Issue No. 19 of Guará Journal debuts a new editorial format with an article on Communication and Health

By Otávio Gomes*

Source: Matheus Pereira - GovBA

Guará Journal, an online journal of extension articles published by the UFES Pro-Rectorate for Extension (ProEx), is debuting a new look. The scientific journal’s website features a new layout, with more interactive features and article search tools, as well as a new editorial model. Issues will now be published annually and on a continuous basis. 

“The navigation has been redesigned, with more intuitive pages and the incorporation of plugins that facilitate interaction between readers and authors,” says João Furlani, deputy editor of Guará Journal. 

The layout of the articles available online has also undergone changes, improving the visibility of the publication’s data. “In addition to the new layout and visual update, we are reviewing the editorial workflow and metadata structure to ensure greater visibility. We hope that, thanks to these improvements, the journal will be better prepared to integrate with new databases and indexers,” adds João. 

According to Paola Primo, the journal’s executive editor, the continuous publication of articles will reduce the time it takes to publish manuscripts submitted to the magazine. “The continuous-flow model offers advantages to both parties involved in scientific publishing. Since it is not necessary to wait for a full issue of articles to be published, the continuous-flow model streamlines the process, benefiting authors, readers, and the journal itself,” she explains.

The increased number of publications should also help boost the journal’s visibility. “This change responds to a demand from the scientific community itself for greater speed and editorial efficiency. This approach values the authors’ work and strengthens the journal’s digital presence, enhancing its relevance in terms of impact and visibility metrics,” concludes the editor. 

The changes are still being implemented, but Issue No. 19 of the journal has been published and currently features two articles.

Rethinking Communication and Health in Espírito Santo

Opening this new issue, the study “Extension in Collective Health, Communication and Culture: experiencing interdisciplinarity in Communication and Health” is an experience report on the activities carried out by five students from UFES’s undergraduate programs in Journalism and Library Science, together with three faculty coordinators, in three extension projects: the Health in the Media Observatory – Espírito Santo (OSM-ES), the Public Health Projects Laboratory (LAPROSC), and VideoSaúde Coletiva (VSC), all affiliated with the university’s Graduate Program in Public Health (PPGSC). 

Between 2022 and 2023, the scholarship recipients engaged in academic research, led educational workshops on video production for elementary school students, wrote press releases about scientific articles, and helped manage the projects’ social media accounts. The main objective of the PPGSC’s extension program is not only to disseminate scientific knowledge in the field of Public Health but also to keep undergraduate students and the general public informed about activities carried out outside the classroom in the courses offered by the UFES Center for Health Sciences (CCS/UFES), such as Extension and Scientific Initiation (IC) projects.

One of the projects under the Public Health, Communication, and Culture Extension Program, OSM-ES is a monitoring initiative that tracks news stories published in traditional media that address issues related to public health. This extension project is the result of technical cooperation agreements between the PPGSC/UFES and the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (Fiocruz). 

During the period covered in the article, five scholarship recipients monitored news articles published in the print media during the COVID-19 pandemic, from December 1, 2019, to December 31, 2021. The research aimed to catalog journalistic discourses produced during the pandemic for critical analysis based on ethical criteria in the field of Communication and Health (C&H) and using the “Epidemics in the Media” data collection and evaluation protocol, a manual developed by the Observatory for media analysis during public health emergencies. 

In total, 74 news articles were collected from 21 Espírito Santo media outlets across all regions of the state. The survey was made possible by the SIGCOVID-19 tool, an automated system used to locate news stories based on keywords. The scholarship recipients participated in workshops on clipping news articles and storing and classifying health data. 

“What became most evident was that many articles gave a platform to statements by officials that contained misinformation, without the necessary counterpoint from experts or scientific data, which ultimately contributed to the spread of misinformation at the most critical moment of the pandemic,” explains Sara Ohnesorge, a senior journalism student and one of the article’s authors. 

According to Sara, amid the climate of misinformation, newspapers in Espírito Santo could have played a more active role in combating misinformation during the period analyzed. 

“The local press covered the developments of the pandemic, but did not always delve deeper into the discussion based on scientific evidence. This gives the impression of more reactive coverage, focused on the authorities’ statements, rather than on critical analyses that could help the public better understand the complexity of the public health situation,” the student says. 

“We must recognize that, in a public health emergency, scientific knowledge is what ensures the greatest reliability of information. Official sources play a role, of course, but they cannot be the only ones shaping the news,” she concludes.

After the study was completed, the results were discussed among the undergraduate students and researchers at OSM-ES. For Sara, these discussion sessions were essential to achieving the educational objective of the extension project. 

“These roundtables were essential because they created a space for exchange and critical reflection on the material we collected. It wasn’t just a technical task of cataloging articles, but also of understanding what those narratives meant in the context of the pandemic. By discussing them together, we were able to deepen our perspective on Communication and Health, recognizing both the limitations of journalistic coverage and the opportunities to enrich this debate,” comments the researcher.

*Intern under the supervision of Paola Primo