Ivo Neto: new PhD in Communication Sciences

The doctoral exams in Communication Sciences by Ivo Neto were held on March 6 (2:00 p.m.), in the ICS (Social Sciences Institute) Sala de Atos of the University of Minho, in Braga. The thesis is supervised by Felisbela Lopes and Josef Straubhaar (University do Texas, Austin), and is entitled “The informative multiplatforms: the challenges that social media networks and mobile peripherals arise in the field of journalism”.

Social media networks and mobile information platforms, such as smartphones and tablets, play an increasingly important role in how citizens access to information and news. Stripped of any physical or temporal space, the news arrives anywhere, anytime and in any format. Contributing to this reality is the development of mobile Internet, which allows us to have access to the network anywhere at truly fast speeds. In this context the new PhD stresses that it is important to understand how convergence in changing the media environment. On the one hand, the way information content is produced in newsrooms and, on the other hand, its own distribution.

By analyzing the vertical axis of the process of convergence, relate with the work of journalists, Ivo Neto intended to understand the behavior of these agents, within the newsrooms, in the face of new technological advances: As we look at the horizontal axis, closer to the strategies of multimedia distribution, we will consider the profile of the contents and the way they adjust to a new reality”. Another element that deserves the investigator attention is related to the capacity of audiences to take a more active role in the information process, in particular “on how citizens ‘participation can influence the media environment and how journalists’ activity is taken into account as they seek to reassert their role in society”.

This work results from the PhD project “4G Information: The challenges that mobile technologies pose in the field of journalism”, which received funding from the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology. It also lives on the inspiration received through the participation of the research project “Television Information and Citizenship: The challenges of the digital public sphere”.

The panel of examiners were chaired by Helena Sousa president of the ICS, and was composed of the following members:
– Moisés Martins (Full Professor at UMinho’s Communication Sciences Department- Institute of Social Sciences, and CECS investigator);
– Gustavo Cardoso (Full Professor at Department of Sociology, School of Sociology and Public Policy, ISCTE-Universitary Institut of Lisbon);
– Felisbela Lopes (Senior Lecturer with Habilitaion at UMinho’s Communication Sciences Department- Institute of Social Sciences, and CECS investigator);
– José Manuel Pereira Azevedo (Senior Lecturer at University of Porto, Department of Sociology, Faculty of Letters);
– Luís Miguel Loureiro (Lecturer at Faculty of Communication, Architecture, Arts and Technologies of the Lusófona University of Porto);
– Alberto Sá (Lecturer at UMinho’s Communication Sciences Department- Institute of Social Sciences, and CECS investigator)

Text: Vítor de Sousa
Photos: Marta Barbosa