The International Journal of Communication is an online, multi-media, interdisciplinary, academic journal that adheres to the highest standards of peer review and engages established and emerging scholars from anywhere in the world.
USC Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism
What Are Media? A Hedonic Model for the Second Digital Convergence
Key questions for media scholarship hinge on defining its object: What are media today? What are media industries and companies? Traditionally, media activities were viewed as binary—either media or not. However, in a second wave of digital convergence, media-related activities permeate many economic activities, raising delineation questions. To address this, we propose a model and empirical approach to measure the degrees of involvement in various media activities on a continuous scale of mediality. Rather than strictly defining media, we deconstruct activities into attributes and assign weights and values. The model uses two interlinked formulas to calculate the media intensity for industries and companies. By surveying more than 150 media experts and using the model, we generate scores for 48 industries and 50 companies and demonstrate the usefulness of this tool for policymaking, industry strategy, and media scholarship.
media attributes, content production, content distribution, media industry, media intensity, media definition, big tech, mediality, digital convergence, hedonic model
Copyright (c) 2026 Eli M. Noam, Gregory Ferrell Lowe, Jason Adam Buckweitz https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Wunpini Fatimata Mohammed, Media, Culture, and Decolonization: Re-righting the Subaltern Histories of Ghana
Copyright (c) 2026 Ignatius G. D. Suglo https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Christopher Pinney with the PhotoDemos Collective (Eds.), Citizens of Photography: The Camera and the Political Imagination
Copyright (c) 2026 Kaitlyn E. Rich https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Zeynep Bulut, Building a Voice: Sound, Surface, Skin
Copyright (c) 2026 Can Cui https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Not Entirely Artificial, Not That Intelligent| AI and Communication Research: A Conversation on Hype, Contexts, and Practices (Part 1)
On June 9, 2025, the DAN Department of Communication at Tel Aviv University convened a roundtable to explore the evolving intersections of artificial intelligence and communication research. The event brought together communication scholars from multiple universities in Israel for a wide-ranging conversation about AI’s place in the field of communication—as an object of study, a methodological tool, and, increasingly, as part of a broader cultural and technological climate that shapes new horizons for analytical thinking. The article is an edited and truncated version of the panel: “AI in Communication Research.” The panel was hosted and moderated by Dr. Hadar Levy-Landesberg and Dr. Roni Danziger and features Dr. Aya Yadlin, Dr. Ido Ramati, Dr. Lidor Ivan, and Dr. Ilan Manor.
Copyright (c) 2026 Roni Danziger, Hadar Levy-Landesberg, Aya Yadlin, Ido Ramati, Lidor Ivan, Ilan Manor https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Big Data Discourses| Big Data Discourses: Introduction to the Special Section
Big data discourses are integral to how we come to understand and engage with datafication. This IJoC Special Section explores the semantics of big data in contemporary society. By weaving together three central themes—big data’s materiality, the role of emerging technologies, and the sensemaking around datafication—it interrogates how communication, imagination, and social practices shape and are shaped by the expanding landscape of data-driven innovation. The contributions offer interdisciplinary perspectives on the semantics, imaginaries, and social implications of big data, drawing on empirical research and critical theory to illuminate the evolving relationship between technology, discourse, and meaning-making in the digital age.
Copyright (c) 2026 Charlotte Knorr, Christian Pentzold https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Anti-Media Media: A Normative Approach to Media Positionality
Partisan media gained increasing traction as debates regarding disinformation, polarization, anti-media populism, and media bias have drawn attention to the rise of nonmainstream media outlets. But what does “partisan media” mean, and is it the right framework for exploring current changes to the information environment? This article claims the term “partisan media” is lacking because (a) conceptually, it is too vague and all-embracing to serve as a useful analytical category; (b) historically, it was shaped by a U.S.-centric vision of media and society, assuming objectivity as an organizing force of journalism and a two-party political system; (c) normatively, it fails to capture the nature of media outlets that weaponize the facade of journalism against the roles assigned to media in democratic theory. Drawing on media roles literature and empirical evidence, this study proposes an alternative approach, distinguishing media from anti-media media, based on facticity, loyalty, plurality, and solidarity. The article calls to measure media organizations on their societal merits through their position on a democratic spectrum, thus offering an urgent intervention in the field.
partisan media, disinformation, polarization, media capture, U.S.-centrism, bias
Copyright (c) 2026 Ayala Panievsky https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Burcu Baykurt, Smart as a City: The Politics of Test-bed Urbanism
Copyright (c) 2026 Jian Xiao https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
The Politics of Diversity: Netflix and the Transformation of Korean Drama Production in the Streaming Era
This study examines the impact of Netflix on the diversity of Korean drama production in the global streaming era. Drawing on Napoli’s framework, it analyzes changes in source diversity (production companies) and content diversity (genres) across three distribution systems: terrestrial broadcasters, capital-intensive general programming and cable channels, and Netflix originals. Combining interviews with industry insiders and quantitative concentration measures of Korean dramas released between 2021 and 2023 (N = 200), this study identifies a paradoxical pattern in which Netflix expands genre diversity while also reinforcing existing patterns of capital concentration in Korean drama production. These findings suggest Korean cultural production is increasingly integrated into global value chains and reoriented toward global markets, raising critical questions about the qualitative dimensions of diversity.
Netflix, diversity, Korean drama, streaming television, drama production
Copyright (c) 2026 Woochul Kim https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Not Entirely Artificial, Not That Intelligent| AI and Communication Research: A Conversation on Trust, Authenticity, and (Emerging) Futures (Part 2)
Big Data Discourses| A Model of Frame Categories for Analyzing Media Discourse of Emerging Technologies
This article presents a model of frame categories for analyzing media discourse about emerging technologies, applying it to 2 original case studies on UK news coverage of big data and generative artificial intelligence (gen-AI). The Frame Categories for Emerging Technologies (FCET) model offers 4 categories (Conceptualization, Newness, User Experience, and Evaluation) to allow researchers to identify frames inductively while affording easy and effective comparisons across studies. The empirical results demonstrate this, showing that the news included frames unique to each technology (such as Vast for big data and Human-Like for gen-AI), as well as shared frames such as Revolutionary and Important. This article contributes to the literature on media discourse of emerging technologies and offers a methodological approach to improve the quality and comparability of future studies in this area.
Copyright (c) 2026 Emma Kaylee Graves-Sandriman https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Bo Ruberg, How to Queer the World: Radical Worldbuilding through Video Games
Copyright (c) 2026 Sabrina "Bri" Sonner https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
From Navigating Discrimination to Developing Professional Digital Intimacy: How Indonesian LGBTQ+ Users Harness the Affordances of Healthcare Apps
This article investigates how lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, and queer (LGBTQ+) Indonesian users engage with healthcare apps, addressing the challenges they face in accessing inclusive and affirming digital health services within a sociopolitical environment that often marginalizes LGBTQ+ identities. Drawing on 21 in-depth interviews with LGBTQ+ Indonesian users and the media go-along method to trace their interactions with healthcare apps, this study examines LGBTQ+ users’ experiences in navigating and accessing medical services through mobile applications. The study conceptualizes “professional digital intimacy” to explain how LGBTQ+ users strategically use platform affordances to connect with medical practitioners. Establishing this form of intimacy allows LGBTQ+ users to access health services while mitigating the risks of discrimination. The study highlights the strategies LGBTQ+ users adopt to construct, negotiate, and selectively disclose their identities when interacting with healthcare apps, demonstrating how these strategies help them navigate stigma, ensure safety, and assert agency within a neoliberalized digital health landscape.
Copyright (c) 2026 Ferry Fauzi Hermawan, Verity Trott https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Big Data Discourses| Reframing Datafication: News Media Discourses on Big Data and AI
This article examines how the news media reshape discourses on technology, focusing on datafication between 2019 and 2024—from the decline of big data to the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) and generative tools such as ChatGPT. Media narratives now emphasize AI-driven technologies across multiple sectors, framed through diverse perspectives. To assess the discursive impact of AI datafication, two news corpora—English and Spanish—are analyzed using a critically informed, mixed approach combining topic modeling, linguistic framing, and critical discourse studies. The analysis identifies six key narratives: AI versus human, popularization of AI, technology as business, surveillance, data politics, and the datafied society. The study traces how discourses have evolved in the transition from big data to AI, revealing shifting meanings and power dynamics. Ultimately, it contributes to debates on technological governance by showing how news narratives engage with critical perspectives on datafication. The move from data to information raises epistemological and ethical challenges, redefining the risks and promises of innovation in society.
