CECS will organize ECREA conference in 2020

The Communication and Society Research Centre (CECS) will be responsible for organizing the European Communication Conference 2020 of the European Communication Research and Education Association (ECREA) – the main European Association of Communication Sciences.

The event will take place between October 2 and 5, 2020, at the University of Minho, in Braga, and will focus on “Communication and Trust: building safe, sustainable and promising futures” trying to analyze not only the communication practices of the technological era but also the vulnerabilities arising from an accelerated and rapidly changing digital society.

Information and communication technologies have not only had beneficial consequences for social development. On the contrary, there are many perverse developments associated with them, which translate into new and unexpected social dangers and risks. The proposal theme presented by the CECS to the Executive Board of ECREA is based on the idea that “the manipulation of information, the security and the violation of privacy are dangers that cannot be ignored. Far from being synonymous of transparency and qualified content, information abundance and the access to multiple channels of communication today require additional competences to distinguish between opportunities and threats”.

In this context, with the confidence of citizens to be affected by uncertainty and insecurity, it is incumbent of information and communication technologies to exercise a citizenship function by interrogating current information practices, as well as the information system itself, in order to safeguard the conditions of freedom and the democratic functioning of the institutions.

The European Communication Conference 2020, “Communication and Trust: building safe, sustainable and promising futures”, will be presented by the researcher Helena Sousa, member of the CECS’s Directive Board, in Lugano, Switzerland, during the ECC 2018.