Banca de DEFESA: IVO HENRIQUE FRANÇA DE ANDRADE DANTAS CAVALCANTI

PORTALS, PUBLIC SPHERE AND FRAGMENTATION: UOL and Globo.com coverage in times of bubble filters and echo chambers

Public Sphere. Webjournalism. Filter bubbles. Portals. Polarization.

This thesis analyzes the role played by portals as informational filters and mediators of public debate. To do so, it establishes a discussion about the evolution of the web within a sociotechnical context divided into two predominant phases: web 1.0 and web 2.0. With the growing horizontalization of communications symbolized by the potential of mass selfcommunication, we seek to deepen the knowledge about the place occupied by portals in the digital ecosystem. With an increasingly fragmented Public Sphere and journalistic authority based on the outmoded positivist notion of objectivity in question, deepening the understanding of how information flows work in the digital environment and the foundations on which journalism should be the mediator of public debate becomes fundamental. Thus, the present work has an empirical-theoretical case study of the 2018’s presidential elections in Brazil to understand the role played by the homepages as filters and to analyze the diversity of contents and frameworks offered by the coverage of the portals O Globo.com and UOL. In a scenario that poses an excess of information and a growing discussion about the bubbles generated by algorithms, the mediation carried out by journalism can present answers to a better democratic exercise.