Project

Pública Pop: Public Administration, pop culture and digital narratives in dialogue with young people

How can anime, series, films and games help young people understand and discuss the state and public policies?

The project starts from the gap between how the state works and the conditions young people have to understand and discuss it. Throughout 2027, it promotes dialogue between the university and young people about the state, public policies and Public Administration, through the critical and participatory analysis of pop culture products and short digital narratives.

The priority audience is young people, with an emphasis on upper secondary students at state schools, cursinhos populares (community courses that prepare students for university entrance exams) and youth groups in the Araraquara region. A reference youth group acts as an editorial board, and undergraduate students carry out the production. The unit of the project is not the video but the cycle of listening, co-creation, production, testing, circulation and feedback; the episodes are the product and the interface of this cycle.

Status
Planned
Period
to
Type
Outreach
Research lines
Language, Literacies and Digital Citizenship
Funder or instrument
UNESP university outreach project (extensão universitária), with no request for grants or funding

Method

Two semester-long cycles: listen, curate, script, test, produce, publish, engage in dialogue, evaluate and reformulate. Each episode starts from an editorial matrix (work, public problem, concepts, trigger question, risk of oversimplification and sources) and from a six-movement narrative cycle, which ends by making the limits of the analogy explicit. The narrative gamification uses dilemmas, choice and perspective, with no rankings and no rewards for likes. Understanding is tested with the audience, not presumed.

Outputs and results

Twelve short episodes, six per semester, well-founded and tested with the audience, published on TikTok, Instagram Reels and/or YouTube Shorts; reusable protocols (editorial matrix, narrative cycle and plain-language rubric); a documented process of dialogue with young people; and training of the undergraduates in public communication. Views count as an indicator of circulation, not of learning.

Team

Updated on