of contemporary times.

Professors: Agnes Francine Carvalho Mariano, Cláudio Rodrigues Coração, Denise Figueiredo Barros do Prado, Frederico de Mello Brandão Tavares, Hila Bernardete Silva Rodrigues,. Gorski Brittes, Karina Gomes Barbosa, Marta Regina Maia.

Line 2 - Interactions and emergencies of communication

Interpellations of time in communicational forms and logics, affectations between media and social subjects, modes of inscription, formats and dynamics in the different uses and appropriations of media devices. It’s open for researches on the processes of circulation, languages and media changes, as well as on the relation between production and reception, interaction and networks in their social, technical and aesthetic dimensions.

Professors: Ana Carolina Lima Santos, Debora Cristina Lopez, Jan Alyne Barbosa Prado, Marcelo Freire Pereira de Souza, Nair Prata Moreira Martins, Priscila Monteiro Borges.

ACADEMIC LIFE:

The Master in Communication lasts 2 years and a  curricular semester regime. In total, each student must:

In the first year of the course: Take three mandatory subjects, being one theoretical-conceptual introductory one, one in the area of methodology, common to all students and a compulsory subject of their research line.

In the second year of the course: Be enrolled in Guidance Seminars I and II, one after the other.

Throughout the course, he/she must attend two elective subjects, one of which might be taken in another Postgraduate Program in the area or related areas;

When it is the case, perform Teaching Internship in the second year of the course.

Mandatory Disciplines:

Communication and Temporalities (1st semester)

Summary: Theories of Communication, and the synchronic and diachronic dimensions in  communicative processes. Changes and temporal interferences in experience, social mediation and media contexts in their production, reception and circulation. Subjects, languages and aesthetics of communication, and the relationship with various domains of the social and the contemporary, their conceptualizations and analysis.

Topicality and critical communication processes (Mandatory for line 1 of research)

Summary: Communication and journalistic products in everyday life. Recognition of time, memory and event. Interceptions, frames and conducts of communication in the public space. Media as vectors of experience and socialization. Structural changes in media functions. Invested critics in the tension of communication practices.

Interactions and processes of signification (Mandatory for Line 2 of research)

Summary: Communicational logics and mechanisms of meaning production. The constitution of media, its processuality and forms of articulation in social space. The affectations of time in  communicational devices: history, evolution and emergencies. Dynamics of social interaction. Relational and symbolic aspect of communication languages.

Methodology of Research in Communication (2nd semester)

Summary: Science and knowledge. Epistemology and Interdisciplinarity. Scientific production: objects, challenges and the making of a research. Theoretical-methodological questions on the construction of objects of study. Methods and techniques of research applied to the fields of Communication and Journalism. Developing the research project.

  • Dissertation Orientation

  • Orientation Seminar I (3rd semester)

  • Orientation Seminar II (4th semester)

Elective subjects:

Reading of journalistic practices

Summary: The nature of journalistic knowledge. Subjects, performance, and the unveiling of the world. The spaces of practice and the constitution of the knowledge of journalism. Endogenous and exogenous evaluations on journalistic production process. Main theoretical approaches of studies in Journalism.

Contemporary languages and aesthetics

Ementa: Perception and reason in communicative systems. Phenomenology and cognition. Modes of social, subject and time inscription in verbal and non-verbal texts. Aesthetics and the fields of writing and images. Design, communication and information. Dimensions of the sensitive, aesthetic, ethical and logical.

Narrative and Discourse in Communication

Summary: Theoretical-analytical devices of discourse and narrative and their re-readings in the field of Communication. Processes of interpretation and production of meaning. Subjects and language: social place, discursive place. Narratives, alterity and articulation of time. Strategies for the study of narrative and discourse.

Politics, cultural practices and experience

Summary: Communication as a relational space: the cultural and socio-historical dimensions. The mediation between fields and places of communication in the social domains. Social response systems, communication policies and media democratization in the public sphere. Dynamics of representation and identity processes in contemporary sociability.

Media practices in digital environment

Summary: Informational models mediated by digital technologies. Network interaction and sociability. Cultures and digital languages. New temporalities, multimedia and convergence. Systemic and relational approach to the study of computer-mediated interaction. Analysis of media practices in the digital environment

Editorial Technologies and Processes

Summary: Technological evolution of the media. Formats, logics and circularity in different supports and their co-affectations. Editorial mediation and the relationship with media content. Impact of technologies, and innovation on processes and editorial products. Interface studies.

Special Topics I, II, III and IV

Summary: A specific topic seminar aimed at updating, complementing and/or deepening of theoretical and/or methodological issues in social communication related to the Program's Concentration Area and its Research Lines.

Inquiries and information about selective and admission processes should be sent to: ppgcom@icsa.ufop.br