Papers by Marcelo C Fontoura
Brazilian Creative Industries Journal, 2022
Pablo Boczkowski, professor at Northwestern University, has an influential career in Journalism S... more Pablo Boczkowski, professor at Northwestern University, has an influential career in Journalism Studies. In his first book, Digitizing the News, Boczkowski has described the early efforts of newsrooms to deal with digital media. His latest book, Abundance, is based on 158 interviews with media consumers in Argentina and analyzes how they establish routines and strategies over media. In this interview, Boczkowski discusses his legacy, the challenges that a new information environment poses to classic theories, and his focus on the research of audiences.
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Brazilian Creative Industries Journal, 2022
Pablo Boczkowski, professor at Northwestern University, has an influential career in Journalism S... more Pablo Boczkowski, professor at Northwestern University, has an influential career in Journalism Studies. In his first book, Digitizing the News, Boczkowski has described the early efforts of newsrooms to deal with digital media. His latest book, Abundance, is based on 158 interviews with media consumers in Argentina and analyzes how they establish routines and strategies over media. In this interview, Boczkowski discusses his legacy, the challenges that a new information environment poses to classic theories, and his focus on the research of audiences.
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Ethical Space: The International Journal of Communication Ethics, 2021
This paper addresses the relation between news deserts and ethics in the ecosystem of Brazilian n... more This paper addresses the relation between news deserts and ethics in the ecosystem of Brazilian news. For that, we first analyse specific historical factors of Brazilian journalism in terms of ethics, employing ideas from Bucci (2000), Seligman (2009) and Christofoletti (2018). The research is done empirically by a description and analysis of the Brazilian News Atlas, a crowdsourcing, non-profit initiative designed to map local journalism initiatives and news deserts in Brazil. The paper describes the latest data from the Atlas about news deserts, as well as complementary research from the project, to better understand the limitations and challenges to local outlets. We conclude that news deserts are endemic in Brazil and while a recent increase in digital outlets may change this scenario, the over-reliance on advertising as a source of revenue poses challenges to a journalism ecosystem already historically damaged by ethical issues.
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Journalism Practice, 2021
This paper examines the expansion of journalism boundaries and explores a new type of company in ... more This paper examines the expansion of journalism boundaries and explores a new type of company in the field. For that, the case of Hearken is taken as an emerging category of enterprise in journalism related to interloper media [Eldridge 2014. “Boundary Maintenance and Interloper Media Reaction: Differentiating Between Journalism’s Discursive Enforcement Processes.” Journalism Studies 15 (1): 1–16; Eldridge 2017. Online Journalism from the Periphery: Interloper Media and the Journalistic Field. Routledge], which does not produce content, but still influences the field. The investigation addresses the following research questions: RQ1: What is the nature of Hearken as a company connected to journalism?; RQ2: How do its workers contrast their skills and experiences with journalism?; RQ3: what does this mean for the ecosystem of post-industrial journalism? A participant observation was conducted along with staff interviews. Hearken provides a new model for a journalistic company, which is not involved with content directly, organizes itself differently, but seeks to affect journalism and its ecosystem. It evidences the expansion of the skillsets related to journalism, unveiling different career paths and conceptualizations. Finally, Hearken and its employees seem to embody a journalism definition based on impact, not on method.
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Dígitos - Revista de Comunicación Digital, 2019
The expansion of an ubiquitous and urgent environment of information has been transforming the dy... more The expansion of an ubiquitous and urgent environment of information has been transforming the dynamics inherent to journalism. Social networks, apps and algorithms are just a few of the elements which shift the ways of production and consumption of journalistic content. More recently, push messages have contributed to accelerate the process of accessing the news. In this article, our purpose is to analyze the push messages sent by the news startup Circa News throughout 2013, 2014 and 2015, taking into consideration which areas were most addressed. We concluded that there was an overall focus on world news, bringing into question news criteria for mobile services in a globalized and connected world.
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The present work investigates the work of BBC News Labs, the innovation lab in journalism of the ... more The present work investigates the work of BBC News Labs, the innovation lab in journalism of the BBC. Applying bibliography regarding the concept of media labs and the digitization of public TV, we intend to understand how the experimentation carried out in the lab relates to principles of public TV, mainly concerning the incentive to compete. It was observed that the projects of the laboratory can be connected with a broader principle of open innovation in journalism. It is argued that the encouragement of this type of structure in public communication is an important measure to encourage quality journalism.
