A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of MA (cum laude) in Communication Science University of Zululand, 2002. / In this thesis I characterise South African Infomercials as forms of persuasive mass media messages. After outlining the general nature of persuasive communication, and the rela¬tionship between persuasion and propaganda, I explain which communication codes adver¬tisers use to promote their products, particularly which codes Infomercial advertisers use. After characterising a range of South African TV Infomercials I give a detailed analysis of the pioneering serial radio and TV Infomercials used by the company SA Natural Products (SANP) in their extremely successful campaign over the past two years to make the natural health food supplement Spirulina by Marcus Rohrer® the best known and most used nutri¬tional supplement in South Africa today. 1 in particular look at the forms of communica¬tion used by managers at SANP to create information networks within their organisational network to sustain the popularity of the product in the public mind, and to keep it supplied to pharmacies, health food shops and chain stores that sell it.

Orientadores: Ricardo Ribeiro Gudwin, Cesar José Bonjuani Pagan / Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Faculdade de Engenharia Elétrica e de Computação / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-26T04:03:32Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Angelo_TiagoNovaes_M.pdf: 3900207 bytes, checksum: 2eed8dd66c9bdc37e4d58e9eac614c9d (MD5) Previous issue date: 2014 / Resumo: O surgimento das Tecnologias de Comunicação e Informação trouxe uma nova perspectiva para o fortalecimento da democracia nas sociedades modernas. A democracia representativa, modelo predominante nas sociedades atuais, atravessa uma crise de credibilidade cuja principal consequência é o afastamento do cidadão na participação política, enfraquecendo os ideais democráticos. Neste contexto, a tecnologia surge como possibilidade para construção de um novo modelo de participação popular que resgate uma cidadania mais ativa, inaugurando o que denomina-se de democracia digital. O objetivo desta pesquisa foi desenvolver e implementar uma ferramenta, denominada "Extrator de Conhecimento Coletivo", com o propósito de conhecer o que um coletivo pensa a respeito de sua realidade a partir de pequenos relatos de seus participantes, dando voz à população num processo de democracia participativa. Os fundamentos teóricos baseiam-se em métodos de mineração de dados, sumarizadores extrativos e redes complexas. A ferramenta foi implementada e testada usando um banco de dados formado por opiniões de clientes a respeito de suas estadias em um Hotel. Os resultados apresentaram-se satisfatórios. Para trabalhos futuros, a proposta é que o Extrator de Conhecimento Coletivo seja o núcleo de processamento de dados de um espaço virtual onde a população pode se expressar e exercer ativamente sua cidadania / Abstract: The emergence of Information and Communication Technologies brought a new perspective to the strengthening of democracy in modern societies. The representative democracy, prevalent model in today's societies, crosses a crisis of credibility whose main consequence is the removal of citizen participation in politics, weakening democratic ideals. In this context, technology emerges as a possibility for construction of a new model of popular participation to rescue more active citizenship, inaugurating what is called digital democracy. The objective of this research was to develop and implement a tool called "Collective Knowledge Extractor", with the purpose of knowing what the collective thinks about his reality through small reports of its participants, giving voice to the people in a process participatory democracy. The theoretical foundations are based on methods of data mining, extractive summarizers and complex networks. The tool was implemented and tested using a database consisting of customer reviews about their stay in a Hotel. The results were satisfactory. For future work, the proposal is that the Extractor Collective Knowledge be the core data processing of a virtual space where people can express themselves and actively exercise their citizenship / Mestrado / Engenharia de Computação / Mestre em Engenharia Elétrica