I checked 55 communication journals on Friday, October 16, 2026 using the Crossref API. For the period October 09 to October 15, I found 92 new paper(s) in 30 journal(s).

Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies

Immersive proximity to suffering and crisis: The democratic implications of distressing virtual reality content
RĆ«ta Kazlauskaitė
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Non-fiction VR and 360-degree immersive video are widely used to depict the experiences of victimized, marginalized, and traumatized people, in both historical and contemporary contexts. Immersive VR content frequently engages topics of war and conflict, forced displacement, disability, precarity, incarceration, impact of climate change, and diverse forms of oppression and discrimination. Difficult social topics are introduced experientially, promising the audience an encounter with the lived realities of hardship, suffering, and injustice. The article argues that the democratic stakes of such uses of VR are best understood not by asking whether immersion produces empathy, but by asking what kinds of self–other relations and what kinds of agency are enacted and rehearsed through immersive proximity to suffering and crisis. Drawing on political psychology and indirect-trauma research, I show how immersive proximity to suffering and crisis can shape democratic dispositions via perceived control, threat salience, and victimhood framing. Immersive proximity to suffering and crisis may support solidarity and empathy, but it can also generate personal distress, feelings of helplessness, heightened threat sensitivity, and self-focused victimhood, which may undermine social trust, openness to pluralism, and a sense of civic efficacy. Engagement with distressing content in immersive media should enable reflective processing of difficult experiences, as well as support self–other differentiation, the sense of agency, hope, control, and efficacy, instead of leaving audiences feeling powerless and overwhelmed. The article advances a heuristic for evaluating and designing non-fiction VR depictions of suffering and crisis in ways that support democratic dispositions.
Crisis informatics, disinformation, and emergency politics
Åshild KolĂ„s
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A key question in crisis informatics is how social media and other forms of many-to-many communication can be utilized as sources of actionable information in public emergencies. Reviewing crisis informatics literature before, during, and after the COVID-19 pandemic, this study finds that the issue of social media veracity took on new significance during the pandemic, as policymakers became increasingly concerned about medical misinformation and disinformation. Changes to the guidelines, policies, and business practices of social media platforms, especially X, have also presented social media studies and crisis informatics with new methodological challenges. The contribution of this article is to employ the concept of ‘emergency politics’ to unpack assumptions in the field of crisis informatics in which social media are understood mainly as resources for citizen engagement, and to discuss the ramifications of pandemic and post-pandemic developments in the social media communication space for the future of crisis informatics research. Highlighting impacts of emergency measures on the flow of information on social media platforms, the study also contributes to the critical literature on social media surveillance and freedom of expression during states of emergency.
Ludo-Iconological Analysis: A new method for reading visual symbolism in games, with a case study on Blasphemous
Baykar Demir
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This article introduces Ludo-Iconological Analysis, a staged interpretive method for examining visual symbolism in digital games through an art historical perspective. Informed by Erwin Panofsky’s iconological framework, the method is adapted to the temporal and participatory conditions of games. While existing scholarship has demonstrated the value of analysing games through artistic sources and visual traditions, the present study develops a more explicitly structured framework for tracing how culturally coded imagery is activated and complicated within an interactive medium. The method is applied to Blasphemous (The Game Kitchen, 2019), a title distinguished by a dense religious visual language rooted in Spanish cultural history. Its symbolic vocabulary draws upon penitential garments, the crown of thorns, public devotional ritual, and historically situated works of sacred art without treating any single visual tradition as the privileged measure of symbolic complexity. This combination makes Blasphemous a particularly productive case for demonstrating Ludo-Iconological Analysis, revealing how historical, theological, and ideological meanings are reconfigured within the visual and interactive structures of the game. By introducing Ludo-Iconological Analysis, this study proposes a focused interpretive framework that integrates established principles of art historical research into the study of digital games. Rather than claiming universal applicability, the article demonstrates how the method can illuminate a game whose visual design is densely structured by historically and culturally coded motifs. The framework is intended as a basis for further comparative application to games in which symbolic imagery is meaningfully connected to narrative progression, player encounter, and interactive context.
The challenge of diversity in public service media: A case study of Spanish regional Broadcast Video on Demand portals
Aida Martori Munsant, Tania Fernåndez-Lombao, Azahara Cañedo
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As European public service media (PSM) corporations adapt to the platformed context, the challenge of preserving diversity, one of their essential elements of public value, has become increasingly complex, especially in the case of regional corporations. In this context, this article focuses on a Spanish case study and examines how the four Spanish regional PSM with Broadcast Video on Demand (BVOD) services – EITB (Basque Country), CCMA (Catalonia), CSAG (Galicia), and RTVA (Andalusia) – integrate diversity in the design and management of these portals (Primeran, 3Cat, AGalega and CanalSur Más). For an empirical and comparative analysis of the strategies, constraints, and tensions that are developing, the study draws on twelve in-depth interviews with the BVOD managers, content directors, and innovation officers of these PSM online services, conducted between 2023 and 2024. The findings show that online portals offer new opportunities to promote diversity as a multidimensional element of public value that goes beyond cultural representation to encompass governance, production, and programming. The study identifies two diversity management strategies – visible and invisible – each reflecting different operational logics that contribute to the renewal of the social contract between PSM and the societies they serve.

Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking

PRISM Project—Predictive-Processing Reshaping via Immersive Simulated Multisensory Experiences
Giulia Brizzi, Albert Garcia-Romeu, Johan Rocher, Giuseppe Riva
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The Project O.C.T.O.P.U.S.: Observing Cyberdelic Transformations of Priors Under Simulation
Gökalp Recep Boz, Maria Sansoni, Giuseppe Riva
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Can’t Name It, Can’t Log Off: Alexithymia and Problematic Internet-Related Behaviors: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis
Fangqing Liu, Xiaoshan Yin
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Alexithymia has been proposed as a ransdiagnostic vulnerability for behavioral addictions, but its role in problematic Internet-related behaviors (PIB) has not been quantified across phenotypes and populations. We conducted a preregistered systematic review and meta-analysis following Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses. Major databases were searched in October 2025 for studies reporting quantitative associations between alexithymia and PIB (problematic Internet, smartphone, social media, gaming use, or cyberbullying). Risk of bias was appraised with Joanna Briggs Institute tools. Random-effects models pooled correlations and standardized regression coefficients; three-level and robust-variance models accounted for multiple effects per study and examined moderators and adjustment for internalizing symptoms. Eighty-three studies met inclusion criteria; 78 independent samples ( N = 42,478; 369 effect sizes total, comprising 302 zero-order correlations and 67 standardized regression coefficients) contributed to the meta-analysis. The pooled correlation between alexithymia and PIB was r = 0.36 (95% confidence interval 0.34–0.38; I 2 = 77.6%). Associations were stronger for addictive-use PIB ( r = 0.37) than for cyberbullying ( r = 0.29), broadly comparable across world regions, and tended to be larger in adults than adolescents. In multivariable models, coefficients attenuated from about ÎČ = 0.37 to ÎČ = 0.18 after controlling for depression, anxiety, and other internalizing symptoms, but remained statistically significant. Sensitivity and publication-bias analyses indicated that the association was robust. Alexithymia shows a moderate association with PIB across age groups, partly via shared variance with internalizing psychopathology but also through unique pathways. Longitudinal and mechanistic studies should test whether targeting emotional awareness can help prevent or reduce PIB.
Looking for Love in the Age of AI: When Algorithms Enter the Dating Scene
Brenda K. Wiederhold
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Digital Journalism

