About us - Comunicação e Trabalho

Communication and Work Research Center

The Communication and Work Research Centre (CPCT), coordinated by Professor Roseli Fígaro, was created in 2003 at the School of Communications and Arts of the University of São Paulo (ECA-USP) and is the result of research carried out since 1997.

Accredited by the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq) in 2004, it is made up of professors, doctoral students, master’s students and undergraduate research fellows. Based on the communication-work binomial, it seeks to understand how communication organises, constructs and transforms networks of meaning in a constantly changing world of work.

The new communication technologies are key players and occupy a prominent place in the logic of the socio-economic structure of the capitalist system. Digital media act to compress time and space in social relations. Communication and work activities are appropriated by market agents, including platform companies, whose power reorganises the world of work, professions and the discourses that circulate in society. The closure of jobs, the emergence of new professions and the reorganisation of production transform people’s lives, their ways of perceiving the world and relating to others. These problems are linked to the sphere of political and economic power and move from the simulation of dialogue to the effective pursuit of citizenship.

Communication research that addresses these concerns has shown that the world of work is a fundamental mediator in the relationship between subjects and the media. The research shows how communication relations construct meanings that are influenced by the discourses that circulate in the world of work, as well as the changes that take place there.

Our research provides data that allows us to return to the discussion about the paradigms that guide the field of communication. They have led to theoretical reflections in courses and guidance for undergraduate and postgraduate students in the stricto sensu and lato sensu programmes. They have also resulted in articles, participation in congresses, seminars and lectures, as well as contact with researchers from other Brazilian and foreign universities for co-operation and scientific updating.

Research topics of interest:

Communication relations in the world of work and productive restructuring;
Changes in the world of work of social communicators;
The subsumption of labour as a communicational process;
Datification, platformisation and digitalisation of communication and work relations;
The sensitive materialities captured in communication and labour relations;
The world of work as a space for hegemony and counter-hegemony of discourses (racist, xenophobic, sexist);
Communication and labour relations as an axis for research into inclusion and social diversity.
Information and communication technologies in the context of the ontology of social being.
Among others.