Copyright (c) 2026 Maria Cristina Paganoni, Gastón Becerra https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Benjamin Toff, Ruth Palmer, and Rasmus Kleis Nielsen, Avoiding the News: Reluctant Audiences for Journalism
Copyright (c) 2026 Trish Audette-Longo https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Can Pandora’s Box Be Closed? How People in Myanmar Access and Identify Trustworthy Information After the Coup
In 2012, Myanmar’s government abolished its censorship board, opening a Pandora’s box of unregulated free speech in the country’s previously cloistered information environment and raising hopes for a forthcoming transition to democracy. The military coup of 2021 would dash these hopes. To learn more about the media environment in countries that oscillate between democratization and authoritarianism, we use the case of military-ruled Myanmar, assessing how citizens’ trust in various news and information sources is affected by government efforts to reimpose information control. We conducted in-depth interviews with people from Myanmar and found that despite violent repression and media restrictions—or perhaps because of them—many in the country risk accessing news and information. Furthermore, the military’s brutality and its efforts to constrain communication have led to decreased trust in government media sources. Myanmar’s experiences offer a cautionary tale about the limitations of authoritarian governments, particularly those that have weak capacity, to restrict access to information once they have allowed some media freedom and Internet access.
media restrictions, Myanmar, military coup, democratic backsliding, digital resistance
Copyright (c) 2026 Ardeth Maung Thawnghmung, Jenifer Whitten-Woodring, Tun Tun Lynn, Catherine Abou-Khalil https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Big Data Discourses| Ask Me Anything! ◕‿◕ - How ChatGPT Got Hyped Into Being
This study reconstructs how chatbots like ChatGPT got hyped into being. It dissects the actors and dynamics that triggered, fueled, and disseminated the hype. Through the lens of hype studies, the article interrogates three empirical realms: (1) company websites where the chatbots are presented, (2) blog entries and newspaper interviews by prominent tech figures from Silicon Valley, and (3) New York Times articles. The study shows how chatbot hype is driven by a dynamic between privileged actors (hypers) and a media frenzy, both influencing and being carried by the public and politics alike. The following different interdependent building blocks in the chatbot hype are identified: (1) strategic ignorance—depicting large language model chatbots as knowledge models, (2) the weird and eerie—panicking about the uncanny side of chatbots, (3) the battle—staging a spectacle of competition among tech giants, and (4) crossing the line of the normal—praising the dualism of an apocalypse or a tech-religious calling. The article unravels the core circulated narrative that turns the hype into a powerful societal phenomenon.
Copyright (c) 2026 Jascha Bareis https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Phaedra C. Pezzullo, Beyond Straw Men: Plastic Pollution and Networked Cultures of Care
Copyright (c) 2026 Sohinee Bera https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Resilience in Newsrooms in Times of Authoritarian Resurgence: We Went From the Sky to Under the Ground
This article examines resilience as a framework for explaining how individual journalists cope in restrictive political environments, using Egypt and Algeria as case studies. Focusing on the everyday lifeworld of journalists, it investigates how their practices shape conditions of survival under unequal power dynamics. Drawing on semi structured interviews and life histories with a sample of dissenting journalists in both countries, the article explores the forms of resilience employed to withstand extreme pressures at the micro level. It argues that journalists deploy shifting strategies of adaptation to circumvent structural limitations while preserving professional gains achieved during previous periods of relative openness. Journalistic resilience manifests as pragmatic reworking of opportunities for “breathing,” far removed from the model of the heroic journalist defending freedoms at all costs. This reworking encompasses a spectrum of practices, ranging from “getting by” through adaptation, exit, silence to, in rare cases, radical voicing.
resilience, journalistic practices, authoritarian resurgence, reworking, voice
Copyright (c) 2026 Fatima El Issawi, Joshua E. Rigg https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Big Data Discourses| Curating AI Into Being: Hacks/Hackers as Amplifiers of Journalism’s Digital Futures
As a network of journalists and technologists, Hacks/Hackers represents a transformative force reshaping traditional journalistic practice. From advocating for data journalism to proposing automated journalism, Hacks/Hackers plays a crucial role in “curating AI into being” by advancing AI-driven communication as journalism’s digital future. Based on a media ethnography conducted across Germany, the United Kingdom, and the USA, the article demonstrates that this happens in a three-step process: (1) introducing AI as an emerging trend, (2) consolidating the vision through illustrative examples, and (3) normalizing it. Ultimately, Hacks/Hackers’ curation serves as a twofold amplifier—supporting a sociotechnical imaginary of AI not only as the future of journalism but also as a transformative force in society more broadly.
Copyright (c) 2026 Andreas Hepp https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Noor Ghazal Aswad, Searching for Solidarity: Revolutionary Dreams and Radical Social Movements
Copyright (c) 2026 Marwa Abdalla https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
“Freaks” and Raids: A Study of Networked Harassment and Misogyny in Turkey’s Authoritarian Landscape
This article examines how networked misogyny functions as a mechanism of authoritarian patriarchal control in Turkey's digital landscape. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 33 women and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and intersex (LGBTQI+) creators and digital ethnography, I ask: How do feminist and queer creators navigate gendered digital violence under authoritarian rule, and what do their experiences reveal about the relationship among state power, patriarchal ideology, and platform governance? I argue that networked misogyny in Turkey operates as a state-enabled system of gendered punishment extending offline patriarchal control into digital spaces. Building on Manne's framework of misogyny as enforcement and Banet-Weiser's concept of popular misogyny, I show how creators face two overlapping forms of harassment: identity-based attacks (targeting who they are) and genre-based attacks (targeting what they say). These are amplified by algorithmic bias, political repression, and platform inaction, making visibility a site of punishment—yet creators resist through strategic self-presentation and protective visibility. This study contributes to scholarship on digital activism under authoritarianism by showing how patriarchy, weaponized by authoritarian states, transforms platforms into infrastructures of gendered control.
Copyright (c) 2026 Nora Suren https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Big Data Discourses| Data Feelings: Everyday Affects and Sensory Dimensions of Personal Digital Data
People’s everyday encounters with digital technologies now create continuous flows of data, leaving digital traces that are algorithmically processed for several purposes. This article presents findings from a study exploring “data feelings”: the corporeal and affective entanglements people have with their personal digital data and the technologies that generate and process them. In online workshops, participants reflected on, defined, and discussed “data” and “personal data.” They then engaged in a writing activity that invited them to think creatively about their understandings, practices, and feelings related to datafied life. Analysis of participants’ responses and group discussions illuminates what matters to people about everyday datafication. This article focuses on the materiality, affects, sense-making, and impressions of personal data in participants’ understandings and speculative imaginaries. The conclusion reviews the spectrum of tangible and ephemeral data feelings that surfaced in the workshops and reflects on what our creative approach offers to critical data studies.
Copyright (c) 2026 Ash Watson, Deborah Lupton https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Visibility Under Constraint: Format Publics and the Politics of Visibility on TikTok Protest Videos During the Mahsa Amini Movement in Iran
Short-video platforms have become important sites for protest communication, yet we know little about how visibility is negotiated when appearing on camera entails political risk. This study examines TikTok videos produced during the Mahsa Amini (“Woman, Life, Freedom”) movement in Iran under conditions of state repression and surveillance. Drawing on a mixed-methods content analysis of 145 videos, the study analyzes how narrative style, symbolic imagery, audio cues, and hashtag practices relate to two dimensions of visibility: reach and engagement. Symbolic visuals, such as hair cutting and scarf burning, are associated with higher reach, while original speech, ambient sound, and protest chants predict higher engagement. Hashtag practices show no meaningful relationship with reach. Building on these findings, the article advances the concept of format publics and conceptualizes visibility under constraint as a layered condition shaped by state surveillance and platform curation.
TikTok, digital activism, algorithmic visibility, affective publics, Iran
Copyright (c) 2026 Fatemeh Oudlajani https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Dara Z. Strolovitch, When Bad Things Happen to Privileged People: Race, Gender, and What Makes a Crisis in America
Copyright (c) 2026 Aaron A. Toscano https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Big Data Discourses| Aesthetics of Boundless Insight: On the Scalar Ideology of the Data Imaginary
This article explores the ways in which popular cinema contributes to the data imaginary. We engage in a close reading of key data-related scenes in Minority Report (2002), Moneyball (2011), and Snowden (2016), and we examine their extensive reliance on formal means that are deeply entangled with cinema’s capacity for scalar distortion. Using critical scholarship on the concept of scale as our interpretative lens, we argue that the distinct aesthetic construction of filmic engagements with data-driven issues is politically performative: The sequences that contribute to the data imaginary evoke what we term the “aesthetics of boundless insight,” eminently aligned with the discourse that presents big data as the key to unlimited potential and as a powerful technology without a predetermined agenda.
Copyright (c) 2026 Magdalena Krysztoforska, Oliver Kenny https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
When Identities Go Viral: Themes and Aversiveness in TikTok Discourse on Kamala Harris’s Intersectional Identities During the 2024 U.S. Election
This study examines TikTok posts from the 2024 U.S. election to explore how users discussed Kamala Harris, with particular attention to references to her racial and gender identities. Using social representation theory and the polarized intersectionality framework, this study analyzed 28,435 TikTok posts to identify patterns in how Harris was portrayed as a woman of color in politics and to assess the quality of the discourse using aversiveness measures. A qualitative thematic analysis reveals the following themes: (1) identity-based attacks questioning her legitimacy, (2) counterarguments defending her, (3) voter enthusiasm, (4) denial of identity salience, and (5) post-election collective fate perceptions. A computational analysis of aversiveness shows that references to intersecting identities heightened overall aversiveness. Among these posts, those containing more Trump-related hashtags show higher aversiveness scores than those containing more Harris-related hashtags. These findings reflect ongoing tensions in the representation of women of color in politics and point to polarized intersectionality among TikTok users.
social representation, intersectionality, polarized intersectionality, aversive online content, TikTok, Kamala Harris, deliberative democracy
Copyright (c) 2026 Gyo Hyun Koo, Dasia Clemente https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Dal Yong Jin, Cultural Production of Hallyu in the Digital Platform Era: Industry Perspectives
Copyright (c) 2026 Miri Moon https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Big Data Discourse| A New Source of the Self? A Critical View on the Domestication of Data
While the term “big data” may have faded from public discourse, large-scale data collection and processing continue to underpin contemporary economic and social structures. Against this backdrop, this article critically examines the domestication of data—how individuals understand, integrate, and internalize data in everyday life. Drawing on domestication theory and empirical research conducted across nine towns and cities in England, this article argues that data now function as a part of epistemic (and moral) infrastructure. Central to this process is the presumed facticity of data, a tacit belief in data’s epistemic legitimacy and reality-value that subtly reconfigures self-understanding, everyday practices, and moral reasoning. Foregrounding reflexive engagement with data but also its centrality to everyday practice, this article contributes to theoretical debates on datafication and the lived experience of data systems.