Between Journalism and Justice: Disciplinary Humility in Open-Source Investigations
Isabella Regan, Imar de Vries
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Too Much or Not Enough? The Decline of the Iconic News Image and the Adaptive Challenges of Visual Digital Journalism
Ellie Macdonald
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From Grassroots Sleuthing to Global Uptake: Epistemic Legitimation of Open-Source Investigations in Journalism Through Mediazona’s War Casualty Project in Russia’s War on Ukraine
Volha Kananovich
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From Institutionalized Data to Inconsistent Practices: The Dynamics of Datafied Employee Evaluation in Journalistic Work
Rasa JĂ€msen, Ward van Zoonen, Mikko Villi
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Negotiated Adaptability: How Peripheral Actors’ Perceptions of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) Shape Journalistic Practice
Kevin C. Mudavadi, Bingbing Zhang, Melissa Tully, Brian Ekdale, Jonas Nyabor, Nur Hossain, Shitemi Khamadi
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European Journal of Communication

Public reactions on TikTok: Emotional dynamics in comments to the president of Romania's posts
Tănase Tasențe, Cristina-Dana Popescu
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This article examines how TikTok structures the emotional dynamics of presidential communication during the initial months of a mandate, focusing on the official account of the President of Romania. Drawing on 44 TikTok posts and 29,756 unique public comments recorded between 26 May and 27 October 2025, the study combines multilingual transformer-based sentiment analysis, change-point analysis and co-commenting network analysis. After deduplication and temporal filtering, 21,654 comments were classified. The results show a positive plurality rather than a uniformly positive baseline, alongside issue-specific negativity around economic governance, justice and public safety, security, Moldova and democratic legitimacy. Validation sensitivity checks caution against strong comment-level claims, whilst a bipartite null model shows that much co-commenting density is expected from shared participation in viral threads. TikTok is therefore interpreted as a high-co-presence environment in which episodic affective pressure emerges around salient political themes.

Games and Culture

Perspective as a Compositional Design Apparatus in Horror Video Games: First- and Third-Person Configurations in Resident Evil Requiem
Ferhat Erdinç Kaygusuz
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For three decades, one question has organised scholarship on perspective in horror games: Which configuration produces stronger horror, first-person or third-person? Comparison across games cannot settle it, because character, space and affordance vary along with the setting. Resident Evil Requiem holds them still: one game, two protagonists, both perspectives and a toggle available throughout . This article reads that design through close playing across four configurations. The perspective never alters what a player-character can do. It alters what the player is permitted to know about the body she is operating: its condition, its capability and its bearing. The same setting carries opposite affective values across the two protagonists, and across Grace herself once she is armed. The reach of the setting narrows as the range of action widens. Perspective is a compositional apparatus, and what it produces is set by the point of action it frames.
Toward a Ludology of Fascism
Maxim Tvorun-Dunn
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In a recruitment ad for the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a screenshot from the video game Halo was overlaid with the text “destroy the flood,” presenting an invitation to take part in exterminatory border violence as a form of play. Observing the disquieting glee with which border violence is promoted and conducted in the United States, this paper proposes that fascism should be read as a form of play. This paper looks to games studies as a means to examine how the racialized violence of American policing is given mechanics and procedures that render such violence as pleasurable. Through a case study of the 2023 SWAT-themed video game Ready or Not , this article discusses how thought patterns of fascism are simulated through game mechanics that present fascist praxis as desirable.
From Hosting to Authorship: Saudi Press Coverage of the Esports World Cup 2025
Omar Daoudi, Sara Kreishan, Khaled Zamoum, Assel Kamza, Nassir Bouali, Hany Beshr
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Saudi Arabia has made esports a centerpiece of its Vision 2030 transformation. In 2025, it hosted the Esports World Cup, the largest event in the sport's history, in Riyadh. This article asks how the Saudi press constructs the Kingdom through its coverage of that event. Using constructivist grounded theory, we analyzed 57 Arabic-language newspaper articles published during the tournament. We find that the coverage does not simply report the competition. It repositions the Kingdom from the host that receives the world to the author and leader of a global field. A process we call “ hosting as authorship ,” built by magnifying the event, nationalizing it through the leader and the nation, and reframing esports as a field worth leading. The construction is genre-bound and addressed inward, to a domestic public. We relate this inward narration to debates on nation branding, soft power and political legitimacy, showing how esports hosting can be narrated as a source of domestic legitimacy and not only external image-building.
Tracing the Evolution of Racial Ontology in the Warcraft Franchise
Vasilije Mesarović
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This paper analyzes the racial ontologies implied by the writing and gameplay of various entries in the Warcraft franchise of video games, tracing a chronological evolution from 1994's Warcraft to the most recent expansions for World of Warcraft (at the time of writing, 2024's The War Within ). Three distinct periods in the franchise's development are identified, each exhibiting a different ontology of race in its portrayal of the games’ fictional racial groups. Each period is analyzed independently, noting parallels with various historical and contemporary racial ontologies. The paper ultimately identifies a shift away from an essentialist ontology rooted in ideas of racial morality toward a postracial phase that lacks a coherent ontology of race. The positive and negative consequences of this change are considered.

