During April and May, the CECS and the University of Brasilia provide the cycle of debates “The present and the future of Public Communication”. The sessions will occur via Zoom every Tuesday from 6 pm to 8 pm.
How has the performance of Public Media Services been configured in the contemporary socio-digital media ecosystem, marked by phenomena such as platformisation, the use of artificial intelligence tools and the logic of algorithms? What has been the innovation perspective adopted by Brazilian and Portuguese public media, and what are the ethical issues to be considered in integrating public broadcasters in the socio-digital media environment? At what stage is the current normative/regulatory scenario of Public Media Services in Brazil and Portugal, and how is the perspective of the Digital Services Act perceived in these two contexts? How the public media have contributed/can contribute to the fight against phenomena such as disinformation, the dissemination of fake news and hate speech and, above all, to the strengthening of democracy? How do the public media seek to foster social participation in their management, and how have the issues of funding, editorial independence and representativeness of historically marginalized social groups been addressed by public broadcasters? How are public broadcasters seeking dialogue among themselves and other public actors, such as universities?
All these questions, to some extent, elucidate that Public Media Services, both in Brazil and in Portugal, live -and resist- in a modern digital communication and information ecosystem and are impacted by all the economic and commercial logic behind this reality. Notably, far beyond providing the propagation and circulation of content in socio-digital environments and establishing new forms of production, distribution and consumption, the platforms are configured as a complex territory, with opportunities but also challenges capable of biasing editorial practices and the production of the content of public interest, in order to stress the essential universal, diverse, plural and independent character of public media, especially radio and television broadcasters of this segment of the Media.
Debating such issues from a Luso-Brazilian perspective is the main objective of the Cycle of Debates – The Present and the Future of Public Communication, promoted by the Postgraduate Programme of the Faculty of Communication of the University of Brasília (Brazil) and by the Communication and Society Research Centre of the Institute of Social Sciences of the University of Minho (Portugal).
This series is a general joint organization of the Think tank Communitas, the Observatory of Science, Communication and Culture Policies (PolObs), LaPCom – Laboratory of Communication Policies and the Observatory of Public Broadcasting in Latin America, coordinated by Elton Bruno Pinheiro, Luís António Santos, Fernando Oliveira Paulino and Madalena Oliveira.
The initiative also counts on the participation of the Chair “Public Communication for Social Justice, Human Rights and Territorial Development” (www.comunic.ar) and the partnership of FAPDF – Foundation for Research Support of the Federal District.
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