On 13 and 14 June, the Spanish Journalism Society (SEP) held its twentieth congress on Pompeu Fabra University's Poblenou campus, which was entitled "Journalism in the present and the future. Research, teaching and innovation".

The meeting, co-organized jointly by the Department and the Faculty of Communication at UPF, aimed to be a forum for reflection on the world of journalism and communication in general.

The inauguration of the XX International Congress of the Spanish Journalism Society, which brought together more than 200 internationally renowned speakers to present their latest research, was chaired by Jaume Casals, rector of UPF, and took place in the auditorium on the Poblenou campus on 13 June.

Those attending included Miguel Rodrigo, director of the Department of Communication at UPF; Concha Edo, president of the SEP and Sergi Cortiñas, lecturer in the Department of Communication at UPF and president of the congress.

Then Peter Golding, editor of the academic journal European Journal of Communication and a professor at Northumbria University (Newcastle, United Kingdom), gave the inaugural lecture on "Research in Media and Communications - some thoughts on publication and development". The speaker was introduced and the session was chaired by Josep Fernández Cavia, lecturer at the Department of Communication at UPF.

Communications, lectures and a debate on the journalism of the future

This conference, which paid tribute to Josep M. Casasús, the co-founder of the SEP, on the occasion of his becoming an emeritus lecturer at UPF, continued throughout Friday 13th and the morning of Saturday 14th, and the programme included various communications in parallel sessions, as well plenary lectures and the assembly of members of the SEP.

Events included the roundtable " What will journalism be like in the year 2050?", with the participation of Javier Díaz Noci, professor of Journalism at UPF, who also chaired the discussion; the journalists Milagros Pérez Oliva (El País) and Enric Sierra (La Vanguardia) and Lucía Castellón, lecturer at Universidad Mayor in Chile.

Yariv Tsfati, lecturer at the University of Haifa in Israel and an expert on public opinion and media skepticism, gave the closing lecture entitled "Should We Trust Trust? What Journalists and Scholars Can Learn From Media Trust Research". Finally, Concha Edo, Sergi Cortiñas and Xavier Ruiz-Collantes, Dean of the Faculty of Communication, spoke a few words to close.

The objective of the Spanish Journalism Society (SEP), which was founded in 1989, is to foster studies aimed at journalistic communication, and the Society includes university researchers and teaching staff.