Permanent Professor
Senior Lecturer at Fluminense Federal University’s Department of Social Communication where she teaches at both the undergraduate level (Social Communication bachelor’s course) and postgraduate level (Master’s in Media and Everyday Life). She researches advertising and marketing ethics, and critical studies in mass communication, cultural industry and consumption. Her research project is entitled Media Production and Reception and Consumer Society from an Ethical Perspective. Ana Paula has earned a Ph.D. in Social Psychology from UERJ (2009) and carried out part of her doctoral studies in Madrid, Spain (2008), sponsored by a PDEE/CAPES grant. She has a Master’s in Social Communication from UERJ (2004), is a specialist in Managerial Marketing from UFPR (2001), and has a Bachelor’s degree in Communication – Advertising from UFPR (1998). She is the coordinator of the research group Ethics in Consumer Society (ESC – Ética na Sociedade de Consumo – http://dgp.cnpq.br/dgp/espelhogrupo/5511076745730089) and the social outreach project Contacts: (re)constructing Advertising (Contatos: (re)construindo a Publicidade). She also collaborates with UFRJ’s outreach project Obs.: Observing Expanded Advertising (Obs.: Observatório da Publicidade Expandida), and is a member of PPGMC’s Lapa – Applied Research Lab. Ana Paula has worked at several advertising agencies as copywriter and as marketing and communication professional for several industries, such as in hospitals. She has worked as a higher education lecturer in Rio de Janeiro since 2002.
Research Projects
“Social” advertising and conscious consumption
Description: The main objective of this research project is to understand the ways in which advertising campaigns with a social appeal (commercial ads of various products which take up social causes) might not be aiding a more conscious form of consumption, consisting of a deceitful persuasive strategy, and the ways in which such advertising can be effectively perceived as socially responsible advertising. In order to do this, we investigate the ways in which these ads are received by consumers. The literature review draws from the following areas: psychology and psychoanalysis (focusing on psychology, consumer behavior, and emotion in human behavior); persuasion and rhetoric in advertising, psychology, sociology and philosophy; theories of conscious consumerism, corporate social responsibility, and social marketing. We seek to investigate the relationships between emotion, sensationalism, and critical sense, social responsibility and social marketing, criteria and concepts that revolve around what we understand by conscious consumption, and, finally, understanding the instances in which advertising’s apparent social motives might represent instances of opportunism. The empirical data is being collected on three phases: 1) the selection and analysis (content and discourse analysis) of advertising campaigns with a social appeal that had a significant degree of visibility in the media (such as two O Boticário campaigns from 2015 and 2016, which portrayed divorced women and gay couples); an investigation about the extent to which companies respect (or disrespect) social responsibility principles; 3) reception study (netnography and in-depth interview) with advertising audiences to analyze the ways in which the ads are received (whether they are critically received, as it is implied by the conscious consumerism phenomenon). This research is being conducted by the ESC (Ethics in Consumer Society) research group, led by me, and by PPGMC’s Applied Research Lab LaPA.
Media production and reception in consumer society from an Ethical Perspective.
Description: This research aims to conduct critical studies of advertising from an ethical and social perspective, analyzing consumption behaviors and aspects of mass communication and cultural industry, which are placed in a context of consumer society in hyper-modern times. Drawing from a literature review and empirical studies of media reception, media production, and consumption practices, we point out counter discursive initiatives, which might lead to social transformation in terms of social, and media practices that are connected to contemporary consumer society, proposing a more ethical relationship between subject, market, and society. This initiative fits within a wider “umbrella” research project, which includes other smaller research projects which are led by me and which revolve around themes that are more specific.
Lattes: http://lattes.cnpq.br/2542584687169854
e-mail: apbragaglia@yahoo.com.br
