BNRU Hosts International Academic Conference on the Media

The conference was dedicated to the memory of BNRU's Professor Maria Kazak, who we lost recently. The event was supported by the Russian Foundation for Basic Research, and was organised by BNRU, Bergamo State University's Department of Slavic Studies from Italy, and the University of Belgrade's Centre for Russian Studies, and the Institute for Political Studies, both from Serbia. It follows on from a conference held in Belgrade on the 27^th September. This time the conference brought together more than 150 academics, from all the major universities of Russia as well as the organisers, and welcomed guests from France's Sorbonne University in Paris and the University of Bari in Italy.

Dr Vladimir Kuchmisty, BNRU's Vice-Rector for International Cooperation, welcomed delegates with a reiteration of the reason for such a conference, and underlined the important role played by learned analysis, by academics from disparate fields of study, of the complex processes by which nation speaks unto nation. After his address, a plenary session was held with topics pertinent to modern media research, such as: the discursive construction of national identity; the functional features of media text; discursive representations of social and political problems in the media; public media discourse in musical and literary works; and the literary understanding of problems of journalism. Among the other forums were: the development of language and style in media discourse; media interpretation from the standpoint of the theory of journalism and media criticism; the transformation of discursive practices in the latest media formats; critical analysis of the axiology of media discourse, and the visualisation of media content.
The conference allowed the organisers to identify new areas for inter-university and international cooperation, and ideas about what to discuss in future conferences.