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2nd. WORLD CONGRESS OF SEMIOTIC
AND COMMUNICATION: THE MASS-MEDIA DIMENSION

(under the auspices of the  IASS)

Monterrey, Nuevo León, México
19-22 Octubre 2005

CALL FOR PAPERS

INTRODUCTION
The communication of masses represents a process made up of social imagination and symbolism on a planetary level. The mass-media makes up the machine which produces, and more importantly, transmits the content of the contemporary era.

The departments in Congress will look at, and revise the subjects that contribute to the construction of one of the “big theories” of the mass-media semiotic, analyzing the languages and discursive practices of different mass media and cultural industries as well as the correlation of an answer on the part of the receivers that oscillates between attitudes of complicity and conformity until a critical and purposeful counter-communication generated in the public space. The political communication and the cities with the knowledge will be compatible subjects to the general analysis.

The general subjects are the following ones, such that they will be able to be modified and to be extended:

TOWARDS A SEMIOTIC OF THE MASS MEDIA

The collateral mass-media of the masses and other industries like marketing, video games and the Internet, can be analyzed like production systems of the senses and symbolic reproduction of the reality (and of themselves via the auto referencing, since one such case has been studied in the case of the television) that they have been evolving in its processes of exchange and representation of the world (of “meta-reality”). In Congress the thematic of two slopes will be analyzed: on one hand, the centering of the analysis in the specificity of each ramification of the mass-media universe via the applied/implied semiotics as it is the case of cinema, television, comics, the press and marketing. On the other hand, the presumed restoration of the global speech in its stages of global/local/global with emphasis on the effects of ideological impact in the imaginary and its positioning in the symbolic of great mediatics audiences in the planetary panorama exerted by cultural industries and of the entertainment at national, regional and transnational level.

SOCIO-SEMIOTICS OF THE RECEPTION: THE “ENUNCIATIVE CONTRACT” AND THE “COMMUNICATIVE PACT” BETWEEN MEDIA AND RECEPTORS.

Umberto Eco demystified the illuminist image of “ideal reader” conceived by the emitter of the discursive practices (a novel writing, the producer of a televising serial, the creator of a political campaign, filmmaker seduced by its images and histories) and proposed the theory of the “aberrant reader” originated by the addressees of the messages (semiological guerrilla). Nevertheless before great means, apparently the hearings tend to bet by “communicational pacts” 'adopting complacent and uncritical attitudes in exchange for entertainment without limit. Although auto referencing mediatic is bursting into a new class of receiver. (Wilhalm, Bettetini, Nöth, et alt.)

MEDIATIC SEMIOSIS: THE OTHER SIDE OF THE REPRESENTATION

The processes of reading and the interpretation of messages and mediatic speeches of all nature (cinema, television, publishers, fashion, marketing, urban surroundings, video games, Internet) comprises of the limitless semiosis raised by Charles S. Peirce and developed by diverse authors with different points of view (Umberto Eco, Sebeok, Max Bense, Bonfantini Maximum, Francesco Casetti, Juan Magariños, Paolo Fabbri, Jeff Bernard, Eliseo Verón, Jean Umiker Sebeok, Richard Lanigan, Martin Krampen, Lucrecia Escudero) will be a key subject to develop, directed to the construction of one the “big theories” of the semiotic mass-media.

THE “INVISIBLES” INDIVIDUALS OF THE ENUNTIATION

Who defines the tone, the intentionality or the “point of view” in the statements of the televised or radio programming? Who determines the publishing line and the headlines in any one of the eight front pages of each newspaper? Who specifies the language and the multimediatics joining of an advertising campaign? These “invisible” individuals of the enunciation – creative zars behind the curtains – are the brain of the media machine. They concentrate the different parts of the global speech in each media. They are the last link in the speech practice from an ilocutive and a perlocutive dimension that will be analyzed via the semiopragmatic as a topic to discuss in the congress.

DISTRIBUTION AND CONTENT OF MEDIA: THE FIGHT FOR RATINGS

Some “moguls” or “mass-mediatic” tycoons of conglomerates of massive entertainment, including the complex systems of distribution of planetary reach, assert that the main function of audio-visual mass-media (television, cinema, industry of music, video, DVDs, etc) is to entertain and generate pleasure between the receivers as they send the bill of education and culture of the national states through the public devices of the same state or the civil media. In this context, the mediocre content focused to the mass public, accepted without criticism by these as the TV or ticket ratings grade them as they collect millions of dollars (Star wars III) represent the common use on the nations. To reopen arguments and develop an analysis “heuristics” and present different ways and theoretical proposals to this phenomenon, will be a task assigned to congress.

THE NEW PUBLIC ESPACES AND THE MEDIATIC DEMOCRACY: A SOCIO-SEMIOTIC VISION

The active mediatic citizen, that differentiates themselves from adopting pleasant attitudes without criticism like the rest, will express and manifest itself on the new public spaces where some media, like the independent press or the public access radio, have a growing presence imposing social movements and popular actives. The social semiosis linked to the discursive practices seen from the receptive plane, will be one of the topics to argue in congress.

