Formula One and communication theories: cultural transformations

• Grant number: 09/12531-5
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Master
• Start date: March 01, 2010
• End date: February 29, 2012
• Field of knowledge: Applied Social Sciences - Communications - Theory of Communication
• Principal Investigator: Osvando José de Morais
• Grantee: Lucas Augusto Costa Pinto Giavoni
• Host Institution: Pró-Reitoria de Pós-Graduação e Pesquisa. Universidade de Sorocaba (UNISO). Sorocaba , SP, Brazil

Abstract

This research has as objective to analyze, under the communication theories, the cultural transformations happened in Formula One, main motorsport category of the world, for its association with the media industries, inside Thompson's presupposition that the broadcastings don't just finance and diffuse cultural forms, but they also transform them. Methodologically, we opted to divide the work in two "stages". In a first moment, we will verify the automobile, one of the inventions with larger social impact of the century XX, and its the association with the sporting practice, creating the motorsport, which possesses several inside challenges, once it is composed by the athlete and its equipment. This way, we can understand the symbolic meaning of this modality, detaching differences and similarities of the two competition birthplaces: Europe and United States, through social-historical cultural analysis, also based on Thompson. In a second moment, we will analyze the association of the motoring - above all the Formula 1 - with the media, in what we can verify the ideological transformations, in the approach sense with the Adorno/Horkheimer's concept of Cultural Industry, and the extension needed by motoring disputes, in agreement with McLuhan proposals. With so few specific works, we wish to intensify the motorsport as study object in the applied scientific communication researches: Formula One, considered the most important category, involves several exploitable communicational and cultural aspects in media subjects, in their discursive specificities. (AU)