Howard Journal of Communications

Cinematic in the Age of Automation: A Comparative Study of Google Veo 3.1 and Human-Directed Advertising Videos
Muhamad Reznu Firsyawardana, Rony Kurniawan Pratama, Rino Andreas, Siti Umaiyah, Septi Anggita Kriskartika
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Sport as Cultural Shorthand: Commonsense Sporting Ideologies in Non-Sport Films
Patrick Crowe
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Moral Alignment and Embodied Difference in Superhero Narratives: A Computational Character Analytics Study
Yavuz Selim Balcıoğlu, Erkut Altındağ
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Performing Female Agency: Digital Intimacy Among Chinese Otome Game Players
Wei Pi
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Intersectionality and the Limits of Transformative Leadership in Lincoln (2012)
Rashmi Ranjan Behera, Auro Prasad Parida, Chirashree Srabani Rath, Amarendra Kumar Dash
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Beyond the Nation as Unit: A Nusantara Communication Architecture for Indonesia’s Multi-Ethnic Society
Exsan Adde, Mauly Arzak Julika, Edwin Yustian Nulhakim, Vidyardi Laksmono, Armadila, Muhammad Solihin, Savri Yansah
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Information Technology & People

Disentangling gender stereotypes and gender inequality in Africa's digital sector
Winfred I. Onyas, Samuel Dawa, George Acheampong
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Purpose This paper investigates how gender stereotypes evolve in Africa's digital space and how digital gender inequality can be collaboratively tackled. Design/methodology/approach A two-phase qualitative study was undertaken, involving consultations with 21 experts and interviews with 30 women in the digital sectors in Uganda and Ghana. Underpinned by technofeminism, actor-network theory (ANT) and social role theories, we examine gender stereotypes as outcomes of dual processes that instigate interconnections among heterogeneous actors in the digital space and accord collective agency to the composite to enact digital gender inequality. Findings The findings reveal that gender stereotypes in the digital sector are tied to gendered narratives and evaluations, which dampen women's aspirations and undermine their confidence. Addressing gender stereotypes and digital gender inequality will require inclusive women-led training approaches as well as heightened visibility of female role models, supported by coordinated efforts anchored in stakeholder collaboration and dialogue. Practical implications The framework we develop is useful in guiding academics, practitioners and policymakers in collaboratively addressing digital gender inequality. Originality/value We make an original attempt to integrate technofeminism and ANT frameworks by employing the concept of agencing to better understand how gender stereotypes are enacted and sustained within an actor-network. Contributing to technofeminist Information Systems research, we reconceptualize socio-technical inequality as dynamic and processual, with gendered power embedded in evolving socio-technical processes, and position technofeminism as a habilitative, interventionist approach that organizes actors to reconfigure digital ecosystems.
From prompt to profession: how ChatGPT usage relates to students' perceived employability through skill development
Bahar Javadi Khasraghi, Qiuli Su, Hanieh Javadi Khasraghi
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Purpose The proliferation of generative AI tools like ChatGPT is transforming higher education, yet evidence of their impact on students' career readiness remains limited. Existing studies often rely on localized samples and emphasize usage frequency over underlying mechanisms. This study investigates how ChatGPT usage relates to students' perceived employability, focusing on perceived proficiency (e.g. writing, communication) and analytical skills (e.g. critical thinking, problem-solving) as mediators. Design/methodology/approach Drawing on Self-Perception Theory and Human Capital Theory, with the Technology Acceptance Model providing a conceptual starting point for understanding technology engagement, we use structural equation modeling (SEM) to analyze survey data from 21,716 students across 100 countries, examining associations among ChatGPT use, perceived proficiency and analytical skill development, and perceived employability, with mediation through the two skills. Findings ChatGPT use is positively associated with both skill domains; however, only perceived proficiency is significantly associated with perceived employability. The indirect effect via proficiency is significant, whereas the indirect effect via analytical skills is not, and the direct path from ChatGPT use to employability is nonsignificant, consistent with a full-mediation model. Multi-group analyses indicate stronger effects for students from low- and lower-middle-income countries and for female students, with no substantive differences by field of study. Originality/value This study provides large-scale, theory-driven evidence linking ChatGPT use to perceived skill development and employability. These findings suggest that structured, critical engagement with AI tools may support skill development without displacing deeper learning. It offers critical insights for higher education policy and pedagogy in the GenAI era.

Information, Communication & Society

(In)congruent synergies? Discursive boundary-spanning between the Italian anti-gender galaxy and anti-trans groups
elena pavan, Aurora Perego, Matteo Scianna
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Data benefits? Attitudes and aspirations of recipients towards social security administrative data sharing
Victoria Gorton, Morgan Currie
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From mobilization to diversion: a comparative study of wartime communication tactics of Ukrainian and Russian political elites on Telegram
Mykola Makhortykh, Aytalina Kulichkina, Kateryna Maikovska
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Hearts for hating Activists: how far-right actors dominate polarized TikTok debates on climate protest
Hendrik Meyer
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Trust in algorithms biased appraisal and boosted affect in online dating
Junwen M. Hu, Yoo Jung Oh
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International Journal of Advertising

Motivation-informed persuasion literacy: latent profiles and their relationship to visual attention and behavioral engagement with native advertisements
Maike HĂŒbner, Julia Thalmann, Jörg Henseler
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How storytelling versus factual ads with rivalry appeal drive purchase intention across social media platforms
Madhurima Deb, Sita Mishra, Vinay Kumar Sharma, Yupal Shukla, Rajagowri Giridharan
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Assessing disability in political advertising through the VIS-ABLE Framework
Edward Timke
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Internet Research

Toward fairer large language models: a divergence-reflection-convergence framework for mitigating cognitive bias
Wei Liu, Yixin Zhang
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Purpose Cognitive bias in large language models (LLMs) undermines their reliability due to the practical limitations of existing mitigation methods. This study introduces a divergence-reflection-convergence (DRC) framework, which leverages a computationally efficient and inference-time strategy designed to identify and mitigate cognitive biases without costly retraining. Design/methodology/approach This study proposes a novel three-stage DRC framework utilizing a competitive reasoning process where the model first generates divergent viewpoints, subsequently reflects on them to extract a decision rule, and finally converges on a robust output. Furthermore, we validate the DRC framework on five popular LLMs across four common dimensions of cognitive bias, quantifying performance with evaluation metrics including asymmetric kappa (AK) and total variation distance (TVD). Findings The experimental results demonstrate that LLMs refined by the DRC framework provide more consistent and reliable outputs across all scenarios. Notably, this effect is more pronounced for mitigating internal biases than external biases, suggesting the DRC framework is highly effective at correcting LLMs' flawed internal heuristics. In terms of specific evaluation metrics, the DRC framework successfully transforms all negative or near-zero AK scores into positive values and markedly reduces TVD scores, both of which signify a substantial bias reduction. Originality/value This study develops a DRC framework as a novel inference-time mitigation scheme for LLM bias that addresses the practical limitations of retraining-based approaches. Its competitive reasoning process offers a scalable solution for deploying responsible AI. Concurrently, we propose a more nuanced evaluation metric, the AK, tailored for quantifying LLM bias in subjective contexts.
Predicting participation and expenditure on distinct gambling-like mechanics: financial engagement, selective problem gambling effects and a gaming disorder null
Topias Mattinen, Joseph Macey, Juho Hamari
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Purpose Quantitative work on gambling-like mechanics (GLMs) in video games has largely treated them as a uniform category, overlooking differences in reward structure and similarity to traditional gambling. This study examines predictors of expenditure across three disaggregated GLM categories – cosmetic loot boxes (CLB), game-affecting loot boxes (GALB) and other in-game gambling-like content (OGLC). Design/methodology/approach Data were collected via an online survey of adult gamers (N = 587). Three model sets used the same gaming engagement and problem behavior indicators as predictors, each comprising a two-part approach: binary logistic regression on the full sample to predict purchase participation, and OLS linear regression among purchasers to predict expenditure amounts. Findings Financial engagement – expenditure on non-random free-to-play content and battle passes – emerged as the dominant predictor class; gaming frequency and gaming disorder were null throughout. Problem gambling severity predicted participation selectively – most strongly for OGLC – but predicted expenditure amounts in no category. Predictor patterns dissociated between participation and amount decisions in ways aggregated or uniform analytic approaches would have obscured. Practical implications Increased focus should be given to paid game mechanics that closely mimic the visual and esthetic presentation of traditional gambling formats. Engagement systems such as battle passes should be carefully assessed for their association with increased expenditure on GLMs. Attention should be paid to the risks related to purchase entry into GLMs, rather than to expenditure amounts alone. Originality/value This study is among the first to apply a disaggregated GLM taxonomy empirically and to model participation and expenditure amount as distinct outcomes.

Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media

“Hogwarts is My Home.” The Influence of Transportation, Identification, and Emotion-Specific Personality Traits on the Perceived Sense of Heimat in Fictional Media Worlds
Holger Schramm, Julia Grunwald
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Journal of Information Technology & Politics

Humor on the street, humor on the screen: protest banners, AI-generated avatars, and the visual politics of dissent after the arrest of Istanbul’s mayor
Sarphan Uzunoğlu, Banu Baybars Hawks, Arif Serin
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Bridging the digital divide in online political participation. Six inclusion infrastructuring strategies
Fabrizio Li Vigni
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Real versus AI-generated war videos: comparative effects on viewer attitudes, emotional arousal, and behavioral intentions
Ravi Kumar
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Social media and digital politics: networked reason in an age of digital emotion
Yao Zhang, Shengli Zhang
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The Threads that Fray: Wedge strategies and Chinese influence operations in the Indo-Pacific
Gregory Winger
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Algorithmic authority in Spain: relative deprivation, hierarchy, and support for AI rule
Mingji Liu
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From Facebook to political actions: nationalism, patriotism, and participation in Vietnam’s digital sphere
Giao Nguyen, Uyen-Nhi Tran Le, My Nguyen, Duc Anh Tu Ngo, Thai Nguyen
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Journal of Language and Social Psychology

Identity and Words: Does Gender-Fair Language Impact Workers’ Gender-Work Identity Integration?
Claudia Manzi, Eleonora Crapolicchio, Valeria Amata Giannella, Maria Giuseppina Pacilli, Gabriele Di Cicco, VerĂłnica Benet-MartĂ­nez
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Understanding how individuals integrate their work and non-work identities has become a central concern in research analyzing individual differences in the work context. In particular, gender-work identity integration (GWII) has been proven to significantly impact employee well-being and work adjustment. We present two studies designed to improve GWII by gender-fair language use at work. In Study 1 ( N = 1024), employees of a telecommunication company, after completing a pre-test, received instructions to use either double gender-marking language (DGML, N = 355) or gender-neutral language (GNL, N = 310) in written communication. A third control group ( N = 359) did not receive any instructions. Results show that use of DGML improved employees’ GWII over time, which, in turn, also increased their work engagement and well-being. Study 2 ( N = 219) replicated findings from Study 1 showing that change in DGML use improves GWII, but only under low levels of observed sexist behaviors in the organization. Together, these findings provide evidence of the impact of organizational language policies on employees’ identity processes and well-being.
ChangeMyView: Unpacking the Complex Emotional, Cognitive, and Communicator-Related Processes Underlying Persuasion
Isabella M. Swafford, Alfonso Carballo, Ryan L. Boyd, Vanessa Kountakis, Lucy McGregor, Vivian P. Ta-Johnson
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Persuasion is shaped by complex emotional triggers, cognitive reasoning, and communicator-related characteristics. However, theories of persuasion have often examined different features of persuasive communication in controlled research settings, resulting in questions about how these characteristics exist within naturally occurring persuasive messages. This study addresses this gap by examining theoretically relevant linguistic characteristics associated with successful persuasion using r/ChangeMyView , an online debate forum where users attempt to change others’ views on any topic, and posts resulting in successful persuasion are marked. In Study 1, Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count was used to analyze n = 9020 r/ChangeMyView posts from 2013 to 2018. Principal component analyses identified three broad linguistic dimensions reflecting cognitive reasoning, emotional expression, and authentic communication style. These components were then entered into a multilevel logistic regression analysis, revealing that greater scores on the cognitive reasoning dimension were associated with lower persuasive likelihood, whereas emotional expression and authentic communication were not significantly associated with persuasion. Study 2 analyzed 51,394 posts from 2019 to 2023 and identified a similar three-component structure, demonstrating consistency in how the selected linguistic characteristics grouped across samples. Cognitive reasoning again predicted lower persuasive likelihood, while greater emotional expression predicted lower persuasive likelihood and authentic communication predicted greater persuasive likelihood. The results suggest that naturally occurring persuasive language organizes into reproducible but nuanced dimensions, and that multiple forms of linguistic information contribute to persuasive messaging. Overall, the findings provide naturalistic evidence relevant to theoretical accounts that conceptualize persuasion as involving multiple, potentially overlapping forms of information processing.

Journal of Social and Personal Relationships

Self-Esteem as a Shared Resource Beyond Romantic Relationships: An Extension Into Friendships and Parental Relationships
Lisa B. Hoplock, Jessica J. Cameron, Kelley J. Robinson
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Self-esteem is an important factor in understanding relationship quality, for both the individual and their romantic partner. Yet, most research has focused on solely romantic relationships, neglecting other close relationships that are at least equally important for understanding humans. In the present analysis, introductory psychology students at a Canadian university and their significant other (romantic partner, close friend, or primary caregiver) completed measures of self-esteem and relationship quality ( N = 308 dyads). Actor-Partner Interdependence Model analyses replicated and extended Robinson and Cameron’s (2012) findings that the higher dyad members’ combined self-esteem, the higher the dyad-level relationship quality. Thus, self-esteem may serve as a shared resource in romantic, friend, and family relationships.
Lonely in Love, Driven to Buy: How Perceived Partner Materialism Influences Loneliness and Consumption in Romantic Relationships
Anna J. Vredeveld
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Loneliness is increasingly prevalent and carries significant consequences for well-being, yet it remains common even within romantic relationships. Drawing on Self-Determination Theory and the Discrepancy Model of Loneliness, this research conceptualizes loneliness as arising when relationships fail to satisfy individuals’ need for relatedness, resulting in perceived gaps in closeness. Moving beyond prior work on value congruence, this research examines how perceptions of a partner’s materialism are associated with loneliness, relational outcomes, and consumption behavior. Results from a survey study ( N = 546) indicate that both perceived partner materialism and personal materialism are associated with greater loneliness, suggesting that unmet expectations for closeness, not value similarity, are linked to this experience. In contrast, perceived partner materialism is related to higher relationship satisfaction only among individuals who are themselves more materialistic. Perceived partner materialism and loneliness are also associated with compulsive buying and product retention tendency, even after controlling for personal materialism. Together, the findings highlight the role of perceived partner values in shaping both relationship experiences and consumer responses to unmet relational needs.

Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly

What Makes Child Harm Newsworthy? Event Characteristics, Victim Characteristics, and Media Attention
Nikolay Ternov, Kuralay Mukhambetova, Zeinep Abetova
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Media coverage shapes public understanding of social problems, yet harmful events receive uneven attention even when they involve children. This study examines factors shaping media visibility of child harm in Kazakhstan. Using a corpus of more than 230,000 Telegram news posts (2020–2025), we identify 1,571 incidents involving harm to children and estimate negative binomial regression models to test explanations derived from news values and ideal victim theory. Results show that event characteristics predict media attention more strongly than victim characteristics. Fatal interpersonal violence receives more coverage, while systemic failures receive less. Victim age and gender are not significant predictors.
Stories that Make Hawks? Digital News-Based User-Generated Content and Foreign Policy Orientations Among China’s Generation Z
Yang Li, Ying Hooi Khoo, Siti Ezaleila Binti Mustafa
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This study examines the relationships between exposure to news-based user-generated content on Bilibili and Chinese Generation Z’s support for hawkish foreign policies. Guided by the Narrative Policy Framework, a survey ( N = 688) shows that self-reported exposure to villain, hero, and mixed narrative strategies is positively associated with hawkish orientations, both directly and indirectly through national pride and national humiliation. These findings suggest that, within the highly performative and affectively embedded dynamics of social media, nonofficial actors may rely on dramatized storytelling and serve as a nonnegligible component of the broader rise of hawkishness within Chinese youth communities.
Book Review: Advertising revolutionary: The life and work of Tom Burrell by Chambers, J. P. ChambersJ. P. (2024). Advertising revolutionary: The life and work of Tom Burrell. University of Illinois Press.
Jacqueline Gutierrez
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The False Will Set You Free: How Lower Courts Have Translated the Supreme Court’s Latest Falsity Doctrine into Practice
Robert L. Kerr
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This study provides the first descriptive mapping of the impact of the First Amendment’s rationale for advancing truth-seeking being extended counter-intuitively to provide greater protection for intentional falsehoods. Scholarly concerns over the Supreme Court’s Alvarez ruling focused on potentially creating a doctrinal vacuum of limited guidance. The study found lower courts reflected more clarity of guidance when cases involved the sorts of historically unprotected categories of false expression targeting harm beyond falsity—but considerably less so in other types of cases where it was often “not entirely clear what level of scrutiny is appropriate for laws that criminalize lying.”

Journalism Studies

Mapping Gaps in Local News Coverage
Alexander L. Curry, Yujin Kim, Caroline Murray, Emily Graham, Natalie Jomini Stroud
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More Than Core and Periphery: How a Mapping Approach Can Add Nuance to Understanding the Journalistic Field
Phoebe Maares, Kim Löhmann, Folker Hanusch, Daniel Nölleke
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Mass Communication and Society

Weaving Behavioral Cocoons in Modern Life (2003–2020): Understanding the Acceleration of Pace of Life and Media Use with Word Embeddings
Zhuo Chen, Shengchun Huang, Cheng-Jun Wang
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Exploring Existential Reflections Inspired by Eudaimonic Media Experiences: A Qualitative Analysis of Common Themes and Insights from Media Portrayals of Death and Dying
Enny Das, Anne Bartsch, Julia Böttinger, Christal BĂŒrgel, Kobie van Krieken
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Academic Publishing is Broken. We’re All to Blame
Mike Schmierbach
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Media and Communication

Do Malaysian Newsrooms Jump on the AI Bandwagon? Empirical Evidence From Journalists’ Perspectives
Jiankun Gong, Yu Zuo, Nur Izzati Aziz, Mumtaz Aini Alivi, Kunjin Luo, Yuqing Lin
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Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly promoted as a transformative force in journalism, yet most research on newsroom AI adoption remains concentrated in Western and other well-resourced media settings. This study examines how AI is interpreted, organized, and used in Malaysian newsrooms, offering insight from an emerging Southeast Asian media context. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with 20 journalists across six Malaysian news organizations, the article investigates how national AI governance signals are translated into newsroom norms, how organizational resources and managerial priorities shape uptake, and how AI is incorporated into everyday reporting, editing, and verification. The analysis shows that AI adoption in Malaysian newsrooms is uneven and selective rather than uniform. First, national AI momentum has not yet produced strong newsroom-level governance; instead, the practice remains shaped by limited written rules, selective disclosure, and strong human accountability. Second, organizational capacity is patchy, with uneven access to tools, training, and infrastructural support across organizations and roles. Third, AI is used mainly in bounded, assistive tasks such as transcription, translation, summarization, and headline generation, while verification labor is redistributed rather than reduced. The findings identify a typology of newsroom responses—cautious minimalists, experimental pragmatists, and human-gated adopters—showing that Malaysian newsrooms are not simply “jumping on the AI bandwagon,” but engaging AI pragmatically under uneven governance and resource conditions.

Media Psychology

The Relational Costs of Asymmetric Mixed Reality Headset Use in Large Groups
Monique Santoso, Portia Wang, Jeremy Bailenson
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Love Without Borders: Explaining Why People Interact with National Out-Groups on Tinder
Ainhoa Arranz Aldana, Giulia Ranzini, Philipp K. Masur
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Individual Political Attitudes and Group Norms Interact to Explain Biased Political Information Sharing
Xinyao Zhang, Christin Scholz, Gijs Schumacher, Marte Otten
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Between Ideals and BoPo: Daily Associations Between Exposure to Appearance Content and Body Image Among Young Individuals with Visible Differences
Laure Dedecker, Laurien Coosemans, Chelly Maes, Lara Schreurs, Laura Vandenbosch
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Mobile Media & Communication

