06/16/2026
The Center for Latino/a and Latin American Studies congratulates 2025 CLLAS Graduate Research Grant recipient Giovanni Francischelli on accepting a tenure-track Assistant Professor position in the Film Studies Department at Weber State University following the completion of his PhD in Communication and Media Studies at the University of Oregon.
During his time at the University of Oregon, Francischelli built an interdisciplinary body of work examining documentary film, media systems, platform governance, and digital political culture in Brazil and Latin America. His research and filmmaking explore how documentary media shapes public understanding, identity, and political discourse across digital platforms.
As part of the 2025 CLLAS Graduate Research Grant program, Francischelli presented his project, Documentary Films and the New Brazilian Right: How Online Documentaries Spread Misinformation and Cultural Wars on YouTube, which examined how documentary filmmaking has become a strategic tool within Brazil’s contemporary right-wing media ecosystem.
His research focused on Brasil Paralelo, a Brazilian media company that operates across YouTube, streaming platforms, podcasts, books, and online courses. Francischelli analyzed how the organization uses high-production-value documentary films, advertising infrastructure, and algorithmic visibility to shape political narratives around history, feminism, race, Indigenous rights, LGBTQIA+ communities, and environmental politics.
Using digital ethnography, YouTube Data Tools, and network visualization methods, Francischelli studied how YouTube recommendation systems reinforce ideological environments online. His findings suggested that right-wing YouTube ecosystems often function as highly interconnected and self-reinforcing networks that direct users toward increasingly similar content…
Read the rest of this story at cllas.uoregon.edu