O MetDigi - Metodologias de Pesquisa Digital é um projeto desenvolvido no âmbito das atividades de investigação do MediaLab, laboratório integrado no Centro de Investigação e Estudos em Sociologia (CIES-Iscte) do Iscte - Instituto Universitário de Lisboa. O seu principal objetivo é o estudo de plataformas digitais (redes sociais, aplicações móveis, motores de pesquisa) e de fenómenos sociais que acontecem e se desenvolvem nas mesmas. O ambiente online é o contexto de investigação e as dinâmicas inerentes o seu objeto de estudo. Desinformação, relacionamentos, saúde, política, recomendações, movimentos online, são alguns exemplos de temas já investigados. Fá-lo desde uma abordagem metodológica qualitativa e quantitativa, numa ótica dos métodos digitais. Recorre a ferramentas digitais para recolher dados, ordená-los, classificá-los e visualizá-los de forma a enquadrá-los de acordo com dinâmicas culturais e sociais. Reflete sobre como as plataformas digitais moldam tais dinâmicas e como são moldadas pelos utilizadores. O MetDigi - Metodologias de Pesquisa Digital convida estudantes e investigadores, que pretendam aprender sobre métodos digitais e recorrer aos mesmos para estudar fenómenos online, para ficarem atentos aos resultados de investigação e oferta letiva no âmbito. Equipa do projeto: Gustavo CardosoRita Sepúlveda José Moreno Inês Narciso Nuno Palma        

The EUMEPLAT project aims at analyzing the role of media platforms in fostering or dismantling European identity. The assumption we will draw on is that European dimension has rarely been dominant in media history. In most cases – i.e., movie – market shares are mainly divided among national productions and importations from the most influential country. In broadcasting both regional and national patterns emerge, with properly European exchanges being the exception more than the rule. Web platforms are usually owned by US companies, with a new threat appearing in our media landscape. We will focus on the “platformization” process, as the rise of new closed Web architectures, so as to inquire its positive and negative externalities, functional and dis-functional consequences. Positive externalities are beneficial to society at large, in a way that explains the overall ambition of the project. Detecting the insurgence of negative effects is a fundamental duty for scholars and policy-makers, as externalities of both kinds tend to reinforce themselves, giving rise to positive loop feedbacks and critical vicious circles. Negative externalities include misinformation, toxic debate, exclusion of independent voices; positive externalities encompass European co-productions, or practices able to bring people out of the information bubble. For this purpose, we will run a multidisciplinary analysis of platformization in three fields: news, video sharing, media representations, with the final goal to offer a theoretical synthesis. The research question is whether or not new platforms – YouTube, Netflix, NewsFeed - are making European culture more European, based on indicators related to production, consumption and representation. Patterns will be detected by comparing national, regional and European and level. Advanced methods will be applied for data analysis, so as to provide guidelines for decision-makers (i.e., fake news prevention; best practices in co-productions).

The Covid Check project aims to help optimize official communication and clarify the main issues of the Portuguese about the pandemic, through the creation of a public knowledge network that will be available through a specific website. In this way it can contribute to the optimization of the effective results of communication protocols between health entities and their stakeholders, at internal level, and journalists and citizens, at external level. The expected results are: the promotion of effective and clear messages among the population; contribute to the identification of disinformation that may be harmful to public health; and encourage society to search for reliable sources. To achieve this: entities must improve their communication based on research results; the media must create more focused messages; citizens must understand the practices and behaviours desired to resolve the pandemic. The project is part of the research on desinformation on course in the MediaLab_Iscte.

The main focus of the project is to monitor propaganda and disinformation activities on online social media networks with the objectives of mobilisation, polarisation and political destabilisation in Portugal, regardless of the origin of these activities. Throughout the project period, which corresponds to a moment of great political activity in Portugal, marked by three elections (European, Regional - Madeira and Legislative), an attempt was made to identify and analyse organised movements, political party’s related or not, of propaganda and disinformation with the aim of influencing the informed participation of citizens in the elections. Social network analysis methodologies and tools (i.e. Crimson Hexagon, Netvizz, Google Trends, etc.) will be used to identify, transversally and longitudinally, messages and information dissemination networks with malicious objectives and their international relationships, with special attention to the relations between populist movements and their sharing of messages of misinformation ("fake news"). The final objective is to identify messages, protagonists and channels of disinformation that seek to influence political discourse through the main public online social media networks (Facebook, Twitter and Youtube). The project also aims to contribute to the warning and prevention of the dissemination of malicious propaganda, collaborating with journalistic projects to develop and disseminate the results of research.  Regarding WhatsApp, as it involves the integration of public access groups via an access link, it is expected to replicate the methodology used by Resende et al (2019) that addressed the same phenomenon in Brazilian elections. The anonymization of the personal data of the participants of the groups (phone number, photo and other information associated with the profile) will be made in the collection process, thus not integrating the analysis of the results. This anonymisation of the data in the collection process...