Texting for Connection in an “Always-On” Society: Roles of Content, Availability Pressure, and Emotional Fatigue
David de Segovia Vicente, Mariek M. P. Vanden Abeele, Kyle Van Gaeveren, Stephen Murphy, Jeffrey A. Hall
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Texting is the most ubiquitous form of computer-mediated communication, but its ability to satisfy relational needs in an always-on society remains under scrutiny. This study examines how message content and psychological context—specifically emotional fatigue and availability pressure—determine the relational value of texting. Analyzing 5,821 ecological momentary assessments from 112 adults, the results reveal that while texting and offline interactions positively predict connectedness, offline interactions demonstrate a meaningfully stronger effect. Within the context of texting, meaningful and affectionate interactions are associated with high levels of connectedness compared with those of small talk or practical exchanges, supporting the hierarchy of communication episodes proposed by communicate bond belong theory. Notably, neither emotional fatigue nor availability pressure significantly influences the association between texting and connectedness. These findings highlight that the relational benefits of texting are resilient to emotional fatigue and availability pressure and primarily depend on the nature of the content instead of users' psychological context.
Compressed Time, Narrow Space: The Visual-Temporal Aesthetics of Mobile Microdrama on ReelShort
Seda AktaƟ
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The widespread adoption of digital platforms and mobile devices has significantly transformed audiovisual storytelling. Short-form mobile microdramas represent not only a new mode of distribution but also a narrative form that reorganizes cinematic time and space. While previous research has primarily focused on platform economies, audience engagement, and algorithmic circulation, the visual-temporal organization of mobile microdramas has received comparatively little attention from the perspective of quantitative film analysis. Addressing this gap, this study investigates how mobile microdramas reorganize cinematic form through temporal compression and spatial narrowing. A quantitative formal analysis was conducted on the first episodes of 10 ReelShort series representing different narrative tropes. The analysis examined average shot length (ASL), editing rhythm, shots per minute, shot-scale distribution, and the use of establishing shots. Shot boundaries were automatically identified using Adobe Premiere Pro's Scene Edit Detection tool, while shot scales and spatial indicators were analysed through qualitative coding. The findings show that an exceptionally short ASL of 2.31 s, together with the predominance of medium shots and the limited use of full/long shots and establishing shots, minimizes spatial exposition while privileging character-centred compositions and producing a dense visual rhythm optimized for smartphone viewing. The results suggest that ReelShort reorganizes cinematic form by simultaneously compressing cinematic time and narrowing cinematic space, extending long-term stylistic tendencies in film history while adapting them to the perceptual and technological conditions of vertically oriented mobile media.
“I’m Here to Work and Not to Call”: Blue-Collar Workers Navigating Interruptions by Mobile Devices
Floor Fiers
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In blue-collar work, such as construction and landscaping, mobile devices allow for communication across dispersed workplaces while posing risks to worker outcomes, including physical safety. When mobile devices interrupt workers, they are tasked with making rapid decisions about how to respond. This study examines how blue-collar workers experience and navigate interruptions by mobile communication technologies. Based on 46 semi-structured interviews nested in a phone survey of employees of a blue-collar company in the Netherlands, results reveal that when interrupted by their mobile devices, workers engage in a complex negotiation process in which they weigh a myriad of contextual factors and consider different response options. Participants describe three general strategies to approach these negotiations: devising rules to guide their choices, taking preventative measures to limit the choices they need to make, and structurally deprioritizing mobile communication altogether. Ultimately, the study highlights that managing interruptions in high-risk environments constitutes a complex skill, one that demands more scholarly and managerial attention.
Heterogeneities of Smartphone Use Among Chinese Urban Older Adults: A Life Course Approach
Lu Chen, Miaoting Cheng
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Drawing on a qualitative analysis of semi-structured interview data, this research adopts a life course perspective to examine how Chinese urban older adults adjust their smartphone use in response to significant life events across later life. The findings reveal that multi-level life events foster a dynamic continuum of (dis)connection. At the same time, adaptive and maladaptive use patterns coexist among Chinese urban older adults, demonstrating heterogeneity in their smartphone use. By proposing a shift from an age-as-variable approach to an aging-as-process approach, this study emphasizes older adults’ contextualized (dis)connectivity situated within life course transitions and trajectories, which reflects a negotiation between individual agency and socio-technical structures.
Beyond Seamlessness: Mobile AI and Situated Sense-Making
Thilo von Pape
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This commentary explores what it means for generative artificial intelligence (AI) to become mobile, as interaction shifts from screen-bound querying to AI participation in the flow of everyday situations. Rather than framing this shift in terms of access or use, it approaches mobile AI through situated sense-making, understood here in terms of the constitution of sense through ongoing activities, embodied cues, social coordination, and mobile communication affordances as AI becomes part of the situation. Starting from a cafĂ© interaction staged in a promotional video for a future AI device, the commentary confronts corporate claims of seamless interaction with theoretical accounts of situated sense-making. Drawing on mobile communication studies and human–machine communication (HMC), it argues that mobile AI requires a specification of sense-making as HMC's central boundary object: not only as mutual interpretation between users and interfaces but also as a process embedded in ongoing activities and interactions. The commentary develops this argument through three interrelated aspects of situated sense-making—coordination, distribution, and stabilization—showing how mobile AI may reshape participation, redistribute epistemic authority, and steer relevance toward either shared problematization or premature closure. It thereby advances an approach to analyzing and designing embodied AI that foregrounds visible coordination, responsive alignment, and stabilization that remains open to collective deliberation.