Copyright (c) 2026 Jun Yu https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Curtis Marez, Producing Precarity: The Costs of Making TV in Poor Places
Copyright (c) 2026 David Frank https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Speculators Inside the Slop Factory: Shovelware and Financialized Game Development in Roblox
Roblox, launched in 2006 by Roblox Corporation, hosts more than 40 million player-created games and had 85.3 million daily users as of Q3 2024. The platform promotes game creation as an educational tool. Based on interviews with 17 Roblox creators, this article explores how players are drawn into game development. Unlike traditional platform labor, Roblox incentivizes creators through speculative financial gain rather than creative passion. These creators face both the precarity typical of game development and a winner-takes-all dynamic, intensifying cost-benefit calculations around asset use. This environment encourages speculative reuse of assets and manipulation of Robux, contributing to the rise of shovelware: games perceived as unoriginal and derivative because of their excessive use of premade assets. Ultimately, developers respond to transactional and precarious working practices, forged under restrictive platform governance, with churn—producing content rapidly and routinely in large quantities—as a financialized strategy with critical implications for cultural production.
digital labor, financialization, game engines, game industry, game production, game workers
Copyright (c) 2026 Daniel Nielsen, Aleena Chia https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Big Data Discourses| Deceptive Stories About Scale: Digital Technology, Public Services, and the Promise of Efficiency
“Blitzscaling”—the language and practice of rapidly scaling technology companies—can have significant consequences when pursued in public service delivery. From 2016 until it went bankrupt in 2023, health-tech start-up Babylon Health introduced discourses and practices of scaling to the United Kingdom’s National Health Service (NHS). While the company promised that its software and Artificial Intelligence (AI) would create efficiency, automated diagnosis, and faster access to service for increasing numbers of people, its integration into the service undermined central organizing features of the NHS, including equity of care and the epistemic authority of clinicians. A focus on working at speed also led to obfuscation of the nature of the company’s AI and software products to evade regulatory responsibility and to Babylon accessing and enclosing public data. Recommendations for continued commitments to principles of public service, including attention to relationships and multiple forms of knowledge, could benefit other public services contending with promised technological transformations.
Copyright (c) 2026 Alison B. Powell https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Between Duty and Discipline: Kantian Ideals and Techno-Governmental Realities in the European Union Artificial Intelligence Act and the United Nations Artificial Intelligence Framework
This study comparatively analyzes two major global AI governance frameworks—the European Union’s AI Act and the United Nations’ Governing AI for Humanity report—through the dual lenses of Kantian ethics and techno-governmentality. While previous research has focused on the ethical content of these policies, this study investigates the fundamental tension between their normative rhetoric and operational mechanisms. The findings reveal a critical paradox: While both documents articulate strong Kantian commitments to human dignity, autonomy, and rights, their implementation strategies rely heavily on techno-governmental logics—managing populations through surveillance, classification, and statistical risk assessment. The analysis highlights deep structural constraints, including the EU’s reliance on internal market competence, which subordinates rights to communitarian market standardization, and the “responsibility gap” in autonomous systems, rendering strict Kantian duty ethics structurally unfulfillable. Ultimately, the study argues that without robust participatory mechanisms, ethical AI governance risks becoming a tool shaped by power dynamics and bureaucratic control rather than moral protection. This research concludes that restoring human autonomy requires moving beyond technical compliance to democratically legitimized, inclusive decision making.
artificial intelligence, European Union AI regulation, United Nations AI report, EU Kantian AI ethics, UN risk-based AI regulation, techno-governmentality in AI, AI policy
Copyright (c) 2026 Mir Hasib, Lyombe Eko https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Karrmen Crey, Producing Sovereignty: The Rise of Indigenous Media in Canada
Copyright (c) 2026 Ian Reilly, Oluwasemilore Adeyemi https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Big Data Discourses| Data in India’s Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI): A Deliberative Policy Ecology Approach
At the 2023 G20 Summit held in New Delhi and afterwards, India and other multilateral entities made concerted efforts to accelerate conversations on Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) to enhance digital governance and sustainable development. This article traces its evolution over the last 20 years in India—from its early conception in 2006 as a digital ID for Below Poverty Line (BPL) families to its formalized nomenclature as Digital Public Infrastructure at the G20 summit. I then draw on the theoretical framework of the Deliberative Policy Ecology Approach (Raghunath, 2020, 2022) to examine how data have been imagined and deliberated as part of the DPI in India and internationally. The article concludes by analyzing the deliberative potential of DPI within the policy ecology and reflecting on the strengths and limitations of the Deliberative Policy Ecology Approach for this study.
Copyright (c) 2026 Preeti Raghunath https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
The Industrialization of Digital Entrepreneurship: The Case of Beauty Influencers in China’s Multichannel Networks Economy
With the rise of multichannel networks (MCNs), China’s influencer economy has developed along a highly industrialized trajectory. This article examines that process through the case of MCN-affiliated beauty influencers on Weibo. Drawing on a mixed-methods study of 17,629 posts from the top 100 beauty influencers, combining topic modeling with qualitative textual analysis, we identify 4 patterned domains of content production: commercial promotion, beauty professionalism, performative everydayness, and community engagement. Across these domains, we further trace three interrelated practices of industrialized entrepreneurship: scripted selfhood, industrialized intimacy, and commercial orchestration. These findings demonstrate how self-presentation, audience engagement, and content production are systematically manufactured through MCN mechanisms, platform logics, and commercial cycles, turning intimacy and self-expression into replicable resources for monetization. By centering the Chinese context, this study extends prior influencer scholarship by demonstrating how MCN-driven industrialization materializes in everyday influencer practices. It further advances a conceptual account of industrialized influencer labor, in which creativity, authenticity, and intimacy are institutionally structured and reproduced at scale.
social media influencers, digital entrepreneurship, influencer culture, multichannel networks (MCNs), creator economy, Chinese beauty influencers
Copyright (c) 2026 Qingyue Sun, Huiqian Lai, Runze Ding https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Robin L. Nabi and Jessica Gall Myrick (Eds.), Emotions in the Digital World: Exploring Affective Experience and Expression in Online Interactions
Copyright (c) 2026 Felicia Lu https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Big Data Discourses| Toward Disability Data Justice: A Critical Discussion of Disability and Big Data Discourses
The terms of inclusion/exclusion of disability in big data are ultimately connected to the kinds of discourses that inform disability in society. Since the rise of big data as a phenomenon, disability’s absence in it, especially in the data formations that underpin artificial intelligence and machine learning, is notable. However, nowhere are data sets and disability more connected than in disability censuses—underscored by the efforts of the Washington Group on Disability Statistics to create internationally comparable disability statistics. The divergence is clear: Why is international cooperation to incorporate disability in data collection gaining speed, yet disability bias and discrimination still pervade traditional and new kinds of data? In this article, we bring critical disability studies in conversation with critical data studies to consider how disability is valued in big data. We argue the importance of adopting a disability data justice approach to crip the normative structures that underpin disability data and to ensure that disabled people control and govern the data collected about them.
Copyright (c) 2026 Kuansong Victor Zhuang, Gerard Goggin https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Informational Sovereignty: The Commercial and Geopolitical Risk of Newsroom Dependency on Third-Party Infrastructure in Latin America
This article reveals significant market consolidation within the digital infrastructure of Latin American media. Extending the political economy of media literature from ownership to control over underlying infrastructure, it uses a newly constructed database of over 400 data points to analyze the online infrastructure of 18 media outlets across 6 Latin American countries, focusing on 11 key elements of the media stack. Findings indicate that dominant players, such as Alphabet and Meta, pose the greatest commercial risks to the analyzed media. Meanwhile, the U.S. government emerges as the greatest geopolitical risk, with 50–100% of providers across the analyzed elements operating under U.S. law, exposing Latin American media with similar infrastructural profiles to U.S. government policy. The article places these challenges in conversation with historical calls for a New World Information and Communication Order, which underlines that a robust understanding of media autonomy requires infrastructural autonomy.
digital infrastructure, online journalism, media dependency, political economy of media, Non-Aligned Movement, New World Information and Communication Order
Copyright (c) 2026 Juan Ortiz-Freuler https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Judit Bayer, Digital Media Regulation Within the European Union: A Framework for a New Media Order
Copyright (c) 2026 Guosong Shao https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Big Data Discourses| Cultural Motifs of Big Data in User-Generated Content: A Semiautomated Analysis of 10 Years of Discourse
This article examines the sensemaking around big data in user-generated content on Reddit, Facebook, and Twitter/X. Big data is not only a technology but also an issue of public concern. However, given that the term “big data” has been around for more than a decade, little is known about how the cultural motifs used to make sense of it have changed over time or how public discussions reverberate with—or dispute—elite framings in news and high-profile publications. To fill this gap, we use a semiautomated content analysis of discourse around big data over a period of 10 years. We focus on cultural motifs that anchor big data frames in sensemaking. Our analysis, which integrates manual annotation with automatic classification using a transformer-based language model, revealed three predominant cultural motifs of seven examined. These recurring motifs primarily emphasize themes of profit and prediction, the evolving datafication of society, or the pursuit of innovations for societal advancement. The motifs encapsulate a range of topics that point to a diversity of adjoining discourses on datafication writ large.
Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT)
Copyright (c) 2026 Charlotte Knorr, Andreas Niekler, Christian Pentzold https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Cultivating Self-Care: Health Television and the Internalization of Individual Responsibility for Health in Contemporary China
Encouraging personal responsibility for health is central to China’s policy response to rapid population aging, with mass media mobilized to support this goal. Drawing on cultivation theory, this study surveys 500 Chinese adults to examine how health television cultivates beliefs in personal responsibility for health and traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) self-care. TV viewing was positively associated with favorable TCM attitudes, perceived benefits of self-care, endorsement of cultural-moral values, and belief in personal health responsibility, with these links mediated by perceived source credibility. Belief in personal responsibility, positive TCM attitudes, and dissatisfaction with the health care system significantly predicted intentions to engage in TCM-based self-care. Findings highlight TV’s role in aligning health orientations with state priorities and cultural traditions.
cultivation, Chinese television, self-care, traditional Chinese medicine (TCM)
Copyright (c) 2026 Ge Zhu, Rachel Young https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Francesco Casetti, Screening Fears: On Protective Media
Copyright (c) 2026 Stephen Hickson https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Hybrid Platformism: Thailand’s Online Political Media Landscape
Thailand’s digital media landscape has been transformed by hybrid platformism, a fragmented and dynamic ecosystem shaped by journalists, influencers, and activists operating across social media platforms. This study explores how hybrid platformism reconfigures journalism, blurs boundaries between reporting and advocacy, and reshapes media power. While digital platforms have enabled dissenting voices, they have also deepened structural vulnerabilities, including financial precarity and political co-optation. Tracing the shift from partisan polyvalence to platform-driven media, this article analyzes Thailand’s evolving media system from a comparative perspective, with parallels to Indonesia and the Philippines. Hybrid platformism emerges as both a site of contestation and fragility.
hybrid platformism, Thailand, digital media, political protests
Copyright (c) 2026 Alexandra Colombier Vanijaka, Duncan McCargo https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Mora Matassi and Pablo J. Boczkowski, To Know Is to Compare: Studying Social Media Across Nations, Media, and Platforms
Copyright (c) 2026 Shahid Minhas https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Navigating Credibility on TikTok: How Young Adults Evaluate and Verify Information on the Platform
TikTok has become an important information source for young adults, yet little is known about how they assess the credibility of content encountered on the platform. This study builds on a combination of a 7-day diary study with semistructured qualitative interviews with 46 young adults (aged 18–24), providing nuanced insights into credibility assessments during everyday platform use. The findings reveal that participants are generally skeptical of TikTok’s overall credibility, but rely heavily on source authority as a heuristic for judging individual posts. Message characteristics play largely supportive roles, as TikTok’s affordances—particularly its entertainment orientation and aesthetics—make many cues ambiguous. Participants predominantly employ internal verification strategies, drawing on their own knowledge and intuition, and use external strategies only occasionally, mainly by checking on-platform comment sections. Our findings challenge the applicability of traditional credibility models and demonstrate the importance of considering platform affordances when studying credibility assessments.
credibility, information use, interview study, media diaries, TikTok, young adults
Copyright (c) 2026 Luise Anter, Anna Sophie Kümpel https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Emma L. Briant and Vian Bakir (Eds.), Routledge Handbook of the Influence Industry
Copyright (c) 2026 Rory Gates https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Media-Saturated and Morally Contested Teenage Lives: No Space or Time for Nonmedia Moments (and for Being Bored)?
This article examines how Norwegian teenagers morally assess their media use and how media experiences operate as a means of escaping boredom. Based on qualitative interviews with 24 adolescents, the analysis delineates 3 distinct types of media experiences: ambient, which are morally uncontentious and enrich mundane situations; attentive, which are considered morally “good” because they demand focus, foster insight, and cultivate virtues; and atomized; depicted with moral ambivalence, offering quick escapes, but sometimes leading to feelings of emptiness. This study contributes to understanding the difficulty of resisting instant gratification from omnipresent media when bored and argues that, despite their moral complexities, media remain crucial for a flourishing life.
attention, boredom, capabilities, media, media experience, media morality, social media, youth
Copyright (c) 2026 Marika Lüders https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Peter Neijens, Theo Araujo, Judith Möller, and Claes de Vreese (Eds.), Measuring Exposure and Attention to Media and Communication: Solutions to Wicked Problems
Copyright (c) 2026 Yuhui Zhu https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Angry Posts: Myanmar’s Anti-Military Rhetoric on the Internet
Since the military regime overthrew the democratically elected government in 2021, the world has raised serious concerns about human rights violations in Myanmar. In addition to international efforts calling on the military regime to cease violence, local pro-democracy activists have also undertaken various discursive strategies to mobilize civic action on social media. These online narratives are characterized by hate speech, mockery, and threatening remarks directed at individual soldiers rather than directly challenging the military regime. This article connects the concepts of affective publics with contentious repertoires and connective action, highlighting the dynamics of the affective turn in Myanmar’s pro-democracy rhetoric—manifested in how Burmese citizens use social media to create networked publics and protest communities. It demonstrates the normative role of sentiments, such as anger, in mobilizing support and shows how such affective publics share certain characteristics with digital populism, which may evolve into radicalized narratives that morally condemn “evil” soldiers.
Keywords: affective publics, connective action, contentious repertoire, protest community, pro-democracy rhetoric, everyday justice, Myanmar, military regime, digital activism
Copyright (c) 2026 Yao-Tai Li, Moh Moh Thet https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Giota Alevizou, The Web of Knowledge: Encyclopedias and Authority in the Digital Age
Copyright (c) 2026 Matthew A. Vetter https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Deep State Conspiracism and/as Disinformation: A Journey to the Heart of Democracy’s Truth Crisis
This article explores deep state (DS) conspiracism’s ambiguous relationship with disinformation. Applying cross-cultural discourse analysis and genealogical methods to the divergent valorizations of DS narratives, the study shows how they portray it variously as disinformation, misinformation, sinister actuality, mythological truth, and conceptual tool, arguing this inconsistency impels us to relocate disinformation from a universalist realm of false content to a contingent world of reciprocal political meaning making and outlining a more epistemologically robust approach to the truth-democracy relationship.
deep state, conspiracism, disinformation, discourse analysis, democracy
Copyright (c) 2026 Stephen Hutchings https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Rob Kitchin, Critical Data Studies: An A to Z Guide to Concepts and Methods
Copyright (c) 2026 Ivo Furman https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Communicating the Crisis or Misinforming the Public? Analyzing the AI-Generated Visual Rhetoric of the 2025 California Wildfires
In January 2025, catastrophic wildfires devastated Southern California, prompting a surge in AI-generated visuals across social media. While these visuals might have aimed to raise awareness, they have also distorted perceptions of the crisis’s scale, intensifying public fear and complicating emergency responses. This study depends on Foss’s visual rhetoric model to systematically examine the visual rhetoric of AI-generated visuals that spread during the wildfires. Through qualitative and quantitative analyses of visuals shared on X, we analyze the rhetorical strategies and purposes behind these visuals and assess public sentiment toward them. Our findings reveal how visual generative AI amplifies both the communicative power and the risks of misinformation in crisis visuals. The study contributes to the growing body of scholarship on visual misinformation and crisis communication. It offers empirical insights into how AI-generated visuals shape public perception during crises. The study concludes with theoretical and practical implications.
crisis communication, visual generative AI, visual misinformation, natural disasters, California wildfires
Copyright (c) 2026 Menna Elhosary, Barikisu Issaka, Inusah Mohammed, Balkisa Sissy, Sabena Abdul Raheem https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Jeffrey Boase, The Digital Bind: Constant Connectivity and the Reconfiguring of Family, Work, and Friendship
Copyright (c) 2026 S M Mehedi Zaman https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Shame, Suspicion, Surveillance, and Blame: The Neoliberal Undergirding of Stigma Experienced and Managed by Latinos/as in the United States
This study explores how neoliberal ideology shapes the experience and management of stigma among the fastest-growing demographic in the United States—Latinos/as. We adopt a communicative framework of neoliberal stigma to explore how Latinos/as perceived stigma associated with their identity and stigma management communication theory to outline how Latinos/as manage and cope with neoliberal stigma. Through interviews with 17 Latinos/as, we uncovered compounded layers of stigma that intertwine ethnic identity, immigrant stereotypes, and labels of illegality. In response, Latinos/as balanced resistance and self-preservation within a system that leaves little room for challenge. Notably, this study identifies “blame” as an additional mechanism of neoliberal stigma wherein Latinos/as are scapegoated for systemic social and economic difficulties. Furthermore, we highlight the hegemonic nature of neoliberalism by demonstrating how stigma management strategies can paradoxically sustain dominant socio-political ideologies, even when the intent is to resist them.
neoliberal stigma, stigma management communication, neoliberalism, immigration, in-depth interview
Copyright (c) 2026 Alcides Velasquez, Rikki A. Roscoe, Umar O. Ajetunmobi https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Héctor Beltrán, Code Work: Hacking Across the US/México Techno-Borderlands
Copyright (c) 2026 Shukadev Amgain https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
The Ventriloquial Configuring of Communication: International Communication Association Presidential Addresses as Legitimizing Rituals
Adopting a discursive perspective rooted in the Communicative Constitution of Organizations (CCO) tradition, we analyze 35 presidential addresses delivered at the International Communication Association (ICA) to show how they contribute to legitimizing the communication discipline. Drawing on Cooren’s ventriloquial framework, we argue that these addresses give voice to a range of figures, from specific events and the field’s “founding fathers” to a polysemous “we.” These addresses assemble figures into four performative configurations that suggest a course of action for strengthening disciplinary legitimacy: cooperation, subdisciplinarity, relevance, and reflexive theorizing. Conceptualizing disciplinary legitimation as resulting from such (re)configuration provides discursive granularity to theories of legitimation. It also advances CCO scholarship by showing that ventriloquism is not only about adding figures but also about creating qualitatively different configurations and by linking microtextual analysis to broader temporal trajectories.
