Can we distinguish in the current discourses of the media and universities their roles in our societies? This distinction is important because it refers to the knowledge that journalists and professors put forward through their communications and actions. Do they participate objectively developing the autonomous and enlightened thinking of the citizens of today and tomorrow by democratically supporting their quest for understanding? Or have they become the spokesmen of a single, and therefore partial and partial, way of thinking? What is its legitimacy and relevance when it organizes the information transmitted according to ideological interests, such as a promotional or advertising campaign?

September 6-7, 2024 in Baia Mare, Roumanie

Argument

Technical University of Cluj-Napoca, North University Centre of Baia Mare, Romania, Université du Québec en Abitibi-Témiscamingue, Canada , Centro Universitário Salesiano de São Paulo, Brésil, Faculdade Cásper Líbero, Brésil, Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Brésil invite you to take part in the 4th International Conference Mass communication in the context of contemporary forms of propaganda with the theme Ideological discourse and publicity discourse in the media and universities.

Can we distinguish in the current discourses of the media and universities their roles in our societies? This distinction is important because it refers to the knowledge that journalists and professors put forward through their communications and actions. Do they participate objectively developing the autonomous and enlightened thinking of the citizens of today and tomorrow by democratically supporting their quest for understanding? Or have they become the spokesmen of a single, and therefore partial and partial, way of thinking? What is its legitimacy and relevance when it organizes the information transmitted according to ideological interests, such as a promotional or advertising campaign? For example, in Quebec and Ontario, certain typical situations are multiplying and illustrate the invalidation of freedom of expression and conscience, academic freedom, clientelism, productivism and authoritarianism:

• Various scientific or citizen disagreements,including those related to the health measures taken during the COVID crisis, are excluded from the public space;
• Use of words (e.g., word in"N") or phrases2 that resulted in the suspension or dismissal of persons involved;
• Hiring and appointments based on ideological criteria and not on merit ;
• Asks to purge libraries to the point of burning books that do not correspond to the politically correct values;
• Promoting a "false consensus" in the form of ideas and values that seem unchallenged, clear, and supposedly accepted by all;
• A self-assigned posture – of intellectual and moral representation of the public or of teachers and students – that does not reflect the diversity of their interests and viewpoints.

But what are ideological or advertising discourses? Are these communications meaningful or insignificant, beneficial or harmful, or means of silencing people? Are they places of totalitarian power where indoctrination replaces the expression of reflective thinking and its learning, which are nourished by questioning and doubt to become a critical analysis, and over time, even a critical thought (Motoi, 2023)? These speeches fill the public territory to the point of saturation, leaving little space for the thinking of their issuers to deliberate. In this way, they freeze what we need to know and hide what we should not know. However, where are the calls for caution from scientists and journalists in relation to this new social order imposed silently, without dialogue or debate, without asking which objectives are taken into consideration for what purposes and for what issues? What happens to scientific or journalistic methods of research and investigation that explore different hypotheses and avenues, while questioning them in order to understand the perspectives involved and not to preach single-mindedness? Faire semblant

Publicity discourse is not commercial advertising. It "positively" promotes the university, its programs, its recruitment, or the editorial line of medias supported by politically correct beliefs and doctrines. And this, with the help of means and a language that resembles those deployed by advertising in order to influence people by making believe to create an illusion and sell "products" including ideas: presence of a desiring-buying-consuming-throwing away cycle that promises happiness, satisfaction and use of emotions in order to impress before reasoning, etc. (Robert, 2018; Motoi, 2021, pp. 72-73). In this sense, the results of research and investigation do not present what could have gone wrong, the plurality of points of view which is absent, the contradictory opinions are proscribed, the critical dimension is eliminated. We never question ourselves and we don't make visible what doesn't work, and which will be seen as a "negative discourse". We talk about the results, but not much about the research process. It works similarly to a PR firm that preaches indiscriminate consumption without reasoned verification of that merchandised information or research data. This is the "party line" that must be followed! Hence the need to study and reflect on the meanings produced also from the silence of certain messages, which, naturally, involves the process of publicity enunciation. Ideological discourse often unfolds according to two socially polarized conceptions (Voirol, 2008, p. 62-68):

• The "negative" connotation given by Marx in 1932 who criticized it as an abuse that allowed economic domination, which determines a distortion of reality;
• The "positive" culturalist connotation, reformulated in an uncritical sense by Geertz in 2000 to be conceived as a "symbolic integrator of a community preserving its cultural identity".