New Media & Society

Praise, rent, and the platform: Substack and the enclosure of blog culture
Will Riley
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This article situates Substack within the platformisation of blogging and the enclosure of cultural production within proprietary infrastructures. Tracing the genealogy of blogging as a decentralised practice that carried within it the seeds of citizen journalism and informal intellectual life, I argue that Substack does not restore an apparently lost cultural practice but renegotiates and interpolates blogging into a platformised logic. Framed as a return to independent, writer-led publishing, Substack instead, as I argue, renders free-labour interaction as a source of rent. I analyse the rhetoric and revolving discourse around Substack’s internal curatorial project, ‘The Substack Post’. Drawing on Jodi Dean’s account of blogs as displaced mediators alongside theories of digital labour and platform capitalism, and approaching Substack as a simultaneously platformised and infrastructuralised formation, I argue that praise operates as a platform-specific form of commodity fetishism, animating the platform while obscuring the labour relations that sustain it.
Stress and self-efficacy under artificial intelligence disruption: A mixed-methods study on the usage of artificial intelligence among Finnish workers
Atte Oksanen, Teo Keipi, Moona Heiskari, Iina Savolainen
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Rapid workplace integration of artificial intelligence (AI) is reshaping work practices and challenging employees’ self-efficacy and well-being. This mixed-methods study examines these experiences using national survey data ( N = 2109) and qualitative interviews ( N = 54) with Finnish workers. Frequent AI use, AI-induced identity threat, and organizational AI deployment are associated with higher AI strain, whereas AI self-efficacy relates to frequent use, positive AI attitudes, and subjective well-being. Identity threat moderated several of these associations, highlighting the role of professional identity in AI-related experiences. Analysis drawing on Greimas’ semiotic modalities (must, can, know, and want) explains how these patterns are interpreted and negotiated in practice, revealing tensions between perceived self-efficacy and pressures to integrate AI. AI use was often described as voluntary. However, participants anticipated increasing competence demands and responsibility. The findings emphasize the need for organizational strategies that address identity-related challenges and support employee well-being in AI-driven work transformations.
Platformed affective withdrawal: Quiet quitting and the refusal of gendered emotional labour on TikTok
AybĂŒke BĂŒyĂŒkkağnıcı
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This article examines #quietquitting on TikTok as a platform-mediated articulation of gendered affective withdrawal. While organisational research interprets quiet quitting as reduced discretionary effort or declining work engagement, this study examines how quiet quitting is articulated as a digitally circulated refusal of feminised emotional labour. Drawing on feminist theories of affective labour and critical platform studies, the analysis explores how workers renegotiate expectations of emotional availability within algorithmically structured visibility regimes. The study is based on a qualitative-dominant mixed-methods analysis of 586 TikTok videos shared under #quietquitting between 2020 and 2026. Combining thematic discourse analysis with descriptive engagement indicators, the findings show that creators frequently frame quiet quitting as a refusal of unpaid relational mediation, emotional management, and workplace care. The article introduces the concept of platformed affective withdrawal to explain how narratives of workplace disengagement circulate through algorithmic visibility systems that amplify and individualise gendered labour inequalities.

Nordicom Review

Norwegian party leaders’ communication on social media platforms during Covid-19 lockdowns: A longitudinal comparison of Facebook and Instagram content
Roy Aulie Jacobsen
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Social media platforms became key channels for political leaders’ crisis communication during the Covid-19 pandemic. In this article, I examine how Norwegian party leaders used Facebook and Instagram across three national lockdowns in Norway. A dataset of 2,397 posts from national party leaders was coded using a four-part framework for analysing government communication on social media platforms, capturing information provision, input-seeking, politics, and symbolic presentation. Post-level linear probability models estimate how the probability of each communication type varied by platform and lockdown period, controlling for government or opposition status and Covid-19 relatedness. Facebook accounts for a larger share of posts and carries a broader crisis-communication repertoire, particularly for political and input-seeking communication. The use of Instagram for crisis communication became more selective over time, with several communication types declining during the third lockdown. Contrary to participatory expectations, input-seeking decreased as the crisis persisted. Opposition leaders relied more on information provision across platforms, consistent with visibility and accountability work during prolonged crisis governance.

Political Communication

Who Verifies the Verifiers? AI, Local Knowledge Production, and Credibility in Tanzania’s 2025 Election
Gregory Gondwe
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Public Relations Review

Stronger together? Being part of an organizational coalition can influence perceptions of misinformation among political partisans
Ava Zwolinski, Christian Burgers, Toni G.L.A. van der Meer
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Disrupting and consolidating critical public relations research: Status and outlook
Lee Edwards, Øyvind Ihlen
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Not my party, still my public: Political organization–public relationships beyond the base
Kaye D. Sweetser, Kalyca Lynn Becktel
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Whose voices are published? Public relations scholarship by race, place, and gender in 30 years of journal publications
MarĂ­a Elizabeth Len-RĂ­os, Rosalynn A. Vasquez, Rita (Rongwei) Tang
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Public Understanding of Science

Why research on science communication needs more meta-analyses
Niels G. Mede, Mike S. SchÀfer, Elisa Tedaldi
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Research on science communication has expanded and diversified. Correspondingly, an increasing number of literature reviews, handbooks, and bibliometric studies have taken stock of the field’s accumulated knowledge. However, it is still difficult to identify robust, consolidated answers to key questions on science communication—answers that may help scholars, practitioners, and decision-makers. Meta-analyses—the statistical aggregation of empirical results across multiple studies to determine average effect sizes—can provide some of those answers, complementing existing knowledge syntheses and addressing their shortcomings. Yet, meta-analyses in research on science communication are rare, whereas other disciplines are much closer to establishing a culture of meta-analyses and demonstrate the usefulness of meta-analyses for specific aspects of science communication research within and beyond our discipline. We therefore propose a meta-analytical research agenda of science communication scholarship and argue that it will increase the impact of our field in the social sciences and society.