Communicative Constitution of Organization (CCO)
Copyright (c) 2026 Nicolas Bencherki, Dominique Trudel https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Karen Tongson, Normporn: Queer Viewers and the TV That Soothes Us
Copyright (c) 2026 Em Hathaway https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
“I Am Not a Conspiracy Theorist, But . . .”: Communicative Norms in Conspiracy Theory Supporters’ Interactions With Other News Users in Germany, Israel, Sweden, and the United States
Belief in conspiracy theories (CTs) has gained considerable public visibility, raising concerns about supporters’ antidemocratic attitudes and resistance to evidence-based arguments. While there is ample research documenting such tendencies among dedicated CT communities, however, it is less clear how well these findings generalize toward other CT supporters closer to the societal mainstream. In this study, we analyze user commentary responding to German, Israeli, Swedish, and U.S. news coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic to examine how CT-related ideas are presented and contested within mainstream public discourse. Based on a pragma-dialectic analysis of CT-related controversies in user-generated commentary, we study which political and epistemic norms are invoked and practiced by CT supporters. We find that most individuals expressing support for CTs remain broadly committed to democratic pluralism and evidence-based argument, even if they frequently violate these norms in practice; instead, CT supporters’ rejection of institutional validation emerges as a key distinction.
conspiracy theories, contestation, public discourse, epistemic norms, democratic norms
Copyright (c) 2026 International Journal of Communication https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Julieta Brambila, Mexico’s Resilient Journalists: How Reporters Manage Risk and Cope with Violence
Copyright (c) 2026 Sumana Chattopadhyay https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
The Quotidian Web and the Accidental Archive
Video hosting sites like YouTube are commonly understood through their professional creators and viral content, but they are also rich, global repositories of cultural memory and everyday life. However, their opaque, algorithmically optimized, commercial structure poses challenges to research. We argue that such platforms function as “accidental archives” that capture details of quotidian life that often escape curatorial intention. To consider the unique insights into daily life that such archives preserve, we examine two other accidental archives: a collection of late 20th-century photos and the preserved ruins of Pompeii. We present a four-part mixed-methods approach to researching quotidian video: solving the technical problem of random sampling, conducting metadata analysis, using additional computational means to augment data, and qualitatively analyzing video content.
YouTube, research methods, social video, archives
Copyright (c) 2026 Ethan Zuckerman, Ryan McGrady https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Fan Yang, Disorienting Politics: Chimerican Media and Transpacific Entanglements
Copyright (c) 2026 Narmin Gezer https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Digital Feminism and Anti-Feminism in Interaction: Relational Dynamics and Hybridization Across Seven Spanish-Speaking Communities on Twitter
This study advances a relational and translocal approach to hybridization through a comparative computational analysis of how feminist and anti-feminist discourses coevolve across seven Spanish-speaking Twitter communities. Drawing on 126,978 tweets from the first year of #MeToo, we use time-series analysis, topic modeling, and cross-national comparison to examine how discourses interact and how national contexts shape thematic trajectories. We identify 4 relational patterns—mutual association, feminist-driven dynamic, anti-feminist-driven dynamic, and no association—showing that these movements are not merely reactive, but dynamically shape one another. Topic modeling reveals that specific countries assert discursive leadership, illustrating that linguistic commonality does not imply homogeneous uptake. These findings provide a comparative framework for understanding how polarized movements adapt, compete, and interact in networked publics, with implications for feminist strategizing.
digital feminism, anti-feminism, counterpublic, networked misogyny, Spanish-speaking communities, comparative computational analysis, hybridization
Copyright (c) 2026 Catalina Farías, Elohim Monard, Fernanda Carvajal, Jiyoun Suk, Teresa Correa, Ingrid Bachmann, Christine Garlough, Dhavan V. Shah https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Copyright (c) 2026 Jack McLaren https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Matt Sienkiewicz and Nick Marx, That’s Not Funny: How the Right Makes Comedy Work for Them
Copyright (c) 2026 Madelijn Strick https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Online Eudaemonic Spaces for Students During COVID-19: A Cross-National Comparison of Confession Discourses on Facebook
In this study, we analyzed students’ confessions during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, comparing Facebook Confession Boards (FCBs) from universities in 4 countries. Themes were interpreted through the framework of eudaemonic media entertainment (EME). Using semantic network analysis, we map the central themes in students’ confessions and use qualitative content analysis to explore them further through eudaemonic lenses. Our findings reveal three main cross-national themes: personal life, university life, and romantic relationships. While COVID-19 was a relatively less central topic across all countries, it was present in every aspect of students’ lives. In different countries, sentiments and topics varied according to cultural differences and national policies vis-à-vis the pandemic. Many confessions contained eudaemonic elements, as students used FCBs for support and personal growth, as well as to address sensitive topics. The anonymity and peer-group context of FCBs fostered open discussions on taboo subjects, creating sympathetic communities and facilitating collective meaning making during a global crisis.
confessions, eudaemonic media entertainment, Facebook, COVID-19, students, semantic network analysis
Copyright (c) 2026 Ofer Shinar, Elad Segev https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Mirca Madianou, Technocolonialism: When Technology for Good is Harmful
Copyright (c) 2026 Jillian C. York https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Testing the Effects of Relative Newsworthiness on News Selection
This study conducts an experiment to explore news selection on digital news platforms (e.g., Apple News). We found that the likelihood of selecting a certain news headline varied in terms of how newsworthy the headline is relative to other headlines available at the time of selection. This tendency to select news with relatively higher newsworthiness makes partisans more likely to engage in cross-cutting exposure, although the effects of relative newsworthiness were found to be stronger for neutral and proattitudinal news sources. These findings show the importance of examining relative newsworthiness in a high-choice and hyper-partisan context where multiple news choice options from politically polarized news sources are competing for user attention.
news selection, news competition, newsworthiness, digital news platforms
Copyright (c) 2026 Minchul Kim, Yanqin Lu https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Personal Testimonials and Empathy in Environmental Risk Communication—Their Effects on Reflective Thoughts, Risk Perception, and Behavioral Intentions
Environmental risks related to climate change are on the rise worldwide. This study examines how empathy with personal testimonials of homeowners affected by such risks can stimulate reflective thoughts, risk perception, and intention to take protective measures. A sample of homeowners saw risk awareness videos about different types of environmental risks (storm, hail), with or without personal testimonials of homeowners affected by those risks. The stimulus videos were embedded on an information website for homeowners about environmental risks. Participants were asked to view the video, browse the website, and report their thoughts, feelings, and behavioral intentions. As expected, personal testimonials elicited higher levels of empathy, predicting higher levels of reflective thoughts, self- and other-related risk perception, intention to protect one’s own home, and intention to share the information website with other homeowners.
personal testimonials, empathy, reflective thoughts, risk perception, behavioral intentions, environmental risk communication
Amit M. Schejter, Baruch Shomron, Muhammad Abu-Jaffar, Ghalia Abu-Kaf, Jonathan Mendels, Shula Mola, Malka Shacham, Amneh Al Sharha, and Noam Tirosh, Digital Capabilities: ICT Adoption in Marginalized Communities in Israel and the West Bank
Copyright (c) 2026 Tamar Ashuri https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
When Over-The-Top Is Over the Top: A Political Economic Analysis of Network Usage Fees in South Korea
This study investigates the disputes between global content providers (CPs) and South Korean Internet service providers (ISPs), notably SK Broadband (SKB), over network usage fees, which Korean ISPs argue global CPs—such as Google, Netflix, and Facebook—should pay because of the substantial network traffic they generate. Key cases include disputes between Facebook and the Korean Communications Commission (KCC), Netflix and SKB, and the Korean government’s legislation affecting Google (YouTube) Korea. These case studies are examined through the lens of critical political economy of communication, with emphasis on media hegemony. The case studies indicate that global CPs adopted multiple strategies to gain power over Korean ISPs. Although these strategies differed, they shared a similar hegemonic goal: creating a regulatory architecture where they did not have to pay network usage fees. We suggest that the battle between South Korean ISPs and global CPs is ultimately a battle for control over the global Internet.
network usage fee, Internet service provider, content provider, media hegemony, user protection
Copyright (c) 2026 DongWook Jeong, Christopher Ali https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Vassil Girginov and Katerina Girginova (Eds.), Handbook on Sport and Culture
Copyright (c) 2026 Argyro Elisavet Manoli https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
The Short Video Format: Conceptualizing a Ubiquitous Artifact of Visual Platforms
Short videos first emerged as a core feature of visual-centric platforms and have rapidly expanded across nearly all online spaces, challenging traditional audiovisual norms and reshaping how content is created, consumed, and engaged with. This paper argues that a cross-platform conceptualization is necessary to define how short videos and their features generate meaning, distinguish them from other audiovisual artifacts, facilitate comparison across studies, and support cumulative research. The infrastructure of short videos will continue evolving, shaped by platform objectives and user demands. The conceptual framework introduced in this study allows for tracking and comparing these changes across diverse environments, highlighting how short videos shape platform aesthetics and user practices through mobile-based technological standards, affordances, and the interplay of multiple communication modes. By doing so, this framework provides a solid theoretical foundation for developing tailored methodologies capable of grasping the complex components of this format.
