This conference is held under the project:

 

South Atlantic Media Groups. Singularities of Lusophone Modernity

Project reference: EXPL/IVC-COM/1691/2012

 

The Project

In the last three decades, besides dismantling state intervention in the media, and the liberalisation, deregulation and marketization of the sector (Murdock and Golding, 1999:118), we have also seen increasing concentration and the transnationalisation of the forms of ownership, with the creation of large multi-sector conglomerates. These corporations have blurred the differences between national media systems (McQuail, 2003) by taking a dominant role in the production and distribution of content (Hardy, 2008), and they have led to the reduction of the heterogeneity of international media supply (Thompson, 1998).

 

Despite the clear trend towards the greater homogenization of Western media systems, as highlighted by Albarran and Chan-Olmsted (1998:15), the political, economic, geographic and cultural specificities of the media markets remain relevant. The seminal study by Dan Hallin and Paolo Mancini (2004) states precisely this, through a typing of media systems based on geocultural variables. The three proposed models simultaneously provide homogeneity among a set of countries and heterogeneity to Western media geography (2004:80-6).

 

In this project, we use the polarized pluralist model to demonstrate that this model, by resulting from a generalisation that aims to set it in opposition to the other two models established in the work of 2004, has made the specificity and uniqueness of the media system in Portugal and Brazil void, ignoring in particular the operations of media companies in the Portuguese-speaking world, were we also include Angola, as well as the centrality of those operations in network for the business development of the media groups. Thus, the project aims to fill this gap by a comprehensive and comparative analysis, in a diachronic and synchronic manner, of the economy of the media whose business and influence underpin a Lusophone network in the South Atlantic. We consider that, due to its size and economic development (particularly Brazil and Angola), and not ignoring the Anglophone hegemony in the Western world (Tunstall, 2008), the Portuguese-speaking geo-cultural space comprises a privileged area for the flourishing of transnational corporations, whose specificity deserves to be highlighted in an in-depth study.

 

This project is thus focused on analysing the Portuguese-speaking media companies of the Portugal-Brazil-Angola axis, since these are the three national markets that have shown the largest capacity to invest in the creation and acquisition of media companies aspiring to operate in the transnational Lusophone area. The research is founded on the intersection between Political Economy of the Media and Media and Democracy Studies and it intends to develop an empirical research that articulates media ownership with news production. Considering that the news and also media companies simultaneously reflect and promote a particular political culture, it is a pioneering study with an innovative component, consisting of: (1) the study of the economic groups that are the major players in the production and distribution of content in the Portugal-Brazil-Angola triangle, and (2) the comparative study of the editorial line of the media held by these groups at significant moments of the corporations’ life.

 

We intend to, based on these objectives, characterise what we understand to be the uniqueness of the media companies that operate in this geo-cultural space, which we call the Portuguese-speaking South Atlantic model. Among the peculiar characteristics of these markets we find that the biggest companies are owned by the same political-economic elites since the first decades of the 20th century. Hence, we consider that the specificity of the South Atlantic model can be explained by the contradictory characteristics of Lusophone societies. On the one hand, they are dynamic, modern and opened, and, on the other hand, static, with low mobility and difficult access to decision centers. We put as hypothesis that media groups, their expansion strategies and constraints reflect and are caused by the duplicity and the paradox nature of power in Lusophone culture.

 

 

The research that relies on the collaboration of a team in Brazil, and on James Curran as Consultant, can be classified as an Exploratory Research Project as it will contribute to creating and testing a new model for analysing Portuguese-speaking media systems. We believe that this is extremely important since it is essential for well-reasoned discussion on the impact of forms of ownership on the editorial line of media, the degree of freedom of the press and the diversity of voices in the public space (Norris, 2009; Couldry, 2010). Identifying how the different components of the media articulate as a financial business and democratic institution will contribute to a more in-depth knowledge of the political culture of the Lusophone world and also add complexity to the scientific debate on non-Anglo Saxon media and cultural systems.

 

The Team

Principal Investigator

Rita Figueiras

Rita Figueiras holds a PhD in Communication Studies at the Catholic University of Portugal (UCP). She is member of the Board of the Research Centre for Communication (CECC) and the Coordinator of the PhD program in Communication Studies at UCP, where she teaches Sociology of Communication and Political Communication at the School of Human Sciences, UCP.

 

Researcher

Nelson Ribeiro

Nelson Ribeiro holds a PhD in Media & Culture Studies. He is responsible for the scientific area of Communication Sciences at Faculty of Human Sciences  and coordinates the MA in Communication Sciences at the Catholic University of Portugal. Member of the Board of the Research Centre for Communication and Culture (CECC), he integrates the Line of Research «Media, Technology, Contexts».

 

Researcher

Afonso de Albuquerque

Afonso de Albuquerque holds a PhD in Communication and Culture from Rio de Janeiro Federal University (UFRJ). He is Professor in the Graduate Studies Program at the Fluminense Federal University (UFF) and his research is focused on political propaganda and television, and on the intersection between media and democracy.

 

Researcher

Nuno Conde

Nuno Conde is PhD Candidate in Communication Studies. He integrates the  Research Centre for Communication and Culture (CECC), within the Line of Research «Media, Technology, Contexts». He was a member of the Ad hoc Advisory Group on Public Service Media Governance (MC-S-PG), a group of experts reporting to the Steering Committee on the Media and New Communication Services (CDMC) at the Council of Europe, during the period of 2009/2012. His work focuses on media accountability, media governance, media policy and public service media.

 

Scientific Initiation Schoolarship Student

Margarida Soares Ferreira

Margarida Soares Ferreira is a Junior Researcher of the Research Center for Communication and Culture (CECC) and she is developing her work within the research line “Media, Technology and Contexts” with a FCT scholarship. She holds a Master Degree in Communication Studies at the Catholic University of Portugal (UCP), where he is presently a PhD student in Communication Studies.