I’m a professor and researcher at the Center for Languages and Communication from the Federal University of Pelotas (UFPel). I teach courses for undegraduate levels (such as Digital Communications, Digital Marketing, Research Methods and others) and for graduate levels (such as Digital Methods for Online Discourse, Social Network Analysis, Introduction to Computer Mediated Discourse and others). I also work as a professor and researcher for the Graduate Program of Communication and Information Science at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), where I teach similar courses. I’m the director of the MIDIARS Research Laboratory (Media, Discourse and Social Networks), where I supervise ten other researchers from all levels of formation. I’ve been a professor for 18 years and have been a principal advisor for more than 50 students (undergraduate studies) and more than 20 students in graduate courses (both Ph.D. and masters).
I’m also currently Vice-President for the Association of Post-Graduate Programs in Communication (COMPOS) in Brazil (2021-2022), and elected International Open Seat for the Association of Internet Researchers (AOIR) (2021-2022).
My areas of research are social networks, social media and online discourse, where I’m interested in how people use social media and these appropriations create impacts on society. Currently, my research is focused on political conversations and disinformation, health disinformation and toxicity on social media.
I have more than ten years of experience working as a research consultant for the industry both in Brazil and abroad. I’ve conducted research for Google regarding Orkut’s adoption and user experience in Brazil and India (2005 and 2007). I’ve also conducted a research project about user experience in the platform for MySpace discussing how the platform was used to share information about music (2010-2011). Further, I worked several years with marketing companies in Brazil, such as AG2 (2010-2017) and the ESPM Media Lab (2015-2017) and others, with projects focusing both on user research and digital product development.