The first interconnected feature was published on the Sábado magazine website. Entitled “Depois da reforma, onde se vive melhor?” (After retirement, where is life better?), it was produced by Eduarda Alves and Inês Ramos, final-year students in the Bachelor’s Degree in Communication and Journalism at the Department of Communication Sciences (ECATI) of Lusófona University. The feature was developed within the scope of the course Magazine Journalism in the Digital Era.
The multimedia feature was supervised by CICANT researchers Carla Rodrigues Cardoso and Ana Figueiras, the scientific coordinators of MagLab - Magazine Media Lab. The researchers coined the concept of Interconnected Journalism in 2024 in the Editorial of the International Journal of Magazine Studies, and have since been developing this theoretical-practical framework and implementing it across various course units over the past two years.
Interconnected journalism aims to combat misinformation and hate speech by bringing people closer and fostering a more empathetic citizenry that strengthens democratic values. It does so by investigating topics that are equally relevant to different communities, whether national or international, through a comparative approach to reality.
Experiencing an interconnected feature means gaining information about “us and others,” countering the binary frameworks (“us vs. them”) that shape traditional journalism. In the case of the feature published in Sábado, the common theme is retirement, and the multimedia story reveals differences and similarities between those who experience this stage of life in urban centers and those who choose to live outside them.
The feature by Eduarda Alves and Inês Ramos was presented and discussed on October 31 during the closing session of the international conference Future of Magazine 2025, organized by MagLab. The panel featured Maria Henrique Espada, editor-in-chief of Sábado, who praised the quality of the work produced by the Lusófona University students.