Copyright (c) 2026 Giulia Isabella Guerra https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Hanan Badr and Karin G. Wilkins (Eds.), Critical Communication Research With Global Inclusivity
Copyright (c) 2026 Yujie Huang https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
“Closed by Default”: Authoritarian Data Governance and Civil Society in Singapore
Despite growing scholarship recognizing data as a site of contestation, research on authoritarian data governance predominantly focuses on state actors, leaving underexamined how such governance is experienced and contested by civil society. Through a case study of Singapore, this article addresses this gap by examining civil society’s data practices through semistructured interviews with 21 activists, journalists, and academics. It identifies two key contributions. First, this study reveals how authoritarian data governance is experienced as a hierarchical structure: Support for illiberal policies is datafied as technocratic evidence through selective data disclosures, while civil society expertise is marginalized through technical disaffordances and opaque administrative mechanisms. Second, this article finds that civil society’s responses to data control involve not only tactical shifts but also epistemological ones. Facing dilemmas about whether and how to engage with data shaped by technocracy and illiberalism, civil society actors develop alternative data practices that both challenge and co-opt the language of technocracy.
censorship, data, Singapore, repression, civil society, counterdata, civic data, technocracy, authoritarianism
Copyright (c) 2026 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Samuel Woolley, Manufacturing Consensus: Understanding Propaganda in the Era of Automation and Anonymity
Copyright (c) 2026 Chang Sup Park https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Enhancing Media Literacy in Higher Education: An Experimental Study on Misinformation Through a Gamified Intervention in Peru
This experimental study assesses the effectiveness of a technology-based educational intervention aimed at countering misinformation among young Peruvian university students (aged 18–22), applying inoculation theory through the gamified intervention Bad News, adapted specifically for Latin America. As a conceptual replication of Basol et al., the study preserves the original experimental design while extending it to a Latin American, Spanish-speaking context. A total of 301 first- and second-year students from two private universities in Lima were randomly assigned to either a treatment or control group. Through pretest and posttest measurements and statistical analyses (Student’s t-test, two-way ANOVA), findings demonstrate that playing Bad News significantly reduces the perceived reliability of misinformation content on social media. A significant interaction was found between the intervention and maternal education level. Although no statistically significant interaction effects were found for self-perceived media literacy or trust in traditional and social media, both variables independently predicted more critical evaluations of misinformation. This research represents a pioneering effort in Latin America, a region lacking experimental studies that validate gamified interventions for critical thinking against misinformation.
misinformation, inoculation theory, media literacy, fake news resilience, higher education, Bad News
Copyright (c) 2026 Julio-César Mateus, Manuel Etesse, Diego Vásquez-Cubas, Elohim Monard, Giancarlo Cappello https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
RonNell Andersen Jones and Sonja R. West (Eds.), The Future of Press Freedom: Democracy, Law, and the News in Changing Times
Copyright (c) 2026 Andrei Richter https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Data Publics: An Empirical and Comparative Approach to Datafication
This article presents an empirical and comparative framework for understanding datafication through the lens of data publics. We define data publics as social groups that engage, or might be expected to engage, with data generated about, by, or for them. Through ethnographic case studies conducted in various contexts, including open data, health data, and data activism, this article explores how data initiatives are developed in relation to imagined publics, which ultimately confront actual publics. This study introduces an analytical framework that integrates diverse tensions between conceptions of the public (passive versus agentive, ideal versus empirical, cognitive versus affective) to facilitate a nuanced analysis of data publics. The article emphasizes the complexity inherent in these publics and the ways developers of data initiatives relate to them, and highlights the necessity of examining underlying power dynamics to gain a more in-depth understanding of publics’ agency within the broader landscape of datafication.
Copyright (c) 2026 Florence Millerand, Mélanie Millette, Alexandre Coutant, Guillaume Latzko-Toth https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Steffan Blayney, Joey Hornsby, and Savannah Whaley (Eds.), The Body Productive: Rethinking Capitalism, Work and the Body
Copyright (c) 2026 Whitney-Jocelyn Kouaho https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
What Is at Stake? The Co-Encoding/Decoding Model of Human–Generative Artificial Intelligence Communication
This article introduces the co-encoding/decoding (co-en/de) model to theorize the stakes of human–Generative AI (GenAI) communication. Extending Stuart Hall’s encoding/decoding framework, the model conceptualizes human–GenAI interactions as recursive circuits of meaning-making. Through a typology of co-encoding and decoding modes, this article identifies how these interactions feed back into three core conditions of subjectivity—knowledge, agency, and power infrastructures—ultimately shaping the relational ontology of human actors and GenAI systems. We argue that 2 emergent hybrid subjectivities are formed on a fluid spectrum, from the Android, a diminished human subject shaped by machinic hegemony, to the Cyborg, an augmented subjectivity that fosters resistance and democratic agency. By moving beyond techno-determinist and institutionalist accounts, this study offers a relational, critical framework for understanding how GenAI systems mediate discourse and subject formation. It concludes by outlining the conditions under which counter-hegemonic human–GenAI interactions may emerge.
critical digital studies, generative artificial intelligence, cultural studies, political communication, political agency
Copyright (c) 2026 Marco Guglielmo, Ben O'Loughlin, Henry Snowball https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Jathan Sadowski, The Mechanic and the Luddite: A Ruthless Criticism of Technology and Capitalism
Copyright (c) 2026 MC Forelle https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Bohyeong Kim, Critically Capitalist: The Spirit of Asset Capitalism in South Korea
Copyright (c) 2026 Micky Lee https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Drawing the Faces of “Perpetual Foreigners”: A Multimodal Narrative Analysis of #StopAsianHate on Instagram
Racism against Asians has been a historical problem around the world. The Internet turned into a battleground for racist and antiracist discourses and activism during the pandemic. As such, discursive engagement is often organized around hashtags such as #StopAsianHate, hashtag activism has become one of the key manifestations of the movement. Based on the affective narrative theory, this study aims to understand how multimodal messages including texts and visuals can be used to derive narratives and affects. By examining 46,621 Instagram posts published from January 1, 2020 to November 1, 2022, this study finds #StopAsianHate was short-lived and single-peaked and featured almost an equal amount of positive and negative sentiments. By also analyzing posts with more than 100,000 total interactions (N = 92), this study further delineates multiple affective narratives derived at the iconic, grammatical, and collective levels through layered interpretation. The findings suggest all hashtag movements are equal, pointing to the need to analyze plot twists and ugly feelings in affective narratives using multimodal data and methods.
affective narratives, hashtag activism, multimodal analysis, plot twists, StopAsianHate, ugly feelings
Copyright (c) 2026 Weiyu Zhang https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Voices of Disagreement: Participatory Media and Agonistic Democracy in Cyprus
This article examines how participatory structures within community media organizations (CMOs) in Cyprus shape their capacity to foster agonistic democratic discourse. Drawing on Chantal Mouffe’s theory of agonism and a qualitative multisite case study, it explores the internal dynamics of 6 Cypriot CMOs and their editorial impact. The findings show that CMOs with horizontal, inclusive, and reflexive organizational models tend to generate pluralistic, ethically engaged, and cross-community media content. These outlets legitimize disagreement, amplify excluded voices, and reframe the Other as a legitimate interlocutor. By contrast, CMOs that reproduce hierarchical structures tend to mirror dominant ethnocentric narratives and suppress dissent. At the same time, even the most participatory outlets face internal tensions and self-imposed limits, highlighting that genuine agonistic openness is fragile and continually negotiated. Connecting participatory governance with agonistic representation, the study highlights how grassroots media can incubate democratic culture in deeply divided societies. Though the study is grounded in a specific historical context, its insights resonate with broader efforts to understand how participatory infrastructures in community media can foster democratic pluralism in divided and transitional societies.
participatory media, agonistic democracy, community media, Cyprus conflict, post-conflict communication, editorial practices
Copyright (c) 2026 Chris Voniati https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Catherine D’Ignazio, Counting Feminicide: Data Feminism in Action
Copyright (c) 2026 Muge Yuce https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Performing the People and Depleting the Commons: Bottom-up Populism in Canada and France
This study examines how ordinary citizens construct and circulate populist discourse through social media, comparing two cases of bottom-up populism: Canada’s Freedom Convoy and France’s Yellow Vests movement. Drawing on grounded theory and mixed-method content analysis of 4,725 Facebook threads, the study identifies three production strategies—labeling, linking, and critiquing—and three narrative styles—division, emotion, and drama—that structure grassroots populist communication. These strategies enable decentralized publics to articulate moral boundaries between “the people” and “the elite,” mobilize affective solidarity, and perform legitimacy in the absence of centralized leadership. Cross-national comparison reveals that while French discourse emphasizes confrontation and anger, Canadian discourse privileges gratitude and national pride, reflecting differences in protest culture and institutional context. Yet, both cases exhibit similar emotional intensification and retrotopian storytelling driven by algorithmic visibility, illustrating how digital participation can deplete the deliberative commons it relies on. Integrating Farrer’s “tragedy of the commons,” the study reframes bottom-up populism as both a communicative empowerment and a potential mechanism of discursive exhaustion in networked democracies.
