ИСТИНА

All over the world communication and media are being transformed by complex and often unpredictable dynamics, tendencies and trends. Across an increasing number of regions, established social and political actors are being challenged and new movements are emerging, defined, for example, by sexual preferences, lifestyles, ethnic identities, customs, practices or interests. These new actors are more likely to see “politics” as spaces of multiple modes of participation rather than as spaces where they are represented. Contemporary politics (especially political parties) are being transformed and new social movements are emerging and growing, taking various forms, sizes, and shapes. Against this backdrop, the conference will explore and discuss the link between, on the one hand, broad social, political and cultural changes and dynamics, and on the other, changes in communication, media, and their processes. In particular, the conference will be an opportunity to incubate and develop theories, research, and frameworks, that might guide emerging theoretical frameworks to help think about, discuss and create new, and hopefully more appropriate, concepts and methods for the field and its practices. A key focus will be the new social and spatial territories of the political, their social and cultural effects, and the dramatic transformations they have produced in communication processes. Given the epochal changes underway globally, is it time to rethink communication and relocate it, with all of its nuances, within a new understanding of politics and culture that speaks to the times we now live in? At the same time, the outdated geopolitical idea of a north/south, east/west world that dominated thinking in the 20th century also needs to be revisited. The conditions of social and cultural life that generated these conceptualizations are no longer linked to territories. Today “souths” and “norths” (in the conventional sense), mingle and interact with centers and peripheries, and easts and wests, throughout the world.