Rate My Professor Mauro Porto

Mauro Porto is Professor and Chair of the Department of Communication in Tulane University’s School of Liberal Arts. As a political communication scholar, he investigates the linkages between media and democratization, focusing on Brazil. His research delves into the political dimensions of various communication practices and genres, including journalism, telenovelas, political advertising, presidential debates, and social media. Porto earned his Ph.D. in Communication from the University of California, San Diego in 2001, M.A. in Political Science from Universidade de Brasília in 1993, and B.A. in Communication from the same university in 1988. He joined Tulane University in 2004 as Visiting Assistant Professor, became Assistant Professor in 2005, Associate Professor in 2011, and full Professor in 2023. Previously, he served as Professor at Universidade de Brasília from 1993 to 2004. Additionally, from January 2011 to July 2013, Porto was Program Officer for Media Rights and Access at the Ford Foundation office in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, overseeing grants for media reform and freedom of expression.

Porto’s major publications include the book Mirrors of Whiteness: Media, Middle-Class Resentment, and the Rise of the Far Right in Brazil, published by the University of Pittsburgh Press in 2023. This work examines media representations contributing to conservative shifts in Brazil. His earlier books are Media Power and Democratization in Brazil: TV Globo and the Dilemmas of Political Accountability (Routledge, 2012), based on analyses of TV news and interviews with political figures, and Televisão e política no Brasil: A Rede Globo e as interpretações da audiência (E-Papers, 2007), derived from his Ph.D. dissertation. In 2002, he received the Best Doctoral Dissertation Award from the Brazilian Society of Interdisciplinary Communication Studies (INTERCOM). His articles have been published in journals such as Political Communication, Critical Studies in Media Communication, Journal of Health Communication, Journalism, Media, Culture & Society, and Television and New Media. Currently, Porto studies media’s role in Brazil’s democratic decay since 2013, particularly the mobilization of the white middle class against social inclusion policies.