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Within Putin's conservative nation-building agenda, the Russian mediascape excludes or marginalises non-heteronormative sexualities' voices from the official discourse. However, certain manifestations of non-heteronormative sexualities infiltrate public space through convergent traditional and new media (Jenkins, 2006, Convergence Culture. Where Old and New Media Collide. New York University Press) and the performativity of non-heteronormative sexualities in popular culture. This paper claims that these convergent media-enabled representations of NS can challenge, inform, mediate or authenticate the establishment discourse. It focuses on a particular case of a sexually provocative video with homoerotic undertones (mimicking a popular music hit 'Satisfaction') produced by male cadets from the Ulyanovsk Institute of Civil Aviation and uploaded onto YouTube in January 2018 (allegedly without the cadets' permission). The paper examines its mediation from the grassroots to semi-official peripheries, to mainstream media (TV) and back again (focus group data), highlighting a dramatic change in the official coverage as well as a lack of hegemonic consensus regarding representations of non-heteronormative sexualities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper analyses the role of alternative far-right media in promoting and organizing mobilization against the Global Compact for Migration – the first intergovernmentally negotiated agreement, prepared under the auspices of the United Nations, covering all dimensions of international migration in a holistic and comprehensive manner. Exploring four European alternative far-right media: PI-News in Germany, Il Primato Nazionale in Italy, the UK localization of Breitbart, and the transnational Voice of Europe, we show that these media have gone beyond (dis)informing and have actively mobilized and channeled indignation through petitioning and protest organization. While most research on far-right media practices so far has focused either on social media interactions or exclusively on 'disinformation' and 'fake news', we analyse web based alternative news media as part of а far-right social movement that has successfully used progressive left-wing protests repertoires and tactics. We argue that alternative far-right news media act as 'indignation mobilization mechanisms' that not only fuel the indignation of the public by channeling the messages of far-right politicians but also channel bottom-up indignation through online campaigns, petitions, and offline street protests. This unabashedly biased and mobilization-oriented approach is what distinguishes far-right media from mainstream media and guarantees them a loyal and dedicated supporter base. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The emergence of information communication technologies has transformed communication in Nigeria. The mass media once regarded as the most vocal and vibrant press in Africa is losing public trust as people easily source for critical information from social media instead of the media due to their patrimonial relationship with the state. The potentials of these information communication technologies in holding government accountable and enhancing journalism practice has endangers the state. Consequently, attempts by the state at regulating social media and the mass media through draconian bills such as protection from internet falsehood and manipulation bill of 2019, and the National Communication for the prohibition of Hate Speech bill 2019. Using Habermas notion of the public sphere coupled with semi-structured interviews with 12 media practitioners, this paper examines ways in which such regulatory frameworks have impacted on both the media and democratic cultures of the Nigerian state. The paper argues that social media and its convergence in the newsroom has expounded the democratic culture due to its affordances of speedy and accountability. However, the potentials of social media and its affordance has been misused. Consequently, the contestation between the state, public and media on how social media and its convergence in the newsroom can be effectively regulated. The media and public do not trust the state as they blame the state for the rise of fake news (misinformation and disinformation). On the other hand, the state has blamed the desire for profit and commodification of news for the rise of fake news. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores Mark Zuckerberg's attempts at 'network switching' (Arsenault & Castells, 2008a. Switching power: Rupert Murdoch and the global business of media politics: A sociological analysis. International Sociology, 23(4), 488–513) in order to examine the nature of power in the network society in an age of social media dominance. Through a case study of Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook we illustrate how novel networked media moguls gain and retain power through the interconnection of multiple networks and attempts to reprogram common goals and resources. We thus further test Arsenault and Castells' (2008a. Switching power: Rupert Murdoch and the global business of media politics: A sociological analysis. International Sociology, 23(4), 488–513) hypothesis through an analysis of Zuckerberg, and Facebook's, key operational strategies and their success in facilitating the interconnection of a multitude of networks. In disentangling the strategy, rhetoric and actions of Zuckerberg – notably in the Cambridge Analytica scandal and in his philanthropic efforts with the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative – we analyze how 'switching' power manifests within the context of an inextricable relationship between SNSs and a range of other networks including political, financial, philanthropic and scientific. Moreover, an examination of the multitude of networks Zuckerberg operates within highlights both the opportunities and pitfalls associated with the decentralization and dissemination of power within the network society. Accordingly, this paper offers two updates to the original hypothesis posed by Arsenault & Castells; (1) network switches act as both points for leveraging power and as potential sites of weakness and (2) growing technological interconnection and the visibility of social media require successful network switchers to increasingly operate 'mega-switches' in order to successfully compete against other power seekers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the growing maturity of new, interactive media, rhetoric about its possibilities and potentialities that abounded in its earliest days still endures. The growth of detailed and empirical work, which has sought to populate the digital landscape with grounded research calling into question this rhetoric, has not stopped new media debate from continuing to be shaped, in part, by the language of the potential. This paper is concerned with one aspect of new media's