ACROSS

Aspects of Social-Media Interaction and Society

Georgiana DRĂGHICI (POPESCU) — 2024-06-11

Social media has managed to revolutionise the whole world, not just the concept of public relations. How often have we felt the need to capture a beautiful holiday moment – a snapshot to share on social media accounts? How often have we wanted to share our best culinary experiences with friends or followers? The examples could go on and on, and whether we realize it or not, we end up influencing our followers by what we choose to post online.

We all use the internet to get the information we need almost every day. In this context, it’s no wonder that the phrase “google it” is on everyone’s lips.

Of course, the internet doesn’t just serve us personally. Organisations are now aware that most of the population is online. For this reason, they work hard to have a strong digital image and to reach their target audience. Whether we are talking about public or private institutions, small or large organisations, it is almost impossible for their representatives not to embrace the concept of online communication and marketing.

Values and Cultural Axes of the University Media and Linguistic Educational Portfolio

Dragoș VICOL — 2024-06-11

In the process of configuring the values and cultural axes intended to constitute the educational media and university linguistic portfolio, a primary role belongs to the flexibility of the studies. This principle presupposes elasticity and variety, essential becoming the "struggle" for the "recovery" of each student. The modern educational system is currently trying to free itself from the foundation of the restrictive, exclusively national framework, with studies being implemented at the regional, European and world levels. The awareness of this aspect, as a matter of priority, gives each level the quality of a mandatory link within SUPES.

The development and maturation of the educational-university concept from the perspective of the media and linguistic components will ensure fluent university and extra-university communication. These objectives are also achieved through an adequate knowledge of modern languages, through erudition and tenacity. At the same time, we will try to establish, in agreement with the Cross-Border Faculty of the "Dunarea de Jos" University in Galati (Romania), French-speaking, English-speaking, German-speaking courses, etc.

The values and cultural axes of the university's educational media and linguistic portfolio aim, with predilection, at applied university studies. The teaching staff is the major, responsible element that watches over the inseparability of theory and practice, their complementarity being mandatory and being part of the correlational benefit circuit. This communication must reflect the needs of the time.

In the context of autochthonous and international universityism (based on university classicism, fluent knowledge of foreign languages, applied university studies, internationalization), the values and cultural axes of educational media and university linguistic portfolio essentially include the correct assimilation of specialized terminology, the fostering of correct, coherent speech, training the skills of perfecting official documents. In this order of ideas, the fixed objectives will be reconfigured, by establishing didactic strategies in the selection of the content of the instructional-educational activity, the gradual amplification of the educational content, the systematization of knowledge through a linear or concentric approach, the appropriate combination of frontal didactic work with group work and with the individual activity of each student, the integration of audiovisual techniques in language teaching.

Hybrid Warfare, Trolls, Agents of Influence, and Useful Idiots

Cătălin NEGOIȚĂ — 2024-06-11

If, for the collocation “fake news”, the “birth date” can be approximated (the 2016 United States of America presidential election), about the concepts we will analyse in this material, it is very difficult to establish an initial date, and even harder to find the “godfather”. These concepts have somewhat remained in the shadows, being used only by specialists in the field. However, what happened in Europe and around the world, immediately after the beginning of the XXI century, made them come into prominence, to be intensively used, even excessively, and all political, social, and economic events that came out of the initial logic were suspected to be “wedged with” elements of hybrid warfare.

Le discours (auto)promotionnel : entre la rhétorique et le marketing

Lucica MOȚOC — 2024-06-11

(Self-)promotional speech is a field that lies at the intersection of rhetoric and marketing, as it involves highlighting qualities, achievements and products with the aim of convincing and arousing the interest of the target audience.

Rhetoric encompasses the use of persuasive techniques such as highlighting arguments, using figures of speech, manipulating emotions and constructing a convincing speech. On the other hand, marketing provides a strategic and tactical framework for promotional discourse. Marketing professionals rely on an in-depth understanding of the target market, competitors and consumer trends to develop effective promotional messages.

In the modern context, promotional discourse is often deployed across a variety of media and platforms, including advertising sites.

(Self)promotional speech skilfully combines the principles of rhetoric to persuade and convince with marketing strategies to effectively reach a target audience and promote products, services or ideas. It is a complex art that requires creativity, understanding of the audience and strategic skills.