Copyright (c) 2026 Liwen Zhang https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Nick Couldry, The Space of the World: Can Human Solidarity Survive Social Media and What If It Can’t?
Copyright (c) 2026 Terry Flew https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Knowledge and Expertise in the Digital Age: How People Engage With Sex Advice on TikTok
The proliferation of sexual discourses in the digital age, accompanied by ongoing media panics over the perceived adverse effects of online sexual content, reflects persistent societal tensions about technology’s role in shaping sexual norms. While previous research has examined the spread of sexual advice on social media, there is limited understanding of how users engage with and reshape this advice. This study addresses this gap by analyzing how TikTok users interact with sex experts through a qualitative content analysis of top videos and their most-liked comments (n = 500). Our analysis reveals 4 mechanisms by which users engage with sexual advice: (1) challenging and validating expert authority, (2) collaboratively co-producing knowledge, (3) debating norms of intimacy and pleasure, and (4) finding and sharing emotional support and solidarity. Through these interactions, expertise on TikTok becomes a collective and evolving form of knowledge production.
Copyright (c) 2026 Facundo N. Suenzo, Annika Pinch, Ignacio F. Cruz, Calvin A. Liang, Amy Ross Arguedas https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Laila Shereen Sakr, Arabic Glitch: Technoculture, Data Bodies, and Archives
Copyright (c) 2026 Nathaniel Greenberg https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Aeron Davis, Political Communication: An Introduction for Crisis Times (2nd ed.)
Copyright (c) 2026 Cleves Nkie Mongo https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Understanding Public Concerns About Fake News: Linking Social Media News Use, Cognitive Elaboration, and Perceived Fake News Exposure
Over the past decade, the exponential growth of information consumption through social media has reshaped the media landscape in most liberal democracies. This shift has introduced significant challenges, particularly the spread of fake news and growing concerns—whether real or perceived—about its potential effects. In this study, we propose an overarching moderated mediation model to explain citizens’ concerns about fake news. Drawing on panel survey data from Spain (N = 570), our findings reveal that social media news consumption is positively associated with individuals’ cognitive elaboration of fake news, which, in turn, influences their level of concern about fake news. However, this indirect effect is significantly stronger among individuals who perceive themselves as highly exposed to fake news on social media. Overall, our study advances the current understanding of the effects of social media news consumption, highlighting the crucial role of cognitive elaboration in shaping concerns about fake news, alongside the perceived intensity of fake news exposure in digital media environments.
Copyright (c) 2026 Manuel Goyanes, Taeyoung Lee https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Thomas S. Mullaney, The Chinese Computer: A Global History of the Information Age
Copyright (c) 2026 Weilin Zhu https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Regressive Futuring: Zuckerberg’s Rebranding Against Techlash’s “Crisis”
By 2018, techlash had opened a possible crisis for Silicon Valley’s technology industry, otherwise resolutely committed to selling imagined technofutures. No company or celebrified founder has borne the brunt of public opinion’s pendulum swings as much as Facebook, Inc. and Mark Zuckerberg. Zuckerberg’s rebranding of Facebook, Inc. to Meta in 2021 is a case study for how Silicon Valley’s industry and elite recuperatively make and remake their ideology—the industry’s defining feature—against a critical broader public and techlash discourse through regressive futuring. With textual analysis of Zuckerberg’s rebranding keynote, I map the limited, familiar repertoire of storylines and stages in selective response to techlash critique with (1) (attempted) recuperative humor of geek masculinity, (2) perfunctory acknowledgements of governance made visible through infrastructure, and (3) intra-industry power struggles. Regressive futuring—familiar dramaturgical regimes and recycled charisma—foregrounds how failures to perform become a failure of Silicon Valley’s meaning-making, as these repeated performances are the industry’s active, attempted sutures against substantive reckoning with Big Tech’s illogics.
Copyright (c) 2026 Emilie Grybos https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Beth A. Haller, Disabled People Transforming Media Culture for a More Inclusive World (1st ed.)
div]:bg-bg-000/50 [&_pre>div]:border-0.5 [&_pre>div]:border-border-400 [&_.ignore-pre-bg>div]:bg-transparent [&_.standard-markdown_:is(p,blockquote,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6)]:pl-2 [&_.standard-markdown_:is(p,blockquote,ul,ol,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6)]:pr-8 [&_.progressive-markdown_:is(p,blockquote,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6)]:pl-2 [&_.progressive-markdown_:is(p,blockquote,ul,ol,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6)]:pr-8"> _*]:min-w-0 standard-markdown"> <button id="radix-_r_ns_" class="inline-flex items-center justify-center relative shrink-0 can-focus select-none disabled:pointer-events-none disabled:opacity-50 disabled:shadow-none disabled:drop-shadow-none border-transparent transition font-base duration-300 ease-[cubic-bezier(0.165,0.85,0.45,1)] h-8 w-8 rounded-md active:scale-95 group/btn Button_ghost__BUAoh" type="button" aria-haspopup="menu" aria-expanded="false" data-state="closed" aria-label="Retry">
Copyright (c) 2026 Russell Adzedu https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Biased Judgment or Lack of Skill? The Role of News Consumption in (Mis)Information Identification in the Context of Russia’s War Against Ukraine
This study examines how media consumption shapes individuals’ ability to distinguish true from false information and their response biases in the context of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Drawing on signal detection theory, it analyzes sensitivity (the ability to discern truth from falsehood) and absolute response bias (the strength of the tendency to accept or reject claims) separately. Data come from a survey conducted in 19 European and American countries (N = 19,037) in 2022 during Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine. Reliance on newspapers is linked to higher sensitivity for both pro- and anti-Russia statements, whereas television news shows no such effect. Social media use is unrelated to sensitivity, but corresponds with more balanced evaluations, while messenger-based news consumption predicts lower sensitivity and stronger biases. In some cases, alternative media use is also associated with increased response bias. Cross-national comparisons show that press freedom is linked to higher sensitivity to pro-Russia claims and to asymmetric response biases for pro- and anti-Russia frames, consistent with dominant media narratives.
Copyright (c) 2026 Luisa Gehle, Christian Schemer, Marina Tulin, Michael Hameleers https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Alfred L. Martin Jr., Fandom for Us by Us: The Pleasures and Practices of Black Audiences
Copyright (c) 2026 Gordon Alley-Young https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Decentering Technology in the Datafied Workplace: Data (In)Justice and Workers’ Experiences of Algorithmic Management in Call Centers in the United Kingdom and Greece
This article makes a key contribution to debates on algorithmic management by bringing together insights from labor process analysis and critical data studies to examine how workers experience and understand injustices related to the introduction of data-driven technologies. Based on 34 interviews with telecommunications call center workers in the United Kingdom and Greece, we find that while there are prominent concerns about uses of new technologies, workers tend to “see through” the technology to situate such concerns within wider power dynamics, most notably organizational culture, business models, and relationships with managers. Informed by debates on data justice, we, therefore, make a case for the need to decenter technology in engagements with algorithmic management to better account for workers’ experiences in discussions on the future of work.
call centers, algorithmic management, data justice, labor process theory (LPT), critical data studies (CDS)
Copyright (c) 2026 Lina Dencik, Jess Brand, Philippa Metcalfe https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Timothy Recuber, The Digital Departed: How We Face Death, Commemorate Life, and Chase Virtual Immortality
Copyright (c) 2026 Terilee Edwards-Hewitt https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Communicating Mobile Borders: Urban Conviviality and More-Than National Belonging in Trieste’s Interethnic Friendships
This article analyzes communicative practices of interethnic conviviality in Trieste, which make this frontier city the epitome of multiculture in Europe. My in-depth interviews with an ethnographic component explore friendships among Italians and people from neighboring ex-Yugoslav countries. Largely ignorant of official minority frameworks, they negotiate togetherness by self-identifying as Triestines, performing the city in everyday life as a cultural “marketplace”—Trieste’s ancient name—where they work out informal cooperation and joke about inherited cultural opposites (Roman/capitalist vs. Slavic/ex-socialist). In interpreting these communicative alliances, I draw analogies to Yugoslav interethnic solidarities of “raja,” where conviviality depended on both spatial proximity and the positive confrontation of difference. Trieste’s Italo-Yugo networks similarly rehearse what I term “more-than-national” or “elastic” belonging, resulting from their routine combining of embodied and digital communication as complementary forms of movement, whether through socializing in taverns and online groups or traversing nearby national borders.