However, what happens to the point of view of the participant – reader, listener or student – but still human? Are they recognized for their thinking and judgement skills, their freedom of expression and their conscience? Is he endowed with "moral competences"? (Boltanski and Chiapello, 2009) Are we taking what the participant says seriously? Does the participant take his or her own point of view seriously? Can he ignore the ideologies and publicity that come from the group to which he belongs, and which provide him with modes of interpretation? Does this explain why some individuals feel "at ease" with ideology without seeing "their adherence in a negative way" (Voirol, 2008, p. 71)?

Van Dijk (2006, p. 1) observe that "dominated groups may also have ideologies [...] of resistance and opposition," even of conflict or glorification forming "ideological communities." But, when these discourses are everywhere, is it possible to envisage a solution to emancipate oneself from them? Is this the role of the university and the media? However, Klemperer and Solzhenitsyn risked their lives to denounce the Nazis and Soviets who killed millions of people in the name of ideologies imposed by force to create the "perfect and just society" (Aubry and Turpin, 2012). They explained how in these territories the rupture between reality and illusion took place in a totalitarian way.

However, in 1960, "the end of ideology" was announced by Bell. Yet, its promotion continued to be linked to propaganda. Moreover, Voirol (2008, p. 62) thinks that in our Western societies, the absence of criteria - to determine the "ideological disjunctions between actual social practices and the discursive and prescriptive registers imposed on them" - has stripped any analysis of its " critical sting". This has led us into the confusion of ideology with reality and the acceptance of the advertising mode of communicating ideas and what follows from it. In this sense, ideology transmits a certain combination of ideas and values that forms a system that functions as a filter that thus sorts out collective representations of reality in the short and medium term to offer only one interpretive version. Therefore, that’s why is important to differentiating between a concept and a criterion. A concept is an idea or a representation by generalization, and a criterion, "a character, a principle to which one refers in order to distinguish one thing from another, to make a judgment, an estimate" (CNRTL).

How can we identify the ideological and advertising discourses that accompany and illustrate the transformation that is taking place in our societies, set up since 1975 by a different relationship to modernity, a postmodernist relationship? In this sense, according to a totalitarian practice of "suspicion", are they by definition only the property of "others"? In this conception that is not very questionable, what is put forward is "a distinction between a posture of 'falsehood' and illusion, on the one hand, and a posture of truth and knowledge, on the other" (Voirol, 2008, p. 64). This distinction makes it possible to "define the appropriate knowledge and actions, independently of the convictions and actions of the subjects concerned" (p. 65), which are rejected in advance. This difference also establishes the demarcation between "subjects [who know how to act] in their own name for their emancipation" and "those who do not know [it]", ordinary subjects in the grip of ideology. Consequently, that’s why is important to understand of understanding, situated as we are between individual autonomy and social control, how to "take possession of reality" and give an active character to our thinking and its cognitive-social impact on our human lives.

Here are some of the themes to explore during this conference:

• Tensions and forbidden debates;
• Distinctions between freedom of conscience, freedom of expression and academic freedom;
• Multiples perspectives on reality: partial perspective, contradictory perspective, overall perspective, etc. ;
• Injunctions of ideological and advertising discourse and the relationship to human knowing;
• Distinctions between single-mindedness thinking, intersubjective thinking, disciplinary thinking, and critical thinking; 
• Current issues: causality, directionality, standardization of thought, atomization and massification of individuals, etc. ; 
• Diversity of diversity and non-relativistic plurality of views on the world;
• Democratic deficit focused by a crisis of representation and non-recognition of journalists and professors; 
• Silence as a producer of meaning in publicity discourse;
• Resistances and quests for meaning present in the context of publicity of ideological conformity.

Submission guidelines

The abstracts are to be sent no later than May 1st, 2024.

