CCS and DCLL Hosts Seminar About Global Communications
Photo by Joanne Marie Bolo
The Carolinian Communications Society (CCS), in partnership with the Department of Communications, Linguistics and Literature (DCLL), hosted its “Gateway to Global Communications” seminar at the Fr. Harold Rigney Hall of the University of San Carlos-Talamban Campus (USC-TC) last April 2, 2019. The seminar was attended by the DCLL students as well as the USC Senior High School (SHS) students of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) and the Humanities and Social Sciences (HUMSS) strands.
The main speaker of the event was Dr. Pandeli Pani, an Albanian journalist based in Germany who has been working as a journalist for more than 25 years. As the main focus of the seminar, he discussed about the media coverage of the migration crisis in Europe.
The seminar was conceptualized by the first year Communication-Media students as part of the requirements of their journalism practices class headed by Karlon Rama, MMS, CSP. Aaron Bruce Clarin, the president of CCS, said that Rama invited Dr. Pani to visit Cebu to do a lecture for the class but it was later elevated as a seminar. Clarin said they wanted to share Pani’s expertise not just to the Communication students but to the Carolinian community as well.
The program began with the opening remarks delivered by Sunliegh Gador, Ph.D, the chairperson of DCLL. She said that one of the objectives of the seminar was to understand the value of effective communication so that people can understand other cultures as well as their own in this globalized world.
Following the opening remarks was Dr. Pani’s lecture. He began the lecture by saying that it was the first time that he delivered a lecture in a seminar attended by a huge group of people.
Dr. Pani stated that the usage of the language in reporting about the European migration crisis by the media influenced the public’s perception of the crisis. He presented various examples of how the European media covered the crisis. Including how pictures circulated on social media and were taken out of context to portray the Syrian refugees in a negative light,t feeding the public of Britain’s fear of refugees, resulting in the majority of the British public to vote for the United Kingdom to leave the European Union (EU). He concluded his lecture by highlighting that the media should be careful in using language in covering an issue as it shapes the public’s perception of a certain issue.
Rama was brought in to reflect on Pani’s lecture, in which he localized the context of the lecture by bringing up the issue of Chinese workers migrating to the Philippines. He said that as a result of the Philippine government not providing jobs to Filipinos in the country, its own countrymen began migrating to other countries to look for job opportunities, citing the absence of knowledge on how internal migration works as the reason why the specific issue of Filipino migration is not nauncely discussed.
The seminar also used the opportunity to showcase the talents of the freshmen Communications-Media students during intermissions. The first performer was Paula Christiane Pagalan, who performed an ukulele rendition of “Young and Beautiful” by Lana Del Rey. The second performer was the dance group CLIQUE, who performed an encore of their debut performance that won them the championship title last March 25 during the first “Sadsad sa SAS” competition during SAS Week.
Joseleanor Magno, a faculty member of the DCLL, was brought in to deliver the closing remarks of the seminar. She thanked the SHS and the DCLL students for attending the event and echoed Pani’s earlier statement, saying that the careful usage of language is crucial in reporting sensitive information as it continues to shape public perception.
