Information and Persuasion in the Web

The research group of “Information and persuasion" aims to study the multiple ways in which, in several areas, information and persuasion play a relevant role. More specifically, the group intends to study, reflect upon and analyse:

• The emergent ways of information and communication specific of the Internet;
• The new challenges posed in several areas of discourse, ethics and professional deontology as well as the reader’s role in interactive emergent media, such as the online newspapers;
• Online materials as ubiquitous and permanent form of information.
• The specificities of online journalism, specially its particular language (multimedia and web journalism) and the participatory dimension of online journalism
• The journalism for mobile-phones as the seventh mass medium;
• The so-called “rhetoric online”, i.e, the way the means of persuasion of the classic rhetoric are adapted to/by the several forms of communication on the web; the political communication and propaganda, namely the one parties as well as citizens make by means of the so-called web 2.0;
• The several persuasive aspects of contemporary commercial advertising;
• The uses of explicit and “hidden persuasion” in the fields of public relations and lobbying;
• The relationship between, on one hand, advertising and propaganda and, on the other, journalism and the effects that the former has upon the latter.