Nota Introdutória

Transformations driven by globalisation, digitalisation, and increasingly complex communication processes have significantly altered how territories are represented, governed, and experienced.Within this evolving landscape, place branding has emerged as a strategic domain that transcends traditional promotional approaches, integrating considerations of identity, governance, participation, and development.Concurrently, digital communication is now a central component of social life, influencing citizenship, the public visibility of social actors, and the collective construction of place-based meanings.Within the broader field of place branding, a perspective persists that challenges the dichotomy between market-oriented self-promotion of tourist destinations, characteristic of the Anglophone conception, and approaches focused on alternative development, sustainability, and public policy design.As Acosta (2016) highlights, and as Sampaio (2024) and Andrade et al. ( 2024) further elaborate, these alternative approaches involve citizen participation through public consultations, integrated plans for culture, tourism, and communication, and advisory councils.In this context, the term "marca-lugar" (place branding), prevalent in Lusophone and Hispanophone contexts, is adopted to move away from the strictly commercial perspective of place branding, which, as David Harvey (2012) argues, often leads to the commodification of cities.It is at this intersection between territory, communication and citizenship that the present thematic issue of Comunicação e Sociedade is situated.The proposal emerged from the need to critically reflect on how cities, regions and nations construct narratives about themselves in a media environment marked by technological convergence, accelerated content circulation and expanded public participation.As Jenkins (2006) notes, convergence culture has redefined the relationships among the production, circulation, and consumption of information, making the boundaries between institutions, media

Cultural, Media, and Literary Studies · Media and Communication Studies · Urban Development and Societal Issues