A Comunicação do Fórum Social Mundial

Abstract

The article approaches the World Social Forum (WSF) from the perspective of communications in a worldwide public sphere. Every year since 2001, thousands of people get together to discuss and argue in favor of a concept that has become a slogan: another world is possible. A world that goes against the international economic order, through actions, speeches and political, economic, social and environmental debates at the WSF. Issues, movements, ethnic groups, and injus¬tices have gained a great deal of visibility in the international media at the same time that the Forum’s structure has created its own spaces for communication. The Forum’s existence has instigated, theoretically and technically, the fields of politics, sociology and communications which is the main issue of this article. The World Social Forum is understood as a privileged object of research to discuss concepts of spectacularization, mediation and mediatization in relation to new configuratios of the public sphere; the communications networks and the new media; the strategic power relations between the media, politics and society; and the construction of a public image for the citizens’ rights and participation.