I am pleased to report that the 20th International Communication Symposium, entitled Communication in the Millennium, was successfully held from 6-8 November 2024. This year marked the 20th anniversary of the event, which was organised in collaboration with Anadolu University, the University of Texas at Austin and Atatürk University, where I serve as the Founding Co-Chairman and Chairman of the Organising Committee.
Here is my speech at the opening session....
First of all, I would like to welcome you all with respect and appreciation with the pleasure of organizing the 20th International Communication Symposium on the 101st anniversary of our Republic.
With the participation of 143 academics and experts from 12 countries, 90 papers and 11 keynote speeches, welcome to this happy opening ceremony of this year's gathering.
At the beginning of my speech, I would also like to welcome our guests from abroad. I would like to thank you for accepting our invitation and taking the time to visit our country and share your valuable opinions with us.
Like the spring and winter of the seasons, life has its reunions and separations. On this stage we call the world, we all show ourselves, play our game, live our own test and leave the stage.
Today, on the occasion of this meeting, we also commemorate with mercy Prof. Dr. Maxwell McCombs, one of the world's most important names in the field of communication sciences, whom we have recently said farewell to, one of the world's most important names in the field of communication sciences, with whom we established this symposium and brought it to these days, who has a very special and important place in my life personally, whom I have always felt his support for nearly a quarter of a century, sometimes as a teacher-student, sometimes as a father-son, sometimes as two close friends, whom we all respect, love and maybe remember in some way, our esteemed teacher, valuable human being. May his soul rest in peace.
I believe that our beloved professor is with us now, watching us and waving to us from above, together with our other deceased professors Prof. Dr. Uğur Demiray, Rüveyde Akyürek, Merter Oral, Robert Stevenson and Prof. Dr. Donald Shaw, who have supported this symposium until today and to whom we have dedicated this symposium in their names over the past 20 years.
In the presence of you, at this opening ceremony, I would like to convey my respect and love to them and thank them once again for the beauty they have brought to our world.
In this year's symposium and today's opening ceremony, we have very valuable guests and esteemed professors with us.
I would like to sincerely thank all our symposium participants who are and will be with us today both face-to-face and online, all my colleagues who will present papers, our dear students, all our friends who work as moderators or as an organizing team in our symposium organization, for their participation and support for the symposium.
If this symposium has been going on for more than 20 years, it is thanks to the contributions of all of us.
Many years ago, at the end of the 1990s, when my hair was blacker, my eyes were sharper and my heart was beating more excitedly, when I started to write my doctoral thesis on the effects of the media, I was introduced to the theory of agenda setting and with the limited possibilities provided by the internet access of that year, I started to exchange e-mails with Prof. Dr. Maxwell McCombs.
In 2001, after I completed my PhD thesis, together with my advisor Prof. Dr. Uğur Demiray, we invited Prof. McCombs, Prof. Shaw and Prof. Judith Litterst to Eskişehir. Together with our esteemed teacher Merter Oral, whom we remember with respect, we made a short tour of the country.
A year later, I went to the University of Texas at Austin with the scholarship I received from our professor and met my dear friend Prof. Dr. Serra Görpe, who was there as a visiting professor like me.
During our stay there, with the encouragement of Prof. Dr. Uğur Demiray and Prof. Dr. Suat Gezgin, together with Prof. Dr. McCombs and Prof. Görpe, we made the first arrangements for Communication in the Millennium.
In 2003, about 40 academics organized our first symposium in Austin.
To the present day, more than 1000 academics from more than 30 countries and more than 100 different universities have lent a hand and supported our events, which aim to increase communication and cooperation between Turkish and American communication scholars, to develop bridges between the two countries, and to offer a warm hand especially to young academics.
We have tried to hold and squeeze their hand in the strongest way possible, and somehow we have not let go.
When we look at the web pages of our symposium and the pages of our Communication in the Millennium group on Facebook and our archives there, we see the traces of the past years with some sadness, some happiness, some admiration and great pride.
Much has changed in the world and in Turkey in the past half century. We talked a lot about these in this symposium. That is why the main theme of this year's symposium is “changing world, changing media”.
In this year's symposium, we will be discussing not only the effects of social media, but also the benefits and drawbacks of artificial intelligence technology over the course of three days. We will try to better understand where the world has come from and where it is going.
I summarize communication in its simplest definition in three words: To understand, to be understood and to get along. I believe that when we understand ourselves better and then others better, we can be better understood and understood.
No matter what problem exists in the world today, we see that communication problems are behind it in one way or another. Therefore, I would like to underline the importance of these and similar meetings and discussions based on communication and cooperation.
While the faculties of communication in Turkey serve with departments of journalism, advertising, public relations, public relations, cinema, television, radio and design, we feel the lack of interpersonal communication departments, of which there are examples in the United States. I believe that more than ever, we need communication specialists who focus on human-to-human communication, who make more use of psychology, sociology and social psychology, and who put the individual, family, school, workplaces, organizations and civil society at the center.
Again, I would like to repeat that it would be of great benefit to add the subjects of Communication Skills to our education curriculum as a separate course, starting from primary education where we learn to read, write and count numbers.
As said by Confucius: “It is the lack of love that makes people incompatible. It is miscommunication that makes enemies. It is indifference that destroys all that is beautiful.”
Yunus Emre, the dervish who gave his name to this campus and whose tomb is in Eskişehir, has a famous saying: “There is a word that ends a war, there is a word that loses a head... A word that whitens the face of the one who knows his word, A word that makes the work right for the one who knows his word...
Without further delay, I would like to thank the Rectorate of Anadolu and our Rector Prof. Dr. Kemal Şenocak and his team for making this organization possible, the Dean of our Faculty of Communication Sciences Prof. Dr. Bülend Aydın Ertekin, the head of our Department of Journalism Prof. Dr. İncilay Cangöz, as well as Kemal Şenocak and his team, Prof. Dr. Bülend Aydın Ertekin, Dean of our Faculty of Communication Sciences, Prof. Dr. İncilay Cangöz, Head of our Journalism Department, as well as all my friends and colleagues who took on the task of moderating the symposium program one by one, my dear teammates who took part in the organizing committee, the Corporate Communication Unit of our University and Atatürk University Faculty of Communication, especially Prof. Dr. Besim Yıldırım.
I would also like to thank the Presidency of TÜBİTAK for supporting our symposium this year and honoring us with their contributions.
As I conclude my remarks, I would like to remind the words of Hz. Ali who said “I will be the slave of anyone who teaches me one single letter”. I would like to gratefully thank all my professors who taught me not one but thousands of letters. I would like to express that if we are here in front of you today, we are the result of their efforts.
I would like to take this opportunity to express my gratitude to my esteemed professors Prof. Dr. Ali Atıf Bir and Prof. Dr. Suat Gezgin, and to all our professors who have supported this symposium by coming from out of town and abroad or online, and who will give keynote speeches.
In especially, I would like to thank you, our participants and guests, for making this symposium meaningful with your presence, and I wish you all a good symposium.
I would like to thank you, all of you here today, for making this symposium meaningful with your presence. I hope it will be a nice symposium for all of us and a nice visit for you.
I express my respect and regards.
Prof Dr Erkan Yüksel