This paper analyzes the outcomes of a game-based educational process aiming to strengthen resilience to fake news. An innovative approach that considers linguistic choices as bases for manipulating information is used in an online classroom environment, students in communication being invited to understand, explain and reflect upon framing and information credibility, using as a topic of inquiry the refugee crisis of 2021 in Romania. Cognitive learning outcomes as well as learning dynamics were assessed using pre- and end-of game surveys. The results of the game are discussed in relation with the instructional goal to facilitate the understanding of communicative social actions, learning about disinformation that is deliberately misleading, as well as finding ways to break the disinformation code. The debriefing discussions after each stage of the game encouraged students to reflect upon their newly gained insights and increase their critical thinking capacity, in the effort to ensure a sustainable education in communication studies. The paper has the potential to enrich the educational strategies with innovative methods helping future professionals navigate the complex world of media messages.

Media Literacy (ML) focuses on educating different categories of public (children, young people and adults), in both formal and informal settings, to critically and consciously consume mediated messages. It encompasses various skills, such as critical thinking, problem solving, autonomy, communication and participation. Although ML is far from being a unified field, there are a number of concepts, approaches and competencies that tend to share a common ground. In addition, despite the fact that there is a vigorous development of ML initiatives worldwide, in Romania the critical deconstruction of media messages is only scarcely present, within narrow niches.

Framing is the process of selecting certain aspects from the perceived reality and placing them prominently within messages, in order to promote a particular definition of the situation , a certain causal interpretation , a certain moral evaluation and a proposal for some remedies. During social movements or protests , especially in an era of post truth, alternative facts and fake news , framing is relevant in different ways of constructing and interpreting messages. Framing is a dynamic process, consisting in collective and ongoing shaping and reshaping of frames by protesters and audiences, in order to mobilize adherents, appeal to authorities and silence opponents. Social media enables social movement activists and participants to organize offline protests and to expand repertoires of action. Online platforms (social networks, etc.) facilitate dissemination of collective action messages and recruiting of supporters. Also, social media influence frame alignment processes of social movements.

This paper aims to present culture jamming as a rhetorical practice (semantic activism). Culture jamming is an anticonsumerist resistance strategy, a countercultural tactic and a critical practice consisting in manipulation of media and other public discourses by artists and activists, in order to challenge the dominant memes, to subvert the mainstream (cultural, political and commercial) messages, using their own discourses and altering them to create alternative meanings. Culture jamming exploits intertextualty and counterframing, in different ways of deconstructing and re-constructing hegemonic messages, using allusion, irony and parody as polemical devices. Also, perspective by incongruity is used: oddly juxtaposed symbols that influence audiences to adopt new perspectives and create new insights. Cultural jammers are questioning the consumerist and corporate worldviews.

This paper aims to show the link between rhetoric and memes in advertising discourse. Digital advertising uses memes as availability cascade tools for commercial propaganda. In contemporary economies of attention, it is critical to capture the interest of consumers and memes can help. Memes are cultural units that are passed on to another person or group. Memes have become extremely valuable assets for brands, since they have built-in audiences that recognize and resonate with them. Not only memes can serve as rhetorical loci: repositories of largely shared ideas and beliefs, but also, they can be used as genuine rhetorical concepts.

This paper aims to show how the consumers shape their identities via advertising rhetoric. The contemporary advertising industry is defining and cultivating customers identity, using tactics such as mental simulation and narrative transportation, based on data-driven social profiling. The consumers are lured in constructing the types of persona which marketers strive to establish, engaging in what I call digital bovarism: an idealized, glamorized and, ultimately, fictional representation of themselves, developed through alienating rhetorical visions. This rhetorical process can be understood using symbolic convergence theory and fantasy-theme analysis, as the individual’s efforts to be unique result in more similarity via mimetic practices of consumption.