potential, personalization. It focuses on new media's proclaimed capacity to be adapted to meet the needs and desires of individual users. This is a trope that runs through much humanities and social sciences literature on new media and ICTs, yet despite recognition of the possibility of personalization offered by networked media technologies, there is very little grounded, empirical work on this subject in these fields. In order to address this absence, this paper compares an attempt to personalize new media web content on a two-year research endeavour entitled Project @pple with the rhetoric about the potentiality for personalization that new technologies offers. It aims to contribute to understandings of personalization by detailing the issues that arise when attempting to implement it. The argument of the paper is that the difficulties encountered on Project @pple suggest that, in real-life situations, characterized as they are by constraints and complexities, it is not always a straightforward process for personalization to cease to be potential and to become actual. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This methodological paper addresses practical strategies, implications, benefits and drawbacks of collecting qualitative semi-structured interview data about Internet-based research topics using four different interaction systems: face to face; telephone; email; and instant messaging. The discussion presented here is based on a review of the literature and reflection on the experiences of the authors in performing completed research that used those four interaction systems. The focus is on functional effects (e.g. scheduling and other logistics, data transcription and data management), as well as methodological effects (e.g. ability to probe, collecting affective data, and data representation). The authors found that all four methods of data collection produced viable data for the projects they completed, but that some additional issues arose. Five themes emerged that form the organization of the paper: (1) interview scheduling and participant retention; (2) recording and transcribing; (3) data cleaning and organizing; (4) presentation and representation of data; and (5) the detection/presentation of affective data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses various reports published within the issue including on the reader's response on old media types and another about the different ways of using semi-structured interviews.

As a group, young people in the UK are represented in media and policy as vulnerable to radicalisation, exclusion or criminality, and as digitally savvy 'partners' and service users. These contradictions between media and policy constructions of young people highlight the problematic frames through which young citizens are imagined and represented. In tandem, mainstream UK media and policy documents identify normative institutional forms of participation as primary arenas for youth engagement. Drawing on extended original thematic analyses of media messages and policy documents about and for young people, and on expert interviews with young activists and youth policy-makers, this paper finds that (1) adults and young people who work in the fields of youth activism and policy have far more precise and critical understandings of young people's needs, contexts and diversity as citizens than media representations or policy narratives; that (2) the nuanced perspectives of young people and of these adults is frequently lost or unheard; and that (3) a diverse repertoire of productive forms of youth active citizenship – which are critical, playful and dissenting – are discouraged, excluded, delegitimised or criminalised. By building consensus amongst powerful adults, media representations and instrumental policies regarding youth thus further widen the chasm between 'accepted' notions of youth active citizenship and how young people enact citizenship in their everyday lives. Rather than retreating from difficult and contentious politics to protect adult authorities, media and policy narratives should acknowledge these as key levers for the productive and critical development of active young citizens in a strong democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper critically situates contemporary concerns with cyberspace and digital media within a cultural dimension. In doing this it sets the emerging new communication technologies alongside issues of cultural limits and boundaries. The paper begins by undertaking ground clearing work about the nature of cyberspace and providing an analytical index of its position in relation to its imaginary or real status. It is argued that cyberspace is destined to attract two competing responses; first for being too true to life; and second for not being true enough. It is argued that these tensions are part of the cyberspatial embodiment of certain significant cultural aesthetics which are subsequently interwoven into the fabric of popular technoculture. This embodiment projects a number of competing claims and characterisations for the potential of digital media through slogans of cyberspace. The paper addresses how spatial metaphors, forms of technological enhancement, Utopian aesthetics, technoculture and posthuman philosophy are framed as ‘frontier discourse’. The materialism of transhumanist and extroprian politics is examined from a phenome‐nological standpoint. These frontier projects posit a ‘disclosing space’ for digital media which offer a radical ‘crossing over’ from the human to nonhuman computer mediated environment. By way of phenomenological analysis these new cultural politics are shown to be intimations of the real and an illusion of radical otherness which is chimerical and exemplary of unreflexive ‘modes of becoming’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Flint Water Crisis became a national news story in January of 2016, when major publishers such as The New York Times began covering the story. In the same month, an influx of social media activism occurred in response to the crisis, with citizens developing hashtag campaigns such as #FlintFwd in order to disseminate news and stories from a citizen's perspective; these campaigns often positioned Flint positively ‒ as a recovering community ‒ rather than a city in the middle of a public health crisis, and often addressed not a national public but a local audience. This paper considers Flint-based social media activity to investigate the emergence of place-based activism within the ostensibly global network of social media. In doing so, it identifies three key themes; 1) leveraging social media to forward a critique of deficient journalistic storytelling; 2) using the affective process of storytelling via social media to claim authority over their own material offline existence, and 3) using place-based storytelling to implicate others as witnesses via the global network of social media. These themes coalesce around a distinctly critical logic of connectivity. This logic