Cornelia ILIE, Introduction

This special issue of the International Journal of Cross-Cultural Studies and Environmental Communication offers a peer-reviewed selection of thematically representative papers presented at the 4th ESTIDIA Conference hosted by Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski”, on 29-30 September 2017. The conference, whose title was “Dialogues without Borders: Strategies of Interpersonal and Inter-group Communication”, brought together an international group of junior and established scholars representing a wide range of disciplines and research approaches to dialogic strategies of interpersonal and inter-group communication. One of the major goals of the contributions included in the present issue is to highlight the role of context-specific communication practices in dealing, from different disciplinary perspectives, with challenging situations emerging in interpersonal and inter-group encounters in 21st century societies, and mainly with the representation of individual and group migration processes, culture-specific perceptions of migrants/migration, as well as online and offline discourses about migrants.

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