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Teknokultura, 2017
Abstract. The demand for journalists to understand technology and embrace it as a skill emerged a... more Abstract. The demand for journalists to understand technology and embrace it as a skill emerged along with the evolution of digital media (Cairo, 2012; Knaflic, 2015). Hence journalism schools have been adapting their curriculum to include those abilities in their classrooms (Broussard, 2015). In this paper, we offer a case study of one such approach at PUCRS University in Brazil, where, since 2011, students have been challenged to make a journalistic app with the Android AppInventor platform in class. This paper addresses this experience and the perception of journalism and media students of PUCRS in Brazil. It is perceived that allying computation and journalism makes professionals think not only about the development itself, but on the packaging of information and distribution of content, two fundamental logics today. However, results also show that the tension between journalism and coding appears to be an ongoing discussion. That happens in a context where the media marketplace perhaps hasn't figured out how to embrace journalists with coding comprehension to take advantage of it.
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Brazilian Journalism Research, Jun 30, 2012
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This paper explores public data apps in Brazil: digital programs created from government database... more This paper explores public data apps in Brazil: digital programs created from government databases, intersecting transparency and online participation, especially the work of hackers. We aimed to understand the motivations that lead to the involvement in this area by exploring the underlying logic in their participations and a better understanding of their contributions in the Brazilian context. Through semi- structured interviews with seven app developers, it was created four different profiles. We conclude that the work of open data hackers in Brazil is not univocal, and responds to different logics, at this phenomenon’s early stage in Brazil.
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Neste artigo, exploram-se as semelhanças e diferenças entre os aplicativos digitais de dados pu... more Neste artigo, exploram-se as semelhanças e diferenças entre os aplicativos digitais de dados públicos e produções de mídia cidadã. Baseando-se na ideia de cidadania de Mouffe e Rodriguez, bem como no resgate da noção de mídia cidadã e mídia participativa de diferentes autores, estabeleceram-se critérios qualitativos que foram aplicados a uma amostragem de 17 aplicativos brasileiros, oriundos de competições de dados abertos promovidas por governos. A contraposição dos critérios (relacionados ao caráter conversacional, contextualização/comentário da informação, monetização, âmbito dos aplicativos, etc.) demonstra uma adoção parcial, o que traz diferenças quanto à relação dos dois fenômenos. Embora possuam formatações diferentes, ambos envolvem lógicas subjacentes próximas. Esta é uma pesquisa exploratória, com o objetivo de contribuir para os estudos de hacking de dados abertos no Brasil.
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This article analyzes the New York Times Innovation Report, an internal document reporting the di... more This article analyzes the New York Times Innovation Report, an internal document reporting the digital challenges of the US newspaper. Based on literature on the state and history of digital journalism, we work with the hypothesis that some adversities reported by the newspaper were already described by academia through research. In this way, we seek to find the historical background of the crisis in journalism, comparing them to its current situation and the report. More partnerships with universities are suggested in order to advance innovation in journalism.
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We undertook the present study, from a report of research trajectory of GrupCiber and some of his... more We undertook the present study, from a report of research trajectory of GrupCiber and some of his academic productions, understand a little more about the application of theoretical and methodological bias of ethnography in studies of internet. We seek evidence the contemporary context full of new forms of mediated cyber socialites and indicated also the advancing of application of ethnography in recent internet researches in the Brazilian context
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Transmedia communication is used mainly in fiction, but also in journalism. This paper analyzes t... more Transmedia communication is used mainly in fiction, but also in journalism. This paper analyzes the informational synergy of transmedia in the news field. Through a conceptual digression, we discuss the word transmedia, as defined by Jenkins (2006), cross-media and multimedia, explaining the differences between all those concepts – sometimes treated by some authors as synonyms, although they are not. The ideas are revisited and verified through the study of Inside Disaster, a Canadian documentary about the 2010 Haitian earthquake that offers news by means of game, hypertext and video. Above all, we propose a reflection on the implications of the transmedia experience applied to journalism, a look at transmedia communication thinking not only about technology, but searching for a cultural and social interpretation, in a cultural perspective of the study of technology and journalism.