Social Media + Society

Careful Dis/Connection: Bringing Digital (Inter)Dependent Relations Out From the Shadows of Autonomy
Sara Van Bruyssel
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Although always-on connectivity affords autonomy, it also creates dependencies on digital devices. Digital disconnection has emerged as a countermovement, with people seeking ‘authentic’ offline reconnection under the discourse of (self-)care. Yet, a pertinent question is whether certain care relations are contingent on digital dependencies between people and, despite being perceived as burdensome, should therefore not be broken through disconnection. Drawing on feminist ethics of care, which understands care as all the work that maintains everyday life, this article examines how care and digital dis/connection practices shape each other. Empirically, it draws on ethnographic fieldwork with 20 adults and analyses three vignettes through a relational framework that follows care occurring in, through and away from digital devices. The findings show that digital well-being is shaped less by individual media use than by the care relations that digital technologies sustain. Experiences of digital dis/connection reveal how connectivity is embedded in often invisible responsibilities, dependencies, and forms of care. Rather than locating digital tensions in technologies themselves, the analysis suggests that such tensions expose underlying challenges in how care is organised, valued, and distributed. In response, the article develops the framework of careful dis/connection to evaluate digital practices according to how they sustain, redistribute, and make visible the care on which everyday life depends.
Webs of Ainu Mosir: Indigenous Creative Networks on YouTube
Xanat Vargas Meza, Takumi Yokoyama, Chieko Nishimura, Ryohei Nishida, Yoichi Ochiai
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The Ainu are Indigenous people living primarily in Japan. As they have recently adopted social media, and network-based analyses of First Nations cultural manifestations are uncommon, this study drew on Indigenous and social network frameworks to examine creative networks in the virtual Mosir (the world as viewed by the Ainu). Our objective was to clarify the types of collaborators, their cooperation patterns and relationships relevant to producing Ainu-related YouTube videos. Three YouTube lists of 428 videos were utilised in this study. Publicly available data were downloaded using a YouTube Application Programming Interface (API). The videos were watched and classified, including anonymised data on collaborators. The relationships of the collaborators were quantified and mapped, network measurements were calculated and collaborator clusters were examined. The most frequent types of collaborators were individuals and communities. We also observed that individuals moderately affected network clustering ( p = .002). Furthermore, individuals were somewhat correlated with the average number of ties ( p = .004) and the bridging of clusters through betweenness ( p = .006), with Japanese male celebrities and Ainu people, particularly Ainu women, showing high centrality. As Indigenous rights advance internationally, the virtual Mosir shows how crucial it is for First Nations to participate in multimedia production processes, particularly if such productions are available on social media. Indigenous network frameworks were highly compatible with network analysis, allowing for a more comprehensive overview of Indigenous production processes. This can enhance the multiple knowledges of First Nations, while fostering accountability and reciprocity of their allies.
Algorithms of Injustice: An Ethnographic Content Analysis of Black Youth’s Experiences with Racial Trauma Online
Amanda M. McLeroy, Tiera Tanksley
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This study explores the pervasive presence of racially traumatic content (RTC) on social media and its profound impact on the mental well-being of Black youth. Utilizing ethnographic content analysis and grounded in critical race technology theory (CRTT), the research identifies key manifestations of RTC, including Black death, digital harassment, deepfakes, and war content. Social media’s algorithmic structures amplify RTC, perpetuating systemic anti-Black racism while exposing Black youth to vicarious trauma, anxiety, and depression. Despite these challenges, social media platforms also provide spaces for activism and community-building. Black youth use these digital arenas to engage in social justice narratives, find solidarity, and develop coping strategies. The findings emphasize the critical roles of educators and counselors in mitigating the adverse effects of RTC by fostering media literacy, digital resilience, and culturally responsive mental health support. This research contributes to evidence-based interventions aimed at empowering Black youth to navigate digital spaces safely, advocate for systemic change, and thrive in an equitable and inclusive online environment.
Automated Influence: How Social Bots Reshape Discursive Opportunities in Online Activism
Linda Li, Helen Margetts
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Social bots are an increasingly prominent presence in online protest discourse. We adapt the discursive opportunity structure (DOS) framework for digital protest, refining its dimensions of visibility, resonance and legitimacy to account for platform-mediated discourse and automated activity. Applying the refined framework through computer-assisted content analysis of bot activity in two major protests – Black Lives Matter (BLM) and Extinction Rebellion (XR) – we move beyond treating bots as a monolithic or uniformly disruptive force, identifying competing pro- and counter-protest strategies distributed differently across the three dimensions. In BLM, pro-protest bot content concentrates on cultural resonance, whereas counter-bot content targets legitimacy; in XR, pro-protest bots are used to build legitimacy and participatory visibility, whereas counter-bots more often work to downplay the movement’s salience. The framework’s granularity discriminates between movement types in ways coarser accounts of ‘political bots’ cannot, showing that understanding contemporary movements requires attending to how automated activity is deployed within their discourse.

Southern Communication Journal

Reflections and Paths Forward: A Collection of Presidential and Keynote Addresses Delivered at the Southern States Communication Association Annual Conventions, 2024–2026
Rebekah L. Fox
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Indigenous Communication: A Global Perspective
Debajit Bora, Maloth Kartheek
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Telematics and Informatics

Did generative AI narrow the digital divide for immigrants in South Korea? A difference-in-differences study, 2019–2023
Nari Yoo, Sou Hyun Jang
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AI hallucinations and user verification intentions: an integrative model based on the DeLone and McLean model and the theory of planned behavior
Bo Hu, Yu-li Liu, Jiayue Dai, Jiayi Mi
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Ideological cues: Fishing photos and US flags reduce romantic interest among liberal daters on dating apps
Annika From, Jasmine Banks, Janae W. Sayler
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How and when AI companionship quality enhances user mental well-being
Pengyi Shen, Dehui Peng, Jinan Xu
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Exploring the social media attention to climate change and its predictive value in the stock market
Yu Bai, Fangfei Yu, Tiantian Wu, Jinling Tan
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Algorithmic visibility of child-directed content: Exposure and persistence dynamics in YouTube trending lists across 113 countries
Yavuz Selim Balcioğlu, Erkut Altindağ
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The International Journal of Press/Politics

How Personal Curation Shapes Political Engagement on Social Media? Examining The Politics of Personal Curation Model
Biying Wu-Ouyang
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Although individuals today have a wide range of media choices to engage in politics, recent investigations have revealed that many are increasingly avoiding news and disengaging from politics, especially in social media. From a user-centered perspective, few effective strategies on social media have been systematically examined to enhance political engagement. Established through the curated flows framework, this study proposes the Politics of Personal Curation (PPC) model, which offers a fresh perspective by examining how everyday mundane personal curation in social media (platform expansiveness, content heterogeneity, news attentiveness, and source belongingness curation) have significantly influences on political engagement. A preregistered study from a nationally representative panel in the United States ( N = 1,270) generally indicates that expansiveness, heterogeneity, and news attentiveness curation yield higher political engagement, whereas belongingness curation is linked to lower engagement. This study further supports that these media effects on political engagement are channeled through enhanced cognitive elaboration and moderated by cross-cutting discussion.
Television Time and Electoral Success: Evidence From the Constitutional Convention Election in Chile in 2021
Roberto Munita-Morgan, Patricio Navia
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Some democracies give all political parties free television time to level the electoral campaign playing field. Relying on a case that uses open-list proportional representation rules and where voters select individual candidates, but where free television time is assigned to party lists, we explore the association between appearing in free television ads (franja) and electoral success in Chile’s 2021 Constitutional Convention election. In this unprecedented contest, airtime was allocated to parties and lists of independents. We use an original coding of 3,157 mentions across 28 days of television ads for candidates in the four largest electoral lists (692 candidates). Candidates mentioned in ads received higher vote shares (2.9 vs. 2.2 percent) and were more likely to win seats (18.6 vs. 7.7 percent). Multivariate models show that campaign spending is more strongly associated with electoral success, but mentions in the franja have a modest but statistically significant positive coefficient. Although we cannot disentangle the potential endogeneity of being more electable and appearing in the franja, the findings highlight the importance of television time for electoral success and point to how party-controlled media exposure influences intra-list competition.

Visual Communication

The semiotics of hope: Visual chronotopes of the community pantry movement
Nelson Mangaldan Buso
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‘In the current context of global crisis’, Bonnin writes, ‘we have the opportunity to design a research agenda for an uncertain future from a dark present. But there is no reason why that agenda should also be uncertain and dark’. My article takes up this challenge by exploring the visuality of hope. Drawing on the community pantry movement that sprouted across the Philippines during the pandemic, I examine the online representations of these pantries and the ways they mediate and circulate hopeful imaginaries amid the crisis. Using a chronotopic approach, I trace how such visual practices creatively mobilise different spatiotemporalities, thereby suturing the past, present and future, and in effect, registering alternative lifeworlds in the face of systemic collapse. This article contributes to hope studies by rendering visible the visual materiality of hope.