They cannot exceed  250-450 words the equivalent of 1,000-2000 characters including spaces and titles). The abstracts will be assessed by the scientific committee of the conference and must be accompanied by a short bibliography. They can be written in Romanian, French or English. An official answer regarding the acceptance or rejection of your proposals will be sent by June 1st, 2024. The evaluation criteria are the following:

• Pertinence in concordance with the general topic and objectives of the conference,
• Explicitness of the context of research, critical reflection or practice,
• Coherence of the theoretical and methodological bases that endorse the research or field experience.

The papers will be grouped according to their topic as to be presented in different workshops. The presentations will not exceed 20 minutes, being followed by 10 minutes of discussions.

The abstracts should be sent to the following address: ina.motoi@uqat.ca

See you in March! Ligia Tomoiaga, Anamaria Felecan, Ina Motoi, Fabiano Ormaneze, Duílio Fabbri Júnior

Participation fees

-150 euros for participants from outside Romania, to be paid before June, 15, 2024 and 200 euros those who will pay after this date;

-150 RON for participants from Romania, Republic of Moldova, Ukraine, Poland, Bulgaria, Russia and Albania to be paid before June, 15, 2024 and 200 RON for those who will pay after this date.

Selection committee

• Ligia Tomoiaga, Université Technique Cluj-Napoca, Centre Universitaire Nord Baia Mare, Roumanie
• Anamaria Felecan, Université Technique Cluj-Napoca, Centre Universitaire Nord Baia Mare, Roumanie
• Ina Motoi, Université du Québec en Abitibi-Témiscamingue, Canada
• Fabiano Ormaneze, Laboratório de Estudos Avançados em Jornalismo/ Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Brésil
• Duílio Fabbri Júnior, Centro Universitário Salesiano de São Paulo et Faculdade Cásper Líbero, Brésil

References

Aubry, Laurence et TURPIN, Béatrice (éd.). (2012). Victor Klemperer : repenser le langage totalitaire. Paris, CNRS Éditions, Colloques de Cerisy.

Bell, D. (1960). La fin de l’idéologie, Paris, Presses Universitaires de France.

Boltanski, L. et Chiapello, E. (1999). Le nouvel esprit du capitalisme. Paris, Gallimard.

Carniol, B. (1984). Clash of ideologies in social work education ». Revue canadienne de travail social, 2, 184-199.

Daniel, M-F. (2002). De l’importance de cultiver la pensée critique à l’université. Pour un savoir-faire, un savoir-être et un savoir-vivre ensemble, L’Autre Forum, 7 (1), 16-20.

Geertz, C. (2000). Ideology as a Cultural System. The Interpretation of Cultures. New York, Basics Books.

Gagnon, M. et Hasni, A. (2020). Pensées disciplinaires et pensée critique : enjeux de la spécificité et de la transversalité pour l’enseignement et la recherche, Montréal, Groupéditions.

Lafortune, J.-M. (2019). La liberté universitaire comme forme spécifique d’autocontrainte. Dans Baillargeon, N., Liberté surveillée, Montréal, Leméac.

Lucien, A. et Gaste, D. (2006). Le principe du contradictoire : paradigme de la société d’information? http://archivesic.ccsd.cnrs.fr/sic_000778235

Motoi, I. (2023). Apprendre à penser de manière critique le visionnement des médias. Animation, territoire et pratiques socio-culturelles, 24. https://edition.uqam.ca/atps/article/view/2180

Motoi. I. (2023). Enseigner à penser critiquement pour intervenir socialement. Sciences et actions sociales, Questionner les philosophies de l'intervention et de la formation sociales, 19.

Motoi, I. en collaboration avec Beaulieu, A. et Gagnon, M. (2021). Guide de visionnement critique des médias, 1, Québec : Presses de l’Université du Québec.

Robert, A.-C. (2018). La stratégie de l’émotion. Montréal, Lux.

Rosa, H. (2014). Aliénation et accélération. Vers une théorie critique de la modernité tardive, Paris, La Découverte/Poche.

Van Dijk, T. A. (2006). Discourse and manipulation. Discourse & Society, 17(3), 359–383. https://doi.org/10.1177/0957926506060250 Voirol, O. (2008). Idéologie : concept culturaliste et concept critique. Presses Universitaires de France, 1 (43), 62-78.