Estratégias de visibilidade e de legitimação no ambiente da ecologia midiática: o ethos discursivo do professor universitário youtuber

Abstract

With the current crisis of legitimacy of the great narratives of modernity (LYOTARD, 2015 [1979]), in which the reorganization of secular values and traditions is observed, as well as the fusion of the public and private spheres, enunciating subjects, such as university professors, seek to mediatize, make visible and legitimize themselves in the digital environment, in order to be integrated in the current process of deep mediatization of society (COULDRY; HEPP, 2017). In addition to that, there is a growing individualism that is manifested in the ecological digital media environment (SCOLARI, 2015), characterized by personalization, datification and digitalization of social practices. In this context, this thesis analyzes the cases of university professors - Christian Dunker and Luiz Felipe Pondé - who are re-signifying the university professor's discursive ethos from the construction of visibility and legitimation strategies on YouTube. Therefore, the University, represented by the enunciating subjects and understood as a community of knowledge (BARICHELLO, 2001), is faced with new practices and experimentations. Such perspective leads to these elaborated questions: what are the visibility and legitimation strategies engendered by the university professors youtubers on Youtube? Considering the ecological view for the construction of these strategies, how is the discursive ethos practiced by university professors youtubers on YouTube shown? What are the possible implications of the construction of the discursive ethos relating to the University as an institution? The central hypothesis is that a resignification of the university professor’s ethos is currently underway, from new outlines based on the notions of project (HAN, 2018) and brand (SEMPRINI, 2015) through the appropriation of Youtube. Methodologically, we opted for the discursive analysis based on the assumptions of Maingueneau, for the study of the discursive ethos, scenography and media performance (GOFFMAN, 2007 [1959]; 2010 [1963]) of the professors. The digital social media Youtube, understood as a strategic device (SBARDELOTTO, 2016) (BORELLI, 2010), is visualized through socio-technical-symbolic aspects. With the investigation, it was found that the ethos of the university professor youtuber is manifested based in the desire to mediatize, make visible and legitimize themselves as a social entrepreneur and not as a university professor. While Pondé consolidates himself as a brand with the articulation of a transmedia narrative, Dunker mobilizes the multiplatform narrative to project himself on Youtube. Academic invisibility and lack of recognition are central to the formation of an effective ethos. In this sense, the University also needs to mediatize, make visible and legitimize to guarantee its permanence and importance in the present time, through the humanization of the brand that could count on the help of those who represent it: university professors.