ICNOVA
NOVA Institute of Communication 

ICNOVA (NOVA Institute of Communication) is a new research unit in the field of Communication Sciences in Portugal, resulting from former units (CECL and CIMJ, pioneers in the area; and CIC.Digital). Its current structure includes 4 groups (Media and Journalism; Culture, Mediation and Arts; Strategic Communication and Decision Making-Process; Performance and Cognition), and 3 labs (BlackBox, Scenic Experimentation Laboratory and iNOVA Media Lab).

ICNOVA’s strategic agenda for 2020-2023 will be Media Practices: Cultural, Societal and Technological Challenges, aiming at the achievement of inclusion and diversity in a world of social acceleration and deep mediatisation. These will be pursued through the following major themes: 1) Diversity, Pluralism, Inclusion; 2) Cognitive, Mediation and Decision-Making Processes; 3) Culture, Criticism and Digital Practices.

ICNOVA will strengthen this research agenda by prioritizing international funding calls (applications for ERC, Erasmus+, H2020, EU CEF-Telecom, and UTAustin/Portugal are under development), and by keeping an assertive strategy in national calls, already in course through the 12 applications submitted in FCT’s 2017 call.

We will reinforce the links between research and advanced training through new partnerships with international universities, institutions and networks, promoting interdisciplinarity and rejuvenating the team with the integration of young researchers.

Concerning relations with society in general, the industry and other R&D units, ICNOVA is establishing collaborative interfaces with the academia and with key stakeholders, focusing on innovative research, and on the interaction with the community through service providing and content production of public interest.

We are also increasing the dissemination of knowledge, i.e., projects and networks outputs, and publications both in open repositories and digital platforms. We will prioritize publications by our researchers in high impact journals and the indexation of our journals in Scopus and WoS.

In order to expand our previous work on emerging social dynamics and new media issues, we will increase the laboratorial intensity of the unit, consolidating the existing laboratories and envisaging four new structures: the Behavioural Research Lab and the Observatories of Diversity and Pluralism; Media and Family; Innovation in the Media and Creative Industries; and Net-Activism.

We have already established new synergies between our groups and labs and other R&D units, innovating in research concerning the role of digital media, the cultural and societal dynamics of cognition, mediation, behaviour and decision-making processes. The goal is to develop research themes that aggregate groups and labs and objectives that will enable new perspectives and convergence lines for our R&D unit and for the field of communication sciences in Portugal.