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The paper shows results of an analysis about Spot.Us, a news
crowdfunding website, ran in the sec... more The paper shows results of an analysis about Spot.Us, a news
crowdfunding website, ran in the second half of 2010. It was a
comparison between the proportions of different subjects
appearing on Spot.Us and the same kind of data from of the
traditional american press. There are quantitative differences
between the subjects on Spot.Us' coverage and that of the
american newspapers. Participatory webjournalism can be seen
as a way pluralizing the journalistic coverage, as in the template
proposed by Gans
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Books by Marcelo C Fontoura
In the first decade of the millenium, the press has been undergoing extensive economic crises, wh... more In the first decade of the millenium, the press has been undergoing extensive economic crises, which affect the quality of the journalism practiced. The audience of all media, except the Internet, has been falling, or at best, remaining stable after years of sharp decline in the United States. On the other hand, advertising money has not followed the migration from traditional media to the Internet, so that newspapers, magazines, radio and television are losing revenue. The economic crisis has been adding to long-term structural problems of journalism. Structural factors for the declining quality of journalism are the cost cuts in newsrooms, shrinking audiences, financial losses that force companies to rebalance budgets, and loss of credibility, since the audiences are increasingly suspicious of news and criticize both the methods used by reporters, and insufficient attention to the public interest. A possible solution to the woes that plague journalism was suggested by Gans (2003): plural points of view represented in the news, creating what the author calls "multiperspectival news". Although proposed in the 1970s, the multiperspectival news approach was not embraced by news organizations in the last four decades. Today, collaborative funding practices known as crowdfunding, a process through which individuals and organizations donate small amounts of money for a specific cause, seem to offer a possible way for implementing some of the characteristics of multiperspectival news. As Aitamurto (2011) argues, reader donations create a new sense of responsibility from the journalists to the audience. In the United States, one of the best-known crowdfunding projects in journalism is the grassroots journalism initiative Spot.Us, the object of analysis of this paper. In order to understand if crowdfunding can be a means of pluralization of the news as proposed by Gans, we performed a content analysis of materials published on Spot.us between October 2008 and August 2010. The frequency of themes covered by the news on Spot.us was compared to the frequency of themes by American newspaper and magazine media, based on data presented in The State of the News Media 2011 report (PEW, 2011) and data from the Readership Institute (LYNCH and PEER, 2002). The comparison suggests that news consumers adopt crowdfunding as a way to complement the traditional news media, donating to journalistic pitches that fill gaps in the "Big Media" coverage of topics such as the environment, public services, social issues and education.
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O jornalismo para dispositivos móveis adapta-se aos no- vos cenários tecnológicos e culturais. No... more O jornalismo para dispositivos móveis adapta-se aos no- vos cenários tecnológicos e culturais. Novos aparelhos provocam novas formas de visualização e acesso ao con- teúdo noticioso, com particularidades que acabam por moldar a forma como uma notícia será acessada pelo público. Este artigo apresenta uma classi cação dos caminhos utilizados no jornalismo móvel ubíquo para assim re etir sobre a in uência das mudanças tecno- lógicas na apresentação das informações. Para tanto, é realizado um resgate histórico de possibilidades, com discussão sobre o impacto de tais características para a pro ssão. Desta forma, é possível observar como o jor- nalismo neste cenário não apenas indica caminhos, mas também é in uenciado por outros aplicativos e costu- mes da comunicação para dispositivos móveis.
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Conference Presentations by Marcelo C Fontoura
Anais do 19º Encontro Nacional de Pesquisadores em Jornalismo, 2021
Este artigo analisa o trabalho de uma empresa que atua nas fronteiras jornalísticas. Em uma persp... more Este artigo analisa o trabalho de uma empresa que atua nas fronteiras jornalísticas. Em uma perspectiva de jornalismo em fluxo e mutante (DEUZE e WITSCHGE, 2020), com novas funções e prioridades, considera-se que a definição de jornalismo não é homogênea (FIDALGO, 2019). Optou-se por estudar a Hearken, consultoria que promove um modelo de "jornalismo guiado pelo público". Por meio de uma observação na empresa e entrevistas com a equipe, se identificou que a Hearken possui características de jornalismo pioneiro e interloper, necessitando uma nova nomenclatura: interpioneiro. Este estudo contribui para ajudar a encontrar novas acepções do trabalho jornalístico.