extends the notion of connectivity articulated by Van Dijck and Poell [2013. Understanding social media logic. Media and Communication, 1(1), 2-14.] and the strategies of platform activism explored by Tufekci [2017. Twitter and tear gas: The power and fragility of networked protest. New Haven: Yale University Press.] to explain how social media works to expose discrepancies between the public story of the water crisis and material, lived conditions of Flint, rendering visible a discursive identity of Flint thus far unrecognized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines information networks on social media to draw conclusions about influence relationships among members of the mass media. The project considers social networks and information patterns using Twitter data, first at the newspaper level and second at the journalist level. Using a computational approach, we look for evidence of elite-directed information flows, as well as exploring whether we find evidence of an increase in the democratization of newsmaking. This study finds that elite voices continue to dominate information networks in the digital age; however, it also finds evidence that information can move expeditiously from journalists in local and regional outlets to elite ones, and vice versa. We move further to explore the content of tweets among the journalist network, finding that there are substantial, direct interactions among elite and regional and local journalists. Our results taken together uncover new network patterns and provide a novel insight on the role of information technologies in newsmaking in the digital age. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite both scholarly and popular claims that citizen journalism (CJ) represents a growing democratizing force in the journalistic field, recent scholarship in the area has noted the decline of the organizational population of CJ. In this paper, we investigate how individual characteristics of sites and the dynamics of larger organizational population affect a CJ site’s risk of experiencing a mortality. Drawing on the largest sample to date of US-based English-language CJ sites, this study examines the risk of site mortality through an event history framework. Findings indicate that the strongest predictor of a site’s mortality is the age of the site, consistent with organizational population theory’s ‘liability of newness.’ We also find that for-profit and community-based sites have lower rates of site mortality, indicating that adopting legitimate conventions of journalism may serve as a protective buffer to site death. The results offer mixed evidence on whether CJ has become more professionalized via attrition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Interactive media and virtual environments give rise to transmedia and multiscreen viewing in a new popular and participatory culture. This in turn requires a new type of critical, reflective media education. This article reviews expert opinions on the educational potential ofThe Hunger Games(THG) and the use of Twitter during the viewing of films by young audiences. The study has the twofold goal of analysing whether the tweets include the topics of ideology and values mentioned in the selected articles and whether the conversations help build knowledge of the subjects that, according to the experts, are discussed in the literary trilogy. The method, based on discourse analysis, is twofold as well, comprising, on one hand, the discussion of 61 selected academic papers onTHGand, on the other, 6000 tweets posted by youngsters while watching the films in the trilogy shown on TV. The tweets were analysed using the ‘coding and counting’ technique in computer-mediated discourse analysis. The results show a great chasm between academic or educational perspectives and what youngsters see in the films. Twitter interactions show that the virtual environments where these interactions take place are mere virtual concourses rather than affinity or learning spaces. This draws attention to the need for a new type of media education which not only includes the popular culture in formal education environments, but also uses the virtual concourses where youngsters gather around media products to transform mere coexistence into convergence of interests based on the meaning of these products. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much has been said about the use of email and other information and communication technologies by online activists to communicate their message to the general public, to recruit and mobilize fellow advocates, and to reach the mass media. However, largely absent from the literature are studies exploring the use of email by the public to communicate and interact with campaigners. This paper investigates why citizens email campaigners and whether email exchanges between the public and activists inform campaigning tactics. The data used in this article include the results of content analysis of the archive of an email list, participant observation, and informal interviews with the grassroots activists of a Dutch single-issue campaign against black box electronic voting. The research shows that the possibility for citizens to communicate with a grassroots campaign has been beneficial for both the civic writer and the activists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Attention in the mass media is seen as crucial for electoral success. However, most ordinary candidates hardly get any attention in the news. With social media outlets becoming ever more popular, the question is whether the overall asymmetry in attention for candidates still holds today. Do candidates who dominate the traditional media during the campaign also dominate the social media? Or can candidates make up for a lack of mass media coverage by attracting attention on these new media platforms? This paper aims to answer these questions by pairing Twitter activity and Twitter popularity with newspaper attention for a large number of individual candidates in the 2014 Belgian election campaign. We expand the normalization versus equalization debate by not only looking at how much a new medium is used, but also at its success in terms of popularity and audience reach. Our findings show that the two platforms are indeed related, mainly because a small political elite dominates both old and new media. Twitter popularity and Twitter activity (albeit to a lesser extent) are higher among powerful politicians. We elaborate on why these findings are so much in line with the normalization hypothesis. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper examines the differential impact of Chinese citizens’ use of traditional media and Internet sources on their political views about the country’s territorial dispute with Japan over the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands. Chinese citizens can utilize a variety of conduits of information that allow varying degrees of government control over the way foreign affairs and other controversies are presented. Those who rely on mainstream, state-controlled television, radio, and printed media for information on the disputes, and those who turn to less-prescriptive sources on the Internet, can be expected to have distinctive political attitudes. We use original 2013 Chinese survey data to explore patterns of media consumption and citizens’ attention levels towards the Sino-Japanese island dispute, and views regarding the government’s performance in handling the issue and appropriate policy responses. Those who derive their information from traditional media tend to view the government’s performance more positively, and are more likely both to favour compromise and to oppose the use of military force. By comparison, information from Internet sources, which is more user selfselective, sustains a wider range of attitudes about the Sino-Japanese island dispute and the appropriate policies for dealing with it, including both militaristic and moderate stances. All told, we find that Chinese citizens bring distinctive predispositions to their consumption of media information on this issue, but our results also clearly reflect an ongoing, pervasive influence for China’s state-run traditional media. These findings have important implications for considering the resilience of authoritarian systems in the Internet era. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

New media such as email and mobile phones have made it easier to maintain relationships over distances. The present paper examines which media people use to maintain long-distance friendships. The main focus lies on the comparison of email and phone. Media choice theories like media richness theory assume that media can be classified according to their richness, and that people choose the medium which fits best to the affordances of a specific task. The phone as richer medium should be preferred over email in the case of maintenance of long-distance friendships because it is easier to express emotions and to give immediate feedback via phone than via email. Email is an asynchronous medium and communication via email is therefore independent of space and time. Therefore, it can also be argued that email is preferred over the phone because it makes it easier to communicate across different work schedules or even time-zones. In two studies (Study 1 conducted in the Netherlands, Study 2 conducted in Germany) media use in long-distance friendships was measured. Across both studies, email was the most frequently used medium. In Study 1, an interesting asymmetric influence of closeness of the friendship emerged. The closer the friendship, the more emails were written in total, but the less the relative use of email. Instead, the percentage of phone calls increased. Study 2 aimed to replicate and explain this finding and assessed also the content of the phone call or emails. Whereas the intimateness of the emails did not change with increased closeness of the friendship, the intimateness of the phone calls increased with increasing closeness of the friendship. This result indicates that people use email primarily for staying in touch, whereas important personal matters are still discussed on the phone. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the convergence of communication and travel and the emergence of a mobile and network sociality, through investigating new communication practices based on the internet and mobile phone enacted by backpackers while on the move. These global nomads produce and maintain mobile spaces of sociality, founded on a complex intersection of face-to-face interaction and mediated communication, co-presence and virtual proximity, corporeal travel and virtual mobilities. Personal communities become a mobile phenomenon, relocalized in a plurality of online and offline social spaces. It is thus argued that network relationships are reshaped and mobilized through reconfigurations of co-presence, proximity and distance in relation to the use of new media. Exploring new media uses on the move can thus provide a useful insight into the emerging social model of the network and mobile society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the fan movement surrounding Lara Croft, a computer- generated character who has appeared in computer games, comic books, men' s magazines, promotional tours, music videos, calendars, action figures and motion pictures. A fixture of the pop-culture landscape since 1996, Croft embodies or incarnates a nexus of cultural, economic, and technological forces, whose shared characteristic is their powerful hold on a vast audience base. Lara Croft is nothing without her fans. As the founding member of a new mode of celebrity system featuring female digital stars, Croft's essentially technological nature - the mode of her signification and circulation - produces continuities and ruptures with traditional fan practices, reframing our understandings of categories such as "fan', "audience', "character', and "text' in relation to a mediascape whose speed and multiplicity mark not just postmodernism, but adaptive responses to postmodernity. From this perspective, Lara Croft is less a singular entity than a coping strategy, a mediation of media. The concerns of this project are, first, to examine Lara Croft as a conjunction of industrial and representational forces intended to promote certain types of reception and consumption; second, to assess the ways in which her peculiar semiotic status - simultaneously open-ended and concrete - renders her available for appropriation and elaboration by fans; and, finally, to discuss the ways in which Croft's fandom opens up new debates about the relationship between texts, audiences, and technology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to tie in the arguments that can be connected to the development of a global media culture and concerns around cosmopolitan forms of democracy. This is done by considering arguments for: (i) a global human right initiative in respect of global media conglomerates; (ii) technological change in respect of digital cultures; and (iii) the arrival of what Castells'shas described as the culture of 'real virtuality'. These views and perspectives are assessed in terms of the contributions they are likely to make towards what I call a 'cautious cosmopolitanism'. Finally I seek to make some definite policy recommendations that might help foster conditions in which cosmopolitan democracy could flourish. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A proliferation of a variety of health misinformation is present online, particularly during times of public health crisis. To combat online health misinformation, numerous studies have been conducted to taxonomize health misinformation or examine debunking strategies for various types of health misinformation. However, one of the root causes – strategies in such misinformation that may persuade the readers – is rarely studied. This systematic review aimed to fill this gap. We searched Web of Science, Scopus, PsycINFO, and Communication and Mass Media Complete for studies published between 2011 and 2021 on 29 May 2021. Peer-reviewed studies that discussed persuasive strategies in online misinformation messages were included. Of 1,700 articles identified, 58 were eligible and 258 persuasive strategies were extracted. Following the affinity diagraming process, 225 persuasive strategies in online health misinformation were categorized into 12 thematic groups, including: fabricating narrative with details, using anecdotes and personal experience as evidence, distrusting government or pharmaceutical companies, politicizing health issues, highlighting uncertainty and risk, inappropriate use of scientific evidence, rhetorical tricks, biased reasoning to make a conclusion, emotional appeals, distinctive linguistic features, and establishing legitimacy. Possible antecedents for why and how these persuasive strategies in online health misinformation may influence individuals were discussed. The findings suggest that media literacy education is essential for the public to combat health misinformation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article advances extant research that has audited search algorithms for misinformation in four respects. Firstly, this is the first misinformation audit not to implement a national but a cross-national research design. Secondly, it retrieves results not in response to the most popular query terms. Instead, it theorizes two semantic dimensions of search terms and illustrates how they impact the number of misinformative results returned. Furthermore, the analysis not only captures the mere presence of misinformative content but in addition whether the source websites are affiliated with a key misinformation actor (Russia's ruling elites) and whom the conspiracy narratives cast as the malicious plotters. Empirically, the audit compares Covid-19 conspiracy theories in Google search results across 5 key target countries of Russia's foreign communication (Belarus, Estonia, Germany, Ukraine, and the US) and Russia as of November 2020 (N = 5280 search results). It finds that, across all countries, primarily content published by mass media organizations rendered conspiracy theories visible in search results. Conspiratorial content published on websites affiliated with Russia's ruling elites was retrieved in the Belarusian, German and Russian contexts. Across all countries, the majority of conspiracy narratives suspected plotters from China. Malicious actors from the US were insinuated exclusively by sources affiliated with Russia's elites. Overall, conspiracy narratives did not primarily deepen divides within but between national communities, since – across all countries – only plotters from beyond the national borders were blamed. To conclude, the article discusses methodological advice and promising paths of research for future cross-national search engine audits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses articles in the issue on topics including focus on media sociology; dispute over air quality between the U.S. and Chinese governments; and social support networks through the use of digital media technologies like Skype and Facebook.

The equalization-normalization debate concerns whether the Internet equalizes politics by empowering resource-poor organizations, or whether it further strengthens the position of resource-rich organizations. We address this debate by studying how interest groups' utilization of digital media is associated with their success in influencing news media. We suggest digital media is characterized by the coexistence of old and new media logics that benefit resource-rich and resource-poor groups in different ways. Analyzing a dataset of 1,127 Finnish interest groups, we found that groups' utilization of digital media is positively associated with their news media success, yet traditional ways of influencing the news media remain more effective. Among resource-rich groups with larger public relations staff, blog publishing is positively associated with both media access (media visibility) and agenda-building success (influencing news topics). In contrast, utilization of digital media among resource-poor groups only correlates with agenda-building success, and audiovisual content is more effective than other content. We suggest that while resource-poor groups benefit from network media logic in which the flow of information is initially based on popularity among social media users, resource-rich groups can exploit mass media logic where traditional journalistic gatekeeping is more important. The findings also imply that digital media has not decreased resource-related bias in interest groups' media access. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

New media has been described as both a boon and a bane for journalism in contemporary times, enabling more issues to be tabled while drawing resources away from traditional newsrooms and spreading unverifiable content. How new media has impacted journalism, however, has tended to be couched within the liberal-democratic ideological framework found typically in dominant Anglo-American literature; research has been scant on societies that may be exposed to Western liberal ideals but whose media systems still experience some form of authoritarian influence or control. Of interest are two Asian 'global cities' in transition, Singapore and Hong Kong, labeled by scholars as 'authoritarian' and 'semi-authoritarian' respectively. Through a textual analysis of survey and interview responses from 160 news journalists, this study identifies the need for a three-dimensional approach to examine new media's impact on journalism crisis perceptions in such hybrid societies – at the material, discursive, and ideological levels. Despite less state control on the media in Hong Kong, both online and offline, this study discovers that it is the Singaporeans that experience less fear of journalism crisis in the digital age, prompting alternative ways to understand state mediation of the press in a digital media landscape. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A central theme in media research has been the transition from traditional broadcast media, like television and radio, to social media and streaming services. For both researchers and practitioners in the field, a crucial concern has been how to understand the emerging forms of flexibility and interactivity that characterize the use of new media platforms. This article adds to this work by analyzing new viewing and audience practices of the streaming platform Twitch, addressing how emergent ways of viewing and engaging with broadcasts both challenges and revitalizes established concepts from television audience studies. For some years, researchers and media analytics have been discussing to which extent Netflix, Hulu, YouTube and other on-demand streaming services represents the death of linear-TV [see, e.g., Lotz, A. D. (2014). The television will be revolutionized. New York, NY: New York University Press; Lotz, A. D. (2017). A treatise on internet-distributed television. Michigan, MI: Maize Books; Buonanno, M. (2016). (Not yet) the end of television: Editor's introduction [Special issue]. Media and Communication, 4(3), 95–98]. Conventional wisdom dictates that only sports and other great events will uphold the flow, linearity and liveness of traditional television. However, our analysis shows how linear-TV is re-emerging in other, novel forms as well. Central to the analysis is the concepts of 'spatial switching' and 'affective switching', which is used to illuminate the ways in which Twitch practices and infrastructures introduces new dimensions of flexibility, convenience and user-control to flow, liveness and linear-TV. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From a discourse analytic framework, the article analyses health blogs and patient's forum discussions in which parents to children with congenital heart defects recontextualize medical professional knowledge and share their own experiences. The study show how the two types of online media may serve as a means for parents to attain expert status in their own case by sharing lay knowledge expressed as an amalgamation of the two key perspectives – professional and experienced – as an indivisible unit. Monological discourses, such as narrating, in blogs and more direct and immediate responses in forum discussions are noted as examples of differences in how medical facts are explained and negotiated, how advice is provided and how patient expertise is created. The study also show how blogs and especially forum discussions are used to problematize the validity of actions and opinions of medical staff. The role of developing patient expertise in epistemic communities online may therefore come with a risk of spreading misrepresentation of medical cases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The distrust of mainstream media expressed in the slogan 'the liar press' ('Lügenpresse') is often used as an example of a populist, anti-establishment attitude that is currently winning terrain throughout the Western world. In combination with the rise of alternative media (especially online), it poses a serious challenge for 'old media'. But how do those who are most suspicious and critical relate to the mainstream media in their own media channels? In this article, we have compared the official Facebook pages of the PEGIDA movement in Germany and Austria, in order to describe their use of references to traditional/mainstream and alternative media. The results indicate that references to mainstream and alternative media are distributed almost equally. Furthermore, when there are references to mainstream media, they are generally of an affirmative nature. These findings are relevant for the debate about cyberbalcanization, echo chambers, filter bubbles and the impact of alternative media on public discourse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the aftermath of the Cambridge Analytica controversy, social media platform providers such as Facebook and Twitter have severely restricted access to platform data via their Application Programming Interfaces (APIs). This has had a particularly critical effect on the ability of social media researchers to investigate phenomena such as abuse, hate speech, trolling, and disinformation campaigns, and to hold the platforms to account for the role that their affordances and policies might play in facilitating such dysfunction. Alternative data access frameworks, such as Facebook's partnership with the controversial Social Science One initiative, represent an insufficient replacement for fully functional APIs, and the platform providers' actions in responding to the Cambridge Analytica scandal raise suspicions that they have instrumentalised it to actively frustrate critical, independent, public interest scrutiny by scholars. Building on a critical review of Facebook's public statements through its own platforms and the mainstream media, and of the scholarly responses these have drawn, this article outlines the societal implications of the 'APIcalypse', and reviews potential options for scholars in responding to it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a high-choice media environment, there are fears that individuals will select media and content that reinforce their existing beliefs and lead to segregation based on interest and/or partisanship. This could lead to partisan echo chambers among those who are politically interested and could contribute to a growing gap in knowledge between those who are politically interested and those who are not. However, the high-choice environment also allows individuals, including those who are politically interested, to consume a wide variety of media, which could lead them to more diverse content and perspectives. This study examines the relationship between political interest as well as media diversity and being caught in an echo chamber (measured by five different variables). Using a nationally representative survey of adult internet users in the United Kingdom (N = 2000), we find that those who are interested in politics and those with diverse media diets tend to avoid echo chambers. This work challenges the impact of echo chambers and tempers fears of partisan segregation since only a small segment of the population are likely to find themselves in an echo chamber. We argue that single media studies and studies which use narrow definitions and measurements of being in an echo chamber are flawed because they do not test the theory in the realistic context of a multiple media environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past decade, an extensive body of literature has emerged on the question of how new communication technologies can facilitate new modes of organizing protest. However, the extant research has tended to focus on how digitally enabled protest operates. By contrast, this study investigates why, how, and with what consequences a heavily digitally enabled ‘connective action network’ has transitioned over time to a more traditional ‘collective action network’ [Bennett, W. L., Segerberg, A. (2013).The logic of connective action: Digital media and the personalization of contentious politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 47]. Specifically, the article scrutinizes the trajectory of the Russian protests ‘For Fair Elections.’ This wave of street protests erupted after the allegedly fraudulent parliamentary elections of December 2011 and continued into 2013. As is argued, the protests were initially organized as an ‘organizationally enabled connective action network.’ However, after eight months of street protests, Russian activists reorganized the network into a more centralized, more formalized ‘organizationally brokered collective action network.’ In order to implement this transition, they deployed ‘Internet elections’ as a cardinally new digital tactic of collective action. Between 20 and 22 October 2012, more than 80,000 activists voted online in order to create a new leadership body for the entire protest movement, the ‘Coordination Council of the Opposition.’ As the study has found, activists implemented this transition because, within the specific Russian socio-political context, enduring engagement and stable networks appeared crucial to the movement’s long-term success. With regard to achieving these goals, the more formalized collective action network appeared superior to the connective action form. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article focuses on the reception of the image of Alan Kurdi by a group of young volunteers in Oslo and Sheffield, and their understanding of the subsequent civic and political engagement. Methodologically, the study draws on a series of in-depth interviews conducted with a group of young volunteers who saw the photograph when it went viral on Twitter and who had followed the media coverage and participated in on- and offline activities related to the case. To analyse the views of the research participants on the Alan Kurdi case, I draw on feminist theoretical perspectives on affectivity, theoretical literature relating to news images and iconic photography, and online social movement theories. The study shows that the iconic image of Alan Kurdi offered a way of transforming complex and unsettled aspects of the refugee crisis into something concrete and understandable, contributing to galvanize affective resonance and immediate public response among the involved subjects. The infrastructure of social media, enabling the rapid global circulation of the image, contributed to shaping social assemblages to which connective emotions and common meanings were ascribed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article puts forward a theory of the role of digital media in social change. It begins by criticizing three theories that currently dominate our understanding of digital media and of media generally: network theory, mediatization theory and actor-network theory. It also identifies a gap in current communication theory, namely, that digital media mostly do not fit the divide into mass and interpersonal communication. A further problem is that insufficient attention is given to the difference between political communication and popular culture or everyday life. The article develops an alternative, focusing on four countries that provide a range of relationships between media and society; the U.S., Sweden, India and China. In all four countries, despite their differences, digital media, in contrast to traditional broadcast and interpersonal media, have led to a more differentiated media landscape. Greater complexity in political communication nevertheless runs up against the continuing dominance of elite agenda-setting. In terms of popular culture, all four countries have experienced a proliferation of media offerings and greater tetheredness between people. Hence, new divides are emerging between more active and variegated as against more passive and restricted media uses. The article concludes with implications of digital media for understanding media generally: with new digital media, there is now a need to rethink media theory in terms of fundamental debates about how media transform or preserve the social order. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

User comments have become an essential part of news websites. In this article, we examine this mode of public expression via the theory of the spiral of silence. This is done while adopting alternative measures, with regard to three major issues on the Israeli agenda, and in comparison to expression in public, as in the traditional theory. Based on an Internet survey (n = 712), the present study results support the relevancy of the spiral of silence to the online comment sphere. Perceived support for one’s opinion by the majority was found to have a positive and significant effect on the willingness to express opinion in the online sphere. The explanatory role of fear of isolation was more significant in the online sphere than in face-to-face context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Informed by research on the uses and gratifications of the Internet for political activity, this study examines predictors of online political efficacy among Internet users in five Arab countries (N = 4029): Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Lebanon, Qatar, and the U.A.E. As predicted, variables presumed to be associated with political dissidence in Arab countries – unemployment, distrust of mainstream media, young age, and feeling country is on the wrong track – were not positively associated with online political efficacy. Counter to what was hypothesized, however, Internet reliance and social media use were not strongly or consistently associated with online political efficacy in the five countries. Rather, the strongest predictors of efficacy were a belief in news media credibility, print media use (newspapers, magazines, and books), belief in the reliability of online information, and tolerance of free speech online. Findings align with some prior research on predictors of online political efficacy, but not with common presumptions of the role the Internet plays among Arab publics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the dominant messages Internet memes communicate about religion. Internet memes about religion are defined as, ‘memes circulated on the Internet whose images and texts focus on a variety of religious themes and/or religious traditions’ (Bellar et al., 2013). By drawing on meme genres identified by Shifman (2012) and analyzing techniques used to frame ideas concerning religion in memes, this study identifies common genres found amongst religious Internet meme and core frames used to present messages and assumptions about religion online. This article further draws attention to the importance of studying religion in digital contexts, as it highlights trends, recognized by scholars toward ‘Lived Religion’ within digital culture (Campbell, 2012). Lived Religion argues that contemporary media and digital culture provide important resources for presenting popular beliefs about religion. This study also suggests that studying Internet memes about religion provides a useful lens for understanding popular conceptions about religion within mainstream culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes the social construction of border surveillance and policing in reality-based television. Utilizing content analytic methods to document and decode popular images of borders, mobility, and insecurity, it assesses three programs from Australia, the UK, and the United States. Despite claims of offering accurate and unfiltered depictions, the programs are ideological and provide visions of enforcement that reinforce stereotypes regarding the risks of permeable borders and exonerate intensive regimes