Copyright (c) 2026 Zlatan Krajina https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Political Manipulation of the Israel-Hamas Conflict on WhatsApp in India
This study provides a descriptive narrative of how the Israel-Hamas conflict was portrayed and discussed on WhatsApp in India. Even though India is not a direct stakeholder in the conflict, we uncover a substantial, orchestrated campaign disseminating extreme hate speech and misinformation. Our analysis reveals a deliberate use of the conflict to propagate anti-Muslim rhetoric, bolstering pro-Israel and pro-Indian government narratives, likely for political advantage in electoral contexts. This article explores the consequences of designing digital platforms that balance privacy with the need to curb harmful content: their lack of moderation and susceptibility to exploitation by politically motivated actors. We discuss the adeptness of political entities in manipulating narratives, underscoring the far-reaching effects of local narratives in a globally connected environment, and prompting a reevaluation of platform responsibilities and design strategies in the face of evolving digital manipulation tactics.
Israel-Hamas conflict, encrypted social networks, WhatsApp, digital manipulation, misinformation
Copyright (c) 2026 Kiran Garimella https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Göran Bolin and Per Ståhlberg, Managing Meaning in Ukraine: Information, Communication, and Narration Since the Euromaidan Revolution
The Dark Side of Algorithms: How Ethical and Privacy Considerations Affect Individuals’ Engagement With Health Information on Social Media?
Algorithm-driven social media platforms are increasingly designed to deliver personalized health content that caters to users’ varied information needs. However, the opaque collection and use of personal data raise significant privacy concerns. Drawing on communication privacy management (CPM) theory, this study examines how users’ ethical considerations of algorithm-driven social media shape their privacy-related perceptions and, in turn, influence their trust in and engagement with health information recommended by these platforms. An online survey of 1,051 users revealed that ethical considerations were positively associated with both social privacy concerns and perceptions of institutional privacy practices. Social privacy concerns negatively predicted trust and engagement with recommended health information, whereas perceptions of institutional privacy practices positively predicted trust, which subsequently enhanced engagement. Ethical considerations exhibited dual indirect effects on engagement: a negative pathway via social privacy concerns and trust and a positive pathway via perceptions of institutional privacy practices and trust. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.
engagement with health information, algorithm-driven social media, communication privacy management theory, ethical and privacy considerations
Copyright (c) 2026 Mengxue Ou, Han Zheng, Baijue Li, Chen Luo https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Eviane Leidig, The Women of the Far Right: Social Media Influencers and Online Radicalization
Copyright (c) 2026 Shahla Shahnaz Dyuti https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Oneness With the Source as a Means of Reducing Motivated Reasoning About Climate Policy
Addressing climate change requires persuading political conservatives—many of whom remain skeptical of climate science—to support climate initiatives. A possible method of reducing conservatives’ resistance to such messages is to use a source that matches their political identity. We attempted to replicate previous findings that perceived oneness with the source may explain why source matching increases persuasiveness for both a targeted attitude and potentially related attitudes. We also tested the extent to which the source-matching effect was further moderated by audience ego-involvement in their political identity. Two studies using pretest–posttest designs were used to assess these hypotheses. Results replicated the importance of oneness in explaining the source-matching effect, but found ego-involvement to be an inconsistent moderator. The data were consistent with a path model summarizing these predictions for the source-matching effect and oneness with the source.
motivated reasoning, climate communication, political communication
Copyright (c) 2026 Christopher J. Carpenter, Shannon M. Cruz https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Jabari M. Evans, Hip-Hop Civics: Connected Learning in the Rap Classroom
“Is It So Bothersome That a Woman Has a Senior Position?”: False Empowerment in the Representation of Women in Sports TV Series
The paradigm shift in televised/streamed sports-themed series is examined from an intersectional and feminist studies perspective using a mixed-methods approach. Quantitatively, the study investigates 208 characters across 15 U.S. and European series broadcast in Spain on leading audiovisual platforms and television channels between 2018 and 2023. Female characters remain invisible, objectified, and in secondary positions, and are underrepresented as players, coaches, and managers. The analysis of recurring traits confirms false empowerment, substantiated by the persistence of traditional stereotypes and the emergence of new chauvinistic traits. Qualitatively, focus groups revealed antagonistic views between male and female viewers on fundamental gender issues. The analysis of production and male reception confirms the hypothesis on the representation of women in sports fiction, which appears to remain rooted in gender stereotypes while rejecting feminist demands. By contrast, the analysis of female reception does not align with the hypothesis, consistent with the approaches of gender studies.
television, series, gender, feminism, sports fiction
Copyright (c) 2026 Anna Tous Rovirosa, Raquel Crisóstomo, Elena Fedotova, Natividad Ramajo https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Amanda D. Lotz, After Mass Media: Storytelling for Microaudiences in the Twenty-First Century
Copyright (c) 2026 Damián Fernández Pedemonte https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Talking About the Voice: Everyday Political Talk About Indigenous Constitutional Recognition
In 2023, Australians went to the polls to vote on a proposal to recognize Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in the national constitution through the creation of an advisory body called the Voice. The proposal was soundly defeated, raising questions about the possibility of reconciliation and Indigenous recognition. While there have been many attempts to explain the outcome, this article takes an interpersonal perspective focusing on voters’ experiences of talking about the Voice. Our aim is to contribute to studies of everyday political talk in contexts of political disagreement, considering the affective dynamics of settler colonialism. We suggest that the ability to talk constructively about the ongoing impacts of colonization and Indigenous recognition, both of which are fundamental to the broader project of reconciliation and truth telling, will require attention to questions of everyday listening in the context of settler-Indigenous relationships.
affect, political talk, settler-colonization, referendum
Copyright (c) 2026 Kate Nash, Caitlin Mollica, Kate Senior https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Rodney Benson, Mattias Hessérus, Timothy Neff, and Julie Sedel, How Media Ownership Matters
Copyright (c) 2026 Murat Akser https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Global Communication and the Scalar Politics of Race: Tensions in Transnational Articulations of (Anti)-Racism(s)
The media and cultural imperialism paradigm’s reliance on Marxist world-system analysis and class, alongside the globalization paradigm’s faith in cosmopolitanism, has made debates on race relatively uncommon in global media and communication studies. Recent literature on race and digital technology has placed race more firmly on the map within our wider field, but the bulk of this work remains nation-centric and has not addressed the tensions in transnational articulations of (anti)-racism(s). This article develops an analytical framework—“the scalar politics of race”—to understand how various actors strategically deploy scale to address race via social media, legacy media, and physical space. I apply this framework to 3 case studies, examining the global disciplining of national forms of racism, the hegemony of transnational forms of anti-racism and solidarity, and translocal appropriations of anti-racism.
Copyright (c) 2026 Wendy Willems https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Natalie Fenton, Democratic Delusions: How the Media Hollows Out Democracy and What We Can Do About It
Copyright (c) 2026 Fritz Kessler https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Expert Reports as Epistemic Participation: Knowing and Doing in Artificial Intelligence’s Environmental Debate
This study examines how nonscientific organizations participate in debates on the environmental footprint of artificial intelligence (AI) through the publication of reports, thus shaping the acquisition and distribution of expertise in the technical public sphere. Drawing on Eyal’s two dimensions of expertise, as tacit versus explicit and individual versus distributed, we use three concepts that best exemplify the various combinations of expert attributes, namely, communities of practice, epistemic communities, and international knowledge institutions. Our findings show reports on AI’s environmental footprint enable organizations to simultaneously engage with communities of practice and epistemic communities, thereby blurring the boundary between practical and epistemic expertise. This development creates challenges for international knowledge institutions, which promote inclusion and global dialogue, but do not always account for disparities in the quality of evidence produced. We conclude by suggesting that reports provide a valuable lens for examining expert organizations’ tacit knowledge and discuss the implications for the technical public sphere’s capacity to advance notions of objectivity.
expertise, technical public sphere, reports, digitalization
Copyright (c) 2026 Théophile Lenoir, Christopher Anderson https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Michelle Cho and Jesook Song (Eds.), Mediating Gender in Post-Authoritarian South Korea
Copyright (c) 2026 Young A. Jung https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Scrolling Past Suffering: Ethnocentric Media, Distrust, and Humanitarian Responsibility
This study investigates the extent to which Israeli Jews’ exposure to Israeli news coverage through social media platforms and their distrust of Palestinians predict their sense of humanitarian responsibility toward Palestinians, within the context of the 2023–2025 Israel-Hamas war. Our analysis is based on a representative sample of Israeli Jews (N = 903) obtained through public opinion polling. In line with our expectation, exposure to Israeli news coverage and distrust of Palestinians each made a significant contribution to explaining a Jewish-Israeli (decreased) sense of humanitarian responsibility toward Palestinians (R2 = .30). Distrust also partially mediated the association between news exposure and humanitarian responsibility. In addition, hawkishness and level of religiosity significantly contributed to the overall explanatory power of the model (R2 = .43). Higher levels of all predictor variables were associated with a decreased sense of humanitarian responsibility toward Palestinians. The implications of our findings for understanding the role of media coverage in shaping humanitarian responsibility toward the opponent in asymmetric conflict are discussed.
ethnocentric media, distrust, media coverage in conflict, humanitarian responsibility, protracted conflict, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, public opinion
Copyright (c) 2026 Inbar Illouz, Tal Orian Harel, Ifat Maoz https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
John M. Jordan, The Rise of the Algorithms: How YouTube and TikTok Conquered the World