Faculty of Communication and Public Relations

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Browsing Faculty of Communication and Public Relations by Author "Borțun, Dumitru"

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    Ethics management and social responsibility in Romanian IT industry (I) - Possible improvements of working conditions
    (National Institute for Research & Development in Informatics – ICI Bucharest, 2020) Cernat, Manuela; Borțun, Dumitru; Matei, Corina Sorana
    The main purpose of this article was to investigate, using the tools of qualitative research, the working conditions for Romanians working in the IT industry, and to assess their level of professional and social responsibility. According to recent research, jobs tend to be more and more polarized. We now have what we might call “bad jobs” and “good jobs” (Kalleberg, 2012). The Romanian IT sector was considered – from the perspective of public policy – a revolutionary sector where intelligence and innovation would lead to social progress. The public discourse framing this sector, the policies regulating this sector, and the relatively high wages would lead to the conclusion that these are “good jobs”. Our goal is to analyze, with scientific rigor, the working conditions in this sector by using the characteristics that are currently used at the level of the European Union to assess the quality of working life. The conclusions of our study would require further interpretations and suggestions in order to to bring about an improvement of the working conditions in this sector, as well as to address the lack of labour unions and of ethics management in Romanian IT industry.
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    HUMANISM AND TRANSHUMANISM－SHAPING AN IMPOSSIBLE DIALOGUE?
    ("Dimitrie Cantemir" Christian University of Bucharest., 2022) Borțun, Dumitru
    The term "transhumanism" has emerged in connection with the development of artificial intelligence and, more recently, with the robotization of thinking and communication. It imprints a new concern with philosophical debates on new topics related to transhumanism. Extensive fields of socio-humanistic sciences and disciplines are involved in these debates: ethics, aesthetics, axiology, communication sciences, psychology, psychosociology, anthropology, linguistics etc. One can also perceive the possible concerns of philosophers with the new status that man could have in relation to future forms of technological improvements of the human body, as well as to the robots created for various interactions with humans. A possible dethronement of Man from the position of supreme value of the known universe, of center of all approaches to knowledge, evaluation and transformation of reality ─ the ancient status of man, i.e. "measure of all things" (Protagoras) is quite debatable. Is this a reasonable concern? Is there enough data to suggest the "end of humanism"? Our paper tackles these questions.
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    Remote Controlled Individuals? The Future of Neuralink: Ethical Perspectives on the Human-Computer Interactions
    (SCITEPRESS – Science and Technology Publications, 2022) Cernat, Manuela; Borțun, Dumitru; Matei, Corina Sorana
    In an experiment presented to the public, a monkey with a Neuralink inserted in its brain is able interact directly with the computer. The Neuralink experiment opens the door to an extremely complex debate with questions ranging from ontology to epistemology. We explore the political economy of these cutting-edge technologies. What we aim to investigate are ethical questions, namely: is it ethical to install such a device in someone's brain and connect it to a computer? And who controls the computer, since it is plausible to assume that the communication could be bidirectional? We argue that this is in fact the key question we, as social scientists, IT specialists, and computer science specialists, have to ask and attempt to find answers to. Oftentimes, scientific discoveries could lead to disasters and in the era of "surveillance capitalism" we could easily imagine a scenario where companies are competing to gain access to our consciousness, and where our decisions are being marketed and sold to the higher bidder. Scientific discoveries do not occur in a purely rational society and questions of power, access, and control are vital for a future where technology and society are not at odds.