of surveillance and securitization. Our findings suggest this occurs in three ways. First, the programs inflate the extent and seriousness of lawlessness associated with cross-border movement. Second, they offer individualistic explanations of crime that cite personal choices and pathologies as determinants. Finally, alongside neglecting their perspectives and interpretations of events, when compared to the reality of official statistics, the programs disproportionately feature suspected offenders as members of marginalized groups. The social and political implications of these findings are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Internet, a global computer network enabling people to send and receive information anywhere in the world, also functions as a local medium of communication. This study focuses on the role of the Internet in transmitting local news and examines the effects of community population concentrations as socio-ecological environments on the use of local news media consumed online and offline. Data from 1367 respondents across 156 Japanese communities were used to analyze the relationships between type of community and type of news source. The findings suggest that people who live in highly populated communities tend more often to use the Internet to access local news, whereas those in less populated communities tend to use more traditional mass media. However, the results of this study did not show a relationship between population concentrations within communities and the acquisition of international news, nor did the social features of residents adequately explain the effects of population concentration on the acquisition of local news. These results are consistent with theoretical predictions based on network externalities, urbanism, and collective action. The findings indicate that local news consumption is embedded in local social contexts in a way that international news is not, reinforcing the importance of urbanism in the information age. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the field of digital inequality continues to expand in many directions, the relationship between digital inequalities and other forms of inequality has yet to be fully appreciated. This article invites social scientists in and outside the field of digital media studies to attend to digital inequality, both as a substantive problem and as a methodological concern. The authors present current research on multiple aspects of digital inequality, defined expansively in terms of access, usage, skills, and self-perceptions, as well as future lines of research. Each of the contributions makes the case that digital inequality deserves a place alongside more traditional forms of inequality in the twenty-first century pantheon of inequalities. Digital inequality should not be only the preserve of specialists but should make its way into the work of social scientists concerned with a broad range of outcomes connected to life chances and life trajectories. As we argue, the significance of digital inequalities is clear across a broad range of individual-level and macro-level domains, including life course, gender, race, and class, as well as health care, politics, economic activity, and social capital. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Participation in voluntary associations is often considered challenging due to the fact that humans possess limited time and resources that can be allocated to various types of social activities. The prevalence of multiple modes of communication in our everyday lives may signal the possibility of addressing such traditional problems of voluntary associations. Employing the framework of media multiplexity, this study investigates the factors that predict multimodal participation and how multimodal participation in turn affects overall involvement in voluntary associations. Analyses of the data gathered by the Pew Internet Report show that the degree of affiliations, prior experiences (including participation in online groups, online recruitment, and leadership), and routinized technology use were significant predictors of multimodal group participation. In addition, multimodal group participation mediated the effects of these factors on participation in voluntary associations. Together, multimodal participation and groups' multimodal organizing positively predicted the generation of group impacts. These findings illuminate a new way of understanding voluntary associations in today's media-saturated society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent scholarship in political socialization has moved beyond traditional transmission models of parent-driven socialization to consider alternative pathways, like trickle-up socialization and its predictors. However, these studies have paid less attention to the diverse ways in which parents and children develop discrete political orientations, especially during a competitive presidential campaign. In this study, we examine various pathways through which influence occurs across generations in terms of partisanship and candidate evaluations. Our results suggest that while harmonious attitudes remain the norm, there are substantial opportunities for youth to demonstrate their independence, particularly when gaining perspectives from schools and digital media sources. Our findings indicate the importance of exploring how youth and their parents come to understand politics and the forces that shape youth socialization. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Scholars and pundits have widely discussed the decline of print journalism, but there has been very little empirical research focussed on examining online alternatives. This article utilizes a unique sample of online local political content related to the 2007 Philadelphia mayoral campaign to address this void. A content analysis of this data set has three objectives: to depict the range of sources of online local political information (LPI) available to Philadelphians; to compare the LPI provided by these various sources; and to determine the amount and provenance of the original LPI that is available on the web. New media sources of LPI may be far from maturity, but this article finds that they do exist and are a viable resource for citizens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mass media in the USA have hosted news content and delivered audiences to advertisers. While advertiser support for traditional news media has been dropping, activities of online 'citizen journalists' have been on the rise. A key question for both traditional news organizations and citizen journalists is who will pay for online news. In-depth interviews were used to gain insight into consumer understanding of changes in the relationship between news and advertising as both adapt to the online environment. Three types of news and advertising users emerged: engagers, receivers, and avoiders. The research also identified three approaches to user-generated content: broad