Curriculum Structure

Academic Life

The Master in Communication lasts two years and has a curricular structure composed of mandatory and elective subjects.

Students of the Master’s degree must develop and present a dissertation in a public exam. To obtain the Master’s Degree, the student must also:

I – Complete the minimum term of 18 months and maximum of 24 months.

II – Comply with a minimum of 24 credits in subjects. 12 credits must be completed in compulsory subjects and 12 credits in elective subjects.

III – Pass the Qualifying Exam within a maximum period of eighteen months from the date of initial enrollment.

IV – Prove proficiency in a foreign language for Brazilians and other Portuguese speakers (English, French or Spanish) and Portuguese for foreigners.

V – Be approved at the Public Dissertation Presentation by an examining committee.

Mandatory Subjects

Communication and Power: theoretical and epistemological perspectives (4 credits – 1st semester)

Summary: Discusses and deepens existing conceptual and epistemological issues in the relationship between society and the phenomena communication today. It works as a space for reflection around the issues that support the relationship between politics, citizenship, aesthetics and narratives. It reflects on recent and canonical theoretical propositions as a way of problematizing research on communication practices today. It inserts the researcher in the scope of the existing choices in the theories of communication and the intersection with other fields of knowledge from sociology, anthropology, philosophy, among others, to think about the multiple power relationships in the contemporary world.

Research Methodologies in Communication (4 credits – 1st semester)

Summary: The course proposes to discuss the assumptions of scientific knowledge throughout history together with epistemological aspects and their differences between conceptual framework, methods, techniques and procedures for collecting and analyzing data in the projects under development in the Master. The process of debate and improvement of projects intends to be carried out in three moments: (I) deepening of epistemological issues, development, history and scientific paradigms in the theoretical-methodological relations of research in the field of communication; (II) the choices and assumptions of the research regarding techniques and approaches in quantitative and / or qualitative investigations; (III) the discussion about research projects in development.

Research Seminar (4 credits – 2st semester)

Summary: The course is a space for debate and joint contributions between researchers in their respective dissertation projects based on the discussions initiated in the discipline of Communication Research Methodologies. It is understood that the importance of group relationships in the development of investigations stems from the process of dialogue between researchers as a result of the heterogeneity that exists in Communication. It assists in the development of dissertations, addressing epistemological and methodological choices and their articulation with subjects and objects, in order to improve research projects. The discipline promotes a seminar open to the public in which graduate students have the opportunity to present their research projects enhanced with the discussions held during the course.

Elective Subjects

Citizenship and Media Representations (4 credits)

Summary: Study of conceptual relations between communication, media and citizenship. Social representations, mediation and participation. Cultural and communicational processes of contestation and resistance. Communication and social movements. The media as an instrument to represent identities. Media representations and class, ethnic-racial and gender relations. Youth, childhood and media. The communicational process as political-pedagogical praxis. Critical reading of the media and citizenship. It is proposed to think about these issues through an epistemic vision that takes communication as a political arena, which articulates social confrontations, production of meanings and power relations.

Communication, Media and Politics (4 credits)

Summary: It studies the relationship between communication, power and democracy in the context of current mediatized societies. It comprises the complex phenomena derived from the intersection between the political, media and judicial fields, their practices, processes and narratives. It studies the changes in the public sphere and public opinion. It analyzes the influence of political theories in understanding the centrality of communication in the current mediatization logics of politics and democracy. The space of politics in the media. Public sphere and political scandal. The meanings built on political activity in contemporary times. The mediatization of justice. Politics in the face of digital media. Communication and civil society. Deliberation and digital democracy. New mediation regimes. Local and regional geographies as a space for the expression of media power and its relationship with political power.

Communication and Gender Inequalities (4 credits)

Summary: Gender diversity and citizenship. Gender inequalities and power struggles in the communicational field. Construction of stereotypes in the communicative process. Heteronormativity in the communicative and academic contexts. Gender discussions based on black feminisms and the southern hemisphere. Gender construction and performance. Gender and processes of subjectification. Communication research based on feminist epistemologies. The place of speech and articulations between philosophy and communication. Intersectionality, consubstantiality and the destabilization of the communicative field in the face of the combination of oppression that constitutes the subjects.

Environmental Communication, Sustainability and Power (4 credits)

Summary: Enables a holistic view on the complexity of the environment in contemporary society, with reflections on the production and analysis of environmental communication in different media and eco-advertising actions, as well as thinking about environmental communication in an engaged, conscious and transformative way of paradigms , particularly in regional contexts marked by conflicts of power in the environmental area.

Media devices and power relations (4 credits)

Summary: Investigates different modes of media production, distribution and diffusion, such as the cinematographic and television industries, independent and community productions, cinematheques and film clubs, artistic and journalistic collectives, cultural organizations, experimental movements, among other institutions and arrangements technological and sociocultural as devices of control, regulation, subversion and resistance that tension power relations in cultural, artistic and media fields.

Aesthetics, Narrative and Discourse (4 credits)

Summary: It discusses approaches, concepts and theories aimed at the aesthetic and narrative investigation of image and / or sound in their diverse manifestations in photography, cinema, television, radio, video and contemporary media. Based on a contextualized theoretical apparatus, the discipline investigates works of diverse nature, framing them in their historical contexts and seeking to understand their discourses and regimes of meaning. Topics relevant to the scope of the discipline are: specificities of audiovisual media and processes, poetics and techniques of sound and visual composition, aesthetics and styles, narrative configurations, intertextualities and intermidialities, narrative arrangements in the culture of convergence and spectatorial regimes.

Narratives in dispute in the audiovisual (4 credits)

Summary: The course addresses content relevant to contemporary debates on media production in its aesthetic, narrative, political, cultural, institutional, identity and territorial aspects. Enables flexibility and updating of the curriculum, through the incorporation of new research by the faculty and the contribution of visiting professors and external collaborators to the Master, stimulating reflections on issues not covered by other disciplines offered.

Cinema and Philosophy: audiovisual perspectives and activism (4 credits)

Summary: Study cinema and philosophy: apprehensions about the junctions / disjunctions of the image-sound-text in filmic scriptures in their different cultural contexts; assembly processes and signification systems. Audiovisual, Politics and Power: activism, consumption and innovation. Experiments of scriptures in the contemporary: case studies in Cinematographic, Audiovisual and Scientific Journalism.

Special Topics in Communication I (2 credits)

Summary: Addresses content relevant to contemporary debates on communication processes related to politics, citizenship and democracy. Enables flexibility and updating of the curriculum, through the incorporation of new research by the faculty and the contribution of visiting professors and external collaborators to the program, stimulating reflections on issues not covered by other disciplines offered by Line 1 “Politics and Citizenship”.

Special Topics in Communication II (2 credits)

Summary: Addresses content relevant to contemporary debates about media production in its aesthetic, narrative, political, cultural, institutional, identity and territorial aspects. Enables flexibility and updating of the curriculum, through the incorporation of new research by the faculty and the contribution of visiting professors and external collaborators to the program, stimulating reflections on issues not covered by other disciplines offered.