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    Rolul limbilor naturale în geneza identităţilor naţionale. Limba română ca resursă semiotică în construirea identităţii culturale
    (Faculty of Letters, 2018) Borțun, Dumitru
    Centenarul Marii Uniri poate fi o „resursă semiotică” (van Leeuwen) pentru identitatea naţională a românilor, dar aceasta presupune să răspundem la câteva întrebări: ce fel de identitate va trebui să întărească sau să restarteze ceremoniile comemorative? Sau ar fi mai profitabilă resetarea identităţii naţionale, acomodarea ei la noile condiţii istorice, denumite genetic „globalizare”? Pentru a răspunde la aceste întrebări, ar trebui să răspundem la altele: Este identitatea naţională imuabilă, anistorică, sau ea se re-defineşte de la o epocă istorică la alta? Centenarul trebuie să-i încurajeze pe români să rămână aşa cum sunt, sau ar trebui să-i îndemne să se schimbe, să-i încurajeze să accepte schimbarea şi să le indice lucrurile pe care să le schimbe, cu care nu pot avea succes în secolul XXI? În literatura de specialitate nu există o definiţie unică a identităţii naţionale, dar unii autori propun o clasificare a principalelor dimensiuni ale conceptului: convingerea subiectivă a unei persoane cu privire la naţiunea căreia aparţine formal, sau ar dori să aparţină; importanţa auto-identificării naţionale în raport cu alte elemente ale identităţii (etnie, limbă, religie etc.); emoţii şi sentimente cu privire la naţiune. După ce antropologii americani B. L. Whorf şi E. Sapir au lansat teoria determinării lingvistice a viziunilor despre lume (1921), tot mai mulţi cercetători au ajuns la concluzia că soarta oamenilor este puternic influenţată de limba lor maternă; aceasta le oferă categoriile mentale care le permit gândirea lumii şi înţelegerea locului lor în ea. Limba în care gândim şi visăm ne defineşte, în sensul că ne oferă o identitate; mai mult, ea ne deschide şi, totodată, ne limitează posibilităţile de cunoaştere şi autocunoaştere. Iată de ce şi limba română poate fi folosită ca resursă semiotică în reconstrucţia identităţii naţionale a românilor. În lucrare încercăm să arătăm ce ar trebui să facem pentru ca aniversarea Centenarului să aibă loc într-o notă decentă, responsabilă şi instructivă, să sancţioneze excesele etnocentriste, speculaţiile etnico-religioase, să încurajeze autocunoaşterea naţiunii române, să promoveze un patriotism civic, responsabil şi documentat, un „naţionalism în marginile adevărului”, cum cerea, la timpul său, Mihai Eminescu.
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    The Game of Reflection and the Power Over People. A Semiotic Approach to Communication
    (Springer, 2019) Borțun, Dumitru
    Ogden and Richards emphasized that in an act of communication the message does not exist before being coded; in addition, coding is a process of creation: the message self-generates in the communication process itself. As such, the term “receptor” should be replaced by the term “reader”—in other words, the “universal receptor” breaks into a multitude of readers, whose readings are culturally pre-determined. The significance of a sign is not given beforehand, it is born following the encounter between the message and the cultural loading with which the reader welcomes the message. As homo significans, we relate not to objects, but to “interpretants” (Peirce). For man, the world is a universe of interpretants. But this renders manipulation possible through partial truths or even fake news, i.e. through the plausible denaturation of reality. The acceptance of a phrase as true is not related to its relation with reality, but rather to its relation with the reader’s cultural loading. This paper describes the mechanism of semiosis that makes possible the exercise of power to have people over other people, through the management of their cultural loading.
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    The Unbearable Lightness of Financed Research
    (Scholars Junction, 2024) Matei, Corina Sorana; Borțun, Dumitru
    This paper aims at drawing the attention of national and international academic communities on an ethical issue which seems to have become systematic: the propensity of forging the scientific research process and its results, in various lines of activity. The manipulation of knowledge and the falsification of knowledge are directly connected to the current conditions and procedures of scholarships granting, of financing research projects, of publishing the results of the research and of promoting research and higher education staff. In order to highlight the manner in which these processes are linked and mutually amplified, we shall make use of the investigations results that the Italian researcher Enrico Bucci presents in his book The Bastard Scientists. Scientific Research Frauds (2015).