Agreement among Kappa Phi’s participants: The Conference was a success

Kappa Phi’s First International Communication Conference “Communication between Domination and Emancipation” was held in Banja Luka, Republika Srpska, Bosnia and Herzegovina from June 24 to June 26, 2016.

The conference was hosted by Banja Luka College of Communications Kappa Phi, and cohosted by the Faculty of Political Sciences, and the Department of English and Literature, Faculty of Philology, of the University of Banja Luka.

The keynotes, leading scholars in the field of communications, media, social theory and cultural studies, introduced the theme from different angles and perspectives.

Stig Hjarvard, professor of media studies at the Department of Media, Cognition and Communication at the University of Copenhagen, spoke about the “dynamics of conflicts in a mediatized world,” while Nick Couldry, professor of media, communications and social theory and department head in the Department of Media and Communications at the London School of Economics, gave a speech on “the social construction of reality.” Thomas Allmer, lecturer of social justice at Moray House School of Education at the University of Edinburgh, discussed “social media and capitalism in light of communication between domination and emancipation,” and Tomislav Longinović, professor of Slavic and comparative literature and visual culture at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, spoke about “translation as intercultural communication.” Aleksandar Bogdanić, professor of communications at the Banja Luka College of Communications and associate professor of communication studies at the University of Banja Luka, offered a historical introduction to the ideas that shaped the views on communication as domination or emancipation.

The participants in the conference presented their papers on topics such as the discursive investigations of gender and identification of educational pitfalls and paradigms of communication, media and dominance relationships and challenges of journalism practices and political reconciliation.

The participants had the opportunity to exchange ideas and broaden their knowledge about the potentials of communication in contemporary society. The shared view among the conference participants is that the event was a fruitful and very useful academic experience.

This was the first international communications conference held in Banja Luka.

Banja Luka College of Communications Kappa Phi is an independent, non-profit institution of higher education, founded in 2000. This conference was organized as one of the events to mark 15 years of communication education at the school.