The 5th edition of the International Conference “Communication in Action:
From Theory to Practice and Back"
November 6th-8th 2025, Iași, Romania
The central theme of CIA 2025 is:
Toward a Paradigm Shift:
Understanding and Implementing Change
in Communication Science
We invite scholars, researchers, educators, and practitioners to reflect on change as a cross-cutting theme in communication science and practice.
Whether perceived as an opportunity for creative development and accelerated improvement, or regarded as disruption, displacement, or even decay, change invariably poses profound challenges for those responsible for communicating it and managing its meaning. Adequately responding to change often requires thoughtful communication with the multiple stakeholders that may be affected by it, in an attempt to ensure strategic insights into the (more or less desirable) transformations taking place. Effectively navigating change often requires making wise choices at every step. However, such wisdom is harder to obtain when the changes are based on radical novelties, and there is no available theoretical framework to provide certainties regarding the best way to handle them.
The current rise of generative AI represents a significant change. While the embedding of communication in digital environments has been a major topic of study over the past decades, what researchers were dealing with was still a form of human-centered expression, albeit in new formats and media. In spite of remarkable differences regarding the pace, the intensity, and the cognitive patterns that defined exposure to the content available online, as well as its production and its reception, communication was still taking place along the lines of classical theoretical frameworks. Generative AI, by contrast, introduces nonhuman agents into the communicative process. These nonhuman agents form a dynamic, heterogeneous, and impressively wide community, able to generate strings of signs that are relatively new without being creative per se: they are the result of a complex linguistic recycling, rephrasing, and reshaping of previously created content, according to formulas that are often opaque to human beings. This shift signals a transformation of a different magnitude, one that may call for deeper changes in communication theory and practice.
We therefore welcome contributions that use diverse methodologies to interrogate how professional and interpersonal communication is being redefined in this context.
As an overarching framework, we propose the following four tracks for CIA 2025:
Track 1. Understanding contemporary changes in content creation
- Intellectual property rights in the age of AI-generated content;
- Idea inflation and the changing value of creative work;
- Mitigating employee deskilling in creative labour;
- Redefining the boundaries of what counts as creative labour;
- The influence of AI on employee creativity.
Track 2. Understanding the highly digitized public sphere
- Documenting the rise of AI-powered deliberative platforms;
- The impact of Generative AI tools on misinformation and disinformation;
- Generative AI and information resilience;
- Generative AI and digital civic empowerment;
- AI tools for fake news debunking.
Track 3. Understanding new facets of interpersonal communication
- Parasocial relations with virtual influencers;
- Parsed selves for divergent digital audiences;
- Digital avatars of deceased individuals;
- Developing attachment ties and trust in chatbots;
- The role of AI in soothing loneliness.
Track 4. Changes in Communication Science education, research, policy, and regulation
- Redefining user privacy and user ownership over one's identity assets;
- Conceptualizing the activity of non-human actors in communicative processes;
- Regulating the activity of non-human actors in communicative processes;
- Skills that need to be prioritised in higher education programs;
- Using AI to generate ideas for new paradigms in communication science.
CONDITIONS FOR PARTICIPATION
- The application consists of submitting the title of the intended contribution, an abstract, and 5 to 7 keywords (the templates for abstracts and articles are on the conference website: www.fssp.uaic.ro/cia;). The submission languages are English and French. The conference also offers a special panel in the Romanian language.
- The authors notified of their paper's acceptance for the conference should prepare a 15-minute presentation in either English or French, except for the Romanian panel, which will be conducted in Romanian and has a limited number of fixed seats. Each presentation will be followed by a 10-minute session for comments and discussions.
Plenary Speakers
Professor at Paul Valéry University of
Montpellier 3
France
Professor in Communication Sciences at the University Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3
Associate Professor of English Language and Translation at the University of Salerno, Department of Political and Social Studies.
Vice President (Academic), at Gisma University of Applied Sciences.
ORGANISERS
Organiser
Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iaşi
is the oldest higher education
institution
in Romania.
Organiser
The Institute for Advanced Religious Studies and Internetworking Communication
Organiser
Gisma University of Applied Sciences
German International Graduate School of Management and Administration
Organiser
The Department of Political and Social Studies (DISPS)
from the University of Salerno (UNISA)