The Influence of Empathy in Public Opinion Discourse

Enache TUȘA — 2024-06-11

The simple system of spreading an opinion or appreciation must not be confused with the broad system of forming public opinion. The criterion according to which an opinion is considered public opinion is not the degree of dissemination through mass media or other means but the degree of fidelity of the transmitted opinions that express what is common to the general public. The system of forming group opinions and the polarity feature of individual opinions should not be confused with the process of creating public opinion, whose action is to involve consensus, not to exclude it. The process of forming public opinion does not eliminate the confrontation of individual opinions on different issues. Discussions and confrontations between individual opinions or between currents of opinion, including some larger or smaller communities, do not constitute public opinion; they express the common point of view reached.

Politeness in Practice: Exploring Cultural Norms in Romanian Language Learning

Alexandra Monica TOMA — 2024-06-19

Politeness shapes interpersonal dynamics and mastering its norms is crucial for engaging in effective and meaningful interactions within a linguistic community. Hence, integrating politeness strategies into language teaching involves navigating cultural differences and contextual subtleties, in a process aimed at reframing linguistic behaviour. Teaching politeness is documented to enhance language proficiency and cultural competence, suggesting the importance of immersive language experiences and authentic communicative exchanges. This study investigates how Romanian language learners at different proficiency levels politeness in their communication, by employing discourse completion tasks, and analyses the results according to Brown and Levinson’s theoretical framework. The results indicate that higher proficiency students exhibit a more nuanced comprehension of politeness and tend to employ negative politeness more often in formal situations and positive politeness in informal ones. Additionally, the study sheds light on two opposing tendencies of non-native speakers of Romanian: the inclination to overuse politeness markers or to skip them entirely, both pointing to the need to enhance pragmalinguistic skills.

The Communication Contract Between the Public and the Press

Ștefania BEJAN — 2024-10-30

In a “liquid society”– as Umberto Eco characterised postmodernity as it is “crossed” by the crisis of the state, of ideologies and of the community ‒, an era of “unsettled individualism” and consumerism in the form of “bulimia without purpose” (Eco 2016, 7-8), responsible journalism is necessary, one that is interested in practices with cultural value and heralds the beginning of a new role for the media. It's about the daily inclusion of at least two pages of Internet site analysis, showing which ones are valuable and which ones spread “hoaxes or inaccuracies” (Ibidem, 363). On the one hand, this would represent an incentive to the public to read the press, and, on the other hand, the confirmation that not all users can distinguish “rambling ideas from well-articulated ones” (Ibidem, 362).

In the spirit of the uses and gratifications theory, the public's expectations of the mass media to satisfy needs such as “...to learn things about myself [...], to feel emotional, to feel less lonely [...], to get someone to do something for me” (Severin & Tankard Jr. 2004, 311) are to be rewarded and generate credibility and loyalty, regardless of whether one analyses the individual choices and uses or the common effects of media contents on the public (Drăgan 2007, 54-55). With all the limits and criticisms of this model: it is only the reaffirmation of the theories of selective influence (DeFleur & Ball-Rokeach 1999, 190), it exaggerates the power of the individual and the freedom of the consumer, it leads to the cancellation of the content of the message in favour of interpretation, etc., it proves viable in the public space dominated by New Media and in the context of the sources-press-public communication contract

Book Review: Alexandra-Monica TOMA, Forme şi structuri literare în comunicarea mediată de calculator: interferenţe între virtual, ficţional şi real

Delia OPREA — 2024-06-11

Alexandra-Monica Toma has been a university lecturer at the Cross-border Faculty of the “Dunarea de Jos” University of Galați since 2019. Having pursued her studies in philology at the same university, she successfully defended her doctoral thesis in 2011. Actively engaged in academic pursuits, she is affiliated with the “Limba noastră” Research Center. Her research interests primarily revolve around computer-mediated communication, pragmatics within the digital environment, and the pedagogy of teaching Romanian as a foreign language.

The volume FORME ŞI STRUCTURI LITERARE ÎN COMUNICAREA MEDIATĂ DE CALCULATOR: INTERFERENŢE ÎNTRE VIRTUAL, FICŢIONAL ŞI REAL (LITERARY FORMS AND STRUCTURES IN COMPUTER-MEDIATED COMMUNICATION: INTERFERENCES BETWEEN VIRTUAL, FICTIONAL, AND REAL), Galati University Press, 2020, is based on the author’s doctoral thesis with the same title. The work comprises four chapters: (1) Virtual Reality and its Literary Perceptions, (2) The Email and the Revitalization of the Epistolary Style, (3) The Narrativity of Computer Games, and (4) Blogs as an Extension of the Traditional Diary.