The Academy aims to give political communication the recognition it is lacking in South East Europe. Even some politicians seem to underestimate the importance of their aides who do political communication.
This year, the event brought together political communicators, journalists, and experts from across South East Europe and Germany who discussed current challenges of political communication in today’s media landscape. The Academy was opened by Christoph Plate, Director of the KAS Media Programme, and Yordan Bozhilov, Chairman of the Sofia Security Forum. In his opening remarks, Plate highlighted the polarisation of societies and advised to reflect whether their messages are reaching their targeted audiences. The first day was dedicated to topics such as the differences of political communication in authoritarian and democratic regimes, strategic communication, and also the practical experience of the Republic of Moldova. Valeriu Pașa, Chairman of WatchDog.MD, Andrey Vladov, Head of the Russia Desk at BBC Monitoring, and Andrei Avram, a specialist in strategic communication and international policy planning, underlined that StratCom is not just a nice word but a key component in safeguarding national resilience.
On the second conference day, Dr. Alina Bârgăoanu, Dean of the College of Communication and Public Relations at the National University of Political Studies and Public Administration in Bucharest, had a session on the relevance and influence of traditional media on modern politics. An important point of her presentation were the major changes that marked traditional media in the past decades: among others, the information-rich environments, the age of the smartphone and exponential technology development. According to her, this led to blurred distinctions, changes in the discourse and new developments in the agenda setting. The following session led by Simon Bölts, Head of AI, Innovation & Consulting at Cosmonauts & Kings, delved deeper into political messaging in the digital age. He explored the rise and continuous evolution of digital platforms in political communication. Furthermore, he presented a chronological recap of the usage of different platforms and gave practical examples for using the new technologies during political campaigns.
The next part of the agenda was dedicated to speechwriting and was held by Michael Dobis, political speechwriter from Germany and former KAS Scholar. According to him, a good speech is one that is formed on the touchpoints of politician’s views and the audience. He provided the attendees with practical advices such as including short personal stories, using metaphors when appropriate and leaving a good key message. Another important discussion was about crisis communication in which Christoph Plate and Simon Bölts, together with Mira Radenovic, State Secretary – Deputy Minister for European Integration of Serbia, took part. The final part of the Academy was about building and maintaining a professional relationship between journalists and spokespersons. Andrey Vladov and Michael Dobis summarized that media and political communicators are not enemies.