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The Laboratory of Online Communication (LabCom) is a communication sciences research unit of the Faculty of Arts of the Universidade da Beira Interior (UBI), located in Covilhã, Portugal. It is supported by the Foundation for Science and Technology (Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia - FCT), an institution of the Portuguese Ministry of Science, Technology and Higher Education. The main purpose of the LabCom is to develop research programmes about the status of the new communication technologies, especially those underlying online communication processes, to assess their impact on everyday life and the different kinds of resulting communication phenomena on an individual, collective, societal, and mass basis. Since its creation in 2002, LabCom has been evaluated twice by International Panels on behalf of the Foundation for Science and Technology (Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia – FCT), and accounts as one of the main Portuguese research units on the communication sciences field. At the end of 2010 the research team of LabCom had 17 integrated PhD researchers, 3 PhD collaborators from other research units and 4 researchers in the final phase of the preparation of their PhD dissertations. Due to the strong connection with the Communication Sciences Doctoral Studies at the UBI, 16 PhD trainees are currently developing their research in the LabCom area of expertise.
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LabCom is a plural and diverse research unit. It includes 3 research groups: i) on online information and persuasion, with special focus on journalism; ii) on media and identities, with special focus on public sphere and participative democracy; iii) on cinema and multimedia. All three groups work together in the organisation of scientific events and publications on an interdisciplinary basis. The most distinctive characteristic of LabCom is its strong online presence with:
Since January 2000, LabCom has hosted the oldest online Portuguese academic newspaper Urbi at Orbi which offers a relevant service to the academic community, and builds a live laboratory to journalism students. It is a weekly newspaper, but it is permanently updated with the latest news. It also possesses an iphone version. This online paper often serves as the main source for the local and regional radios and newspapers that report about the UBI. The online radio and the online TV are services that provide both the academy and the public in general with news from the university world. Director: António Carreto Fidalgo Subdirector: João Canavilhas Scientific Council:
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