FROM COMMUNICATION RESEARCH TO THE “MEDIALOGIE”: SPEECH ORDER AND ANALYSIS OF THE NEW AUDIO-VISUAL CULTURE

The reading process and interpretation of multiple mediatics phenomenons and the attitudes of the audiences gave the starting point for the decline of several lines of thoughts and heterodoxy points of view, from the USA functionalist and its counterpart, the Frankfurt School that anticipated the irruption of the cultural transnational industries and its product: mass culture. To the 60’s, where in Paris another critic stream from CECMAS through the magazine “Communications”, that gave shape with its proposals with the enlightening book from Umberto Eco where demithific the manichean debate between the apocalyptic and the integrated to the mass culture. To the end of the 70’s, when UNESCO made a new shape, the NOIC [New Order of the Information and Communication) topic that comes from the McBride inform, while in the 80’s and 90’s the interest will be focused in the main role of the cultural and political industries along with the communication ones established by the nations to a regional level, trying to stop and regularize in some sort of way the impetus of the mass media globalization to the day, that was unstoppable not respecting any boundary. Regis Debray tells us, in the 80’s that a new paradigm, the “medialogy”, from the point of view of the message transmission to make sense of a critical and cognitive level to the balkanized streams of the research communication.

THE “COMMUNICATIVE ACTION” AS A DEMOCRATIC RESULT: A PARTICIPANT SOCIETY

The meaning systems and the process of communication that make up the “semiotic function”, with bases on the definition from Louis Hjelmslev are the beginings of the communicative action in its conception of the democratic way of the search and success of consensus of the civil life. The communicative actions are a consubstantial part of the perception processes of the messages and answering mechanisms, acknowledgement, representation, appropriation, reproduction or rejection of the mediatic messages. A definition of the democratic regime is based on this political dialogue system and reasoning alternatives in the public affairs. The public space, none the less, in a way, the answer of the receptor toward the messages emitted by the media are unpredictable. This practice comes from the creation of the highly participative societies so that it helps the decision making of the State and other power means, as same as creation of public politics of high social impact.

SEMIOTIC AND POLITICAL COMMUNICATION (SOCIO-POLITICAL SPEECH)

The political communication represents in a democracy of the mass media, the total “semiosfera” as they cross in contradiction the discursive practices emitted by different political actors that the citizenship interprets and decodes in a defensive attitude or in plain open complicity by the individuals in the speech as the critical action and representation executed by the media that makes a new dimension to the counter communication speech located in public areas. In this context we must include the survey role and sampling that works as synchronic snapshots of public opinion toward some political problem of high social impact. Summarizing: a semiotic of political communication will focus its energies of analysis in the construction of meta-realities, of ideas that produce sentiment and are generated by discursive practices of all means semiopragmatic, also as in the reception process and reading like “enunciatation storms” that bring to light the interpretation or social semiosis inside the own citizenship universe located in the infinite public micro spaces. A critical reading alongside the aformentioned should be done and “demithification” of great enunciations or recits (super speeches) of the absolutist court where some occult “points of view” of persuasive tendency works; emitted and transmitted from power cores to provoke streams of opinion that widens the social entropy. This phenomenon will be analyzed in a congressional department.

THE EQUATION KNOWLEDGE CITIES / INFORMATION SOCIETIES: GLOBAL CHALLENGE

As another side of the mediatic phenomenon, its unable to escape the study of the correlation that exists between knowledge cities and information societies that is so narrow. An informed society is conscious, under a global economy ruled by the competitive principle, that its actual development and the future one its the result of the knowledge advancement of the emergent specialties such as biotechnology, mechatronics, informatics, aerospace industry, nanotechnology and the movement between society of informatics and the knowledge cities, which paradigm will come to be Silicon Valley, Boston and many other European and Asian metropolis, and it is narrowly linked with the digital communication phenomenon and from telecommunications, that are part of the new mediatic era and shape a world more and more interdependant in the globalization context.

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ABSTRACTS

COMUNICATION PROPOSALS

The abstracts (one or two pages) will have to be in a Word (*.doc) file, in Times New Roman font, size 12, single spaced and sent as an attachment to Pablo Espinosa Vera at the following e-mails:

isecom@institutodesemiotica.com

asemass@semioticamassmedia.com

isepol@semioticapolitica.com

The completed texts should be limited to ten pages whose reading time will be no longer than 15 minutes. This should be sent by attachment. A more complete version of the same text for the purpose of printing can be sent via diskette or CD after the reading in Congress. The bibliography noted must be specified in the following order:
Name of the author; title of the book (in cursive) or article title or essays (in quotations); number of pages; city, edition, year.

Date limit of reception of summaries: August 15, 2005

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PRE-INSCRIPTION

The pre-inscription to the Congress is informative and will have to be sent by Internet including the following data to the same e-mail addresses with the title: Pre-inscription.

- Name:
- City, State, Country:
- Postal (Zip) Code:
- Telephones and fax:
- Electronic mail:
- Institution name:
- Position:
- Direction:
- City, State, Country:
- Postal (Zip) Code:
- Telephones and fax: - Electronic mail:
- Section where it wishes to participate:
- Title of the conference (abstract):

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GENERAL INFORMATION

Home Page of Congress for to consult is the next, under construction:
www.asemass-congreso.com will include the following information:

CONGRESS INFORMATION:

- Date of the Congress: 19 to 22 of October of 2005.
- Place: Monterrey, Nuevo Leon; Mexico
- Organizing Committee
- Final Registry
- Cost of inscription/ Mode of payment
- Request of scholarships
- Host of the Congress: Universitary Library “Raúl Rangel Frías”
-Objective
- General Program: panels/ sections/ Tables of work
- Plenary Conferences
- Groups of discussion [coloquios]
- Profile of confirmed lecturers
- Artistic and cultural events
- Special presentations (magazine designs of the FELS, etc.)
- Social events (suppers, celebrations, etc.)

ASEMASS&COMGLOBAL INFORMATION: www.semioticamassmedia.com

GENERAL INFORMATION:

- Map of the city
- Airlines (aprox. prices)
- Hotels (aprox. prices)
-Restaurants, audiences, theaters, malls, etc.
- Public transport