INFORMATION, MEDIA AND TRUTH IN THE POST-TRUTH AND ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE ERA

Pristina: 14.06.2024 - 14.06.2024

Organizers:
Faculty of Mass Communication, AAB College, Pristina
Department of Journalism and Communication, FHF, University of Tirana
Communication Institute of Greece

Type: Online (google meet) Scientific Conference for Communication Students and Professionals

Today’s audience has not only migrated online, but has settled into the society of platforms (van Dijck et al., 2018). Politics, marketing, journalism, public relations, also extremists and terrorists, are located there. Much has changed for human life, compared to decades ago. Communications between people have changed, as well as government communications with the public (Strömbäck, 2008).
These changes give the citizen the convenience to engage with political actors and the media, but there are also politicians who compete online for their attention and credibility (Vaccari & Valeriani, 2021). There are also practitioners of public relations with their strategic messages, there is also religion and clergy, there are individuals who daily curate the personal branding. They are there for publicity, to have their voice heard, sometimes loud, sometimes positive and sometimes negative. There is medicine, science, music, identity, health, war, performance, intimate relationships, consumption, memory, and much more (Deacon & Stanyer, 2014). What is special is that everyone has the opportunity to address everyone in an audience of millions and billions.
However, in this situation of mediatization of everything (Hepp, 2013; Hjarvard, 2013), even rational claims based on facts fall, while lies or even the truth can reach a previously unimaginable publics (Waisbord, 2018). Journalists have lost the monopoly of information, while politics due to social media and alternative media (Strömbäck, 2023; Waisbord, 2022), does not tire too much for the media. The main responsibility of the media to “distribute true information to keep the public informed” (Tandoc et al., 2022, p. 2), today increasingly goes to the distribution of information and products that are acceptable to the public, often in damage to the quality of information (Martin, 2021). Truth has been replaced by beliefs (Boorstin, 1961, 2012), while populist post-truth rhetoric has affected the elite, which frustrates them and undermines democracy (Waisbord, 2018). Experts and elites are increasingly reluctant to engage actively and publicly to oppose demagogic populists, where we have a “hyperpartisan content” online (Ferrara et al. 2020) which has brought mob censorship (Waisbord, 2023) and where the defendant speaks in equal positions with a Nobel laureate (Eco, 2015). Demagogic populists on the one hand and elite experts on the other, believe that reality is different from what the majority of the population believes (Fuller, 2018), while in Facebook democracy (Marichal, 2012) the concern of the architecture of democracy itself increases, which some also call post-truth democracy (Chambers, 2021). People in this democracy respond more to feelings and beliefs than to facts and arguments (d’Ancona, 2017).
On the other side, artificial intelligence (AI) still has problems with feelings. AI, as a benefit and a challenge at the same time, is already being used in the media, public relations and political communication. Many studies call for greater attention to the social, cultural and ethical dynamics of AI (Logan & Waymer, 2024), because it can be used to highlight and understand inequalities that exist in social and workplace environments (Chauhan & Kshetri, 2022).
Meanwhile, in this environment where about 5 billion people are online with their hyperhistories (Floridi, 2014), the battle is for attention and not media space, because the media enabled Zelensky to be at the same time physically at the front of the war, and to enter the assemblies of western democracies, seeking the protection of universal values (Saliu, 2023). The pain, meanwhile, where war kills children, prompts student protests in Europe and the US because social media has already made glocalism.
Therefore, the purpose of this conference is to bring together students, professionals in the field of journalism, public relations, political science, marketing, religious communication, and especially master’s students whose fields affect the above issues, to elaborate these transformations today, by sending an abstract of 150-200 words related to the phenomena described as well as to the following topics, but not only:
Today’s online censorship (Mob censorship)
The democracy of social media
Mediatization of everyday life
Political Marketing in the Networking Age
Public relations in the digital age
Media education: media consumption and diet
Online public space, infosphere
Propaganda and fake news (in times of peace or even war)
Media and truth in the age of fake news
Populism in the age of social media
TV as a narcissistic mirror of politicians
Social media as virtual public space and personal branding
Viewing from the public: when the public wants banality
TikTok and Memes
Hate speech online
When televisions hide by showing
Soft power, international public relations and public diplomacy in the digital age
Digital diplomacy and the international image of the country
Fact-checking in the age of social media
Media exposure as a political PR opportunity in times of crisis
Ethics and Privacy in the Age of Social Media
Audience journalism vs quality journalism
Media sensation in the age of fake news
Online bullying

SCIENTIFIC COMMITTEE
Assoc. Prof. Dr. Margarita Kefalaki, Open University, Athens
Assoc. Prof. Dr. Hasan Saliu, AAB College
Dr. Rrapo Zguri, University of Tirana
Prof. Asst. Dr. Gazmend Abrashi, AAB College
Assoc. Prof. Dr. Katerina Spasovska , Western Carolina University , USA
Assoc. Prof. Dr. Ramadan Çipuri, University of Tirana
ORGANIZING COMMITTEE
Assoc. Prof. Dr. Hasan Saliu, AAB College
Assoc. Prof. Dr. Ramadan Chipuri
Prof. Asst. Dr. Gazmend Abrashi
Eriona Ajvazi (PhD Candidate)

IMPORTANT DATA
Students and graduates in the fields of communications, journalism, public relations, political science, political communication, professionals in politics, journalism, etc. are eligible to apply.
Submission of abstracts (150-200 words): until 20 May
Submission of responses: 5 June
Conference date: 14 June 2024 (Friday), from 11:00
Accepted abstracts will be published in the Book of Abstracts with ISBN
Participants will receive certificates of participation in the conference

Participation fee: free
Duration of a referral: 10-15 min (Online, google meet)
Email: konferencastudentore@universitetiaab.com
Participants will receive further instructions via email.