Citizenship, culture & communication

Beyond politics, citizenship is a way of social belonging. In the 21st century, the cultural realms are reshaping with new discourses, new identities, new arts. The fast transformation of the mass media and the digital environment also created new ways of participation within networks of digital social media. This research group understands that culture – in both anthropological and industrial forms – and communication – both interpersonal and massified – play a major role for creating, recreating, and consolidating identities.
This group proposes to research how these three dimensions (citizenship, culture, communication) intertwine in providing social actors a place from where they can express their own speech. Culture and communication are powerful tools of representing social views, either collective or individual. Collective memory, public discourse, social hermeneutics are also fundamental keys to understand the intertwining of the three dimensions.
The pervasiveness of humorous discourse in the public sphere – especially in politics, social representations on the media (traditional and digital), new forms of participative and communitarian art, are some of the issues that illustrate how social actors may contribute to an active profile of citizenship through cultural and communication setups, and to which this research group will pay special attention.