The Postgraduate Program in Media Studies (aka PPgEM - Programa de Pós-Graduação em Estudos da Mídia) formalizes its intention to develop academic activities of studies and research through which it proposes its area of concentration, the mediatic communication addressed in the context of its social practices and in the sphere of its production of meaning. The media communication is thus taken as an object of study according to two perspectives: one focuses on the media as a device for organizing and articulating practices in the social fields; the other considers media communication as an instance of production of meaning from manifestations of a technical-discursive nature. The theoretical and methodological foundations on which the proposal is based are linked to references from the social sciences and from language studies, insofar as these sciences respond to tensions produced by media phenomena.

From the point of view of the implementation of this area of concentration, one starts from the assumption that the object of media communication is specified in two aspects of work articulated in their singularities. In the first, the object of the investigation is the relation of the media with practices of other social fields; in the second, the object of the investigation is the media's discursive production itself. The area of concentration of this proposal adresses therefore, in the research lines below, two dimensions of social life: interaction and language.

Media Studies and Social Practices

We research the media as a power structure, instituting and organizing societal processes in the socio-cultural contexts of its scope of repercussion. In this perspective, the media acts as an articulating and structuring instance of social practices that take place through the mediation of socio-technical devices. We study specific modalities through which the media conditions and is conditioned by the modes of relationship that constitute life and social organization. We examine the central role of media communication - its actors, processes, products and their interaction strategies - in the construction of practices in other social fields. This line establishes a dialogue with analytical frameworks from other courses that highlight the organization and operation of the interactional processes based on the incidence of media communication.

Media Studies and Production of Meaning

It studies the processes of production of meaning as a result of the discursive work of the media, which takes place in the imbrication of the discourses with technical-mediatic supports. It emphasizes the uniqueness of the devices of production and interpretation, which allow the outlining of cognitive and intelligibility schemes linked to discourses and media forms. It is based on analytical frameworks that examine modalities of semantic and semiotic work, covering different genres of discourse in their manifestations of language. The specificities of the functioning of the media for the production of meaning are also investigated, including in other social fields. This line maintains the theoretical-epistemological interface with the interpretive sciences in what concerns the investigation of the specificities of the symbolic processes of the mediatic communication.

 E-Mail of the PPgEM: ppgem_ufrn@yahoo.com.br