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ECREA Journalism Studies Conference 2019 - Abstracts, 2019
This paper proposes an analysis of the expansion of boundaries of journalism as a pr... more This paper proposes an analysis of the expansion of boundaries of journalism as a professional field. With the migration to digital platforms, journalism faces new challenges of several natures, and current discussions on the very nature of the profession and its practices abound (Ryfe, 2012). Thus, we propose that one important aspect to understand the transformation of digital journalism is looking at the relation the profession establishes with other fields.Professions pass through several dynamics of change, always revolving around tasks and abstract knowledge (Abbott, 1988). Professions, then, build boundaries around itself, to assert their autonomy. In the case of journalism, those boundaries are being rearranged (Carlson and Lewis, 2015) with digital media. Additionally, we consider the current scenario of journalism with the principles of Deuze and Witschge (2016; 2018), especially that the profession and its practices need to be understood as more beta and, therefore, one must move away from an essentialist definition of journalism.This paper examines the expansion of journalism’s boundaries (Carlson, 2015) through the schedules of Online News Association Congresses. The ONA National Congress, organized by the homonymous organization, is one of the most relevant professional gatheringsof journalists in the United States. With diverse offerings of lectures and sessions in their programs, the schedule of the annual ONA Congress is a viable way to explore how digital journalism involves not only content practices, but skills related to other field areas, in what we describe as a professional convergence, and the expansion of boundaries. We analyze the schedules of the ONA conferences of 2018, 2017 and 2016, dividing them in the categories business/monetization, technology/data, design/audience, journalistic content, and others. That enables an examination of the current state of newswork, in connection to our research questions. Understanding how one of the main events of the area deals with the skills for a journalist in the digital age motivates new reflections on what a journalist does currently, as well as on what journalism is, with new tasks being increasingly common. There are also consequences for journalism education, that can be rethought when in relation to those new boundaries.This study is part of an ongoing PhD thesis, which will explore the given premises of interdisciplinarity in journalism’s boundaries, highlighting the cases of companies and other news initiatives imbued with this sense of complexity and professional convergence.
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Anais da Intercom, 2012
A participação do público na mídia e nas notícias aparece de diversas maneiras. Uma delas deságua... more A participação do público na mídia e nas notícias aparece de diversas maneiras. Uma delas deságua em um novo modelo produtivo, o do financiamento coletivo, que, quando aplicado ao jornalismo, traz diversas consequências práticas e teóricas. Neste estudo, analisamos os projetos de jornalismo colocados em prática através do Catarse, plataforma brasileira de financiamento coletivo, colocando o objeto à luz da teoria do newsmaking. Nossa intenção é compreender este fenômeno na sua relação com seu contexto sociocultural, relacionando-o com a teoria do newsmaking e, por fim, abrangendo a relação entre o deslocamento da rotina produtiva do jornalismo e as teorias existentes.
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MIT8, 2013
This study proposes an analysis of technological appropriation in a convergent perspective. We ex... more This study proposes an analysis of technological appropriation in a convergent perspective. We explore the Brazilian digital apps scene, which are developed by citizens using public databases provided by the government. We seek to comprehend the way in which these examples relate to the citizen media and the Brazilian context, and how they demonstrate the audience interaction in the search, propagation and recombination of information.
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Uploads
Papers by Marcelo C Fontoura
crowdfunding website, ran in the second half of 2010. It was a
comparison between the proportions of different subjects
appearing on Spot.Us and the same kind of data from of the
traditional american press. There are quantitative differences
between the subjects on Spot.Us' coverage and that of the
american newspapers. Participatory webjournalism can be seen
as a way pluralizing the journalistic coverage, as in the template
proposed by Gans
Books by Marcelo C Fontoura
Conference Presentations by Marcelo C Fontoura
crowdfunding website, ran in the second half of 2010. It was a
comparison between the proportions of different subjects
appearing on Spot.Us and the same kind of data from of the
traditional american press. There are quantitative differences
between the subjects on Spot.Us' coverage and that of the
american newspapers. Participatory webjournalism can be seen
as a way pluralizing the journalistic coverage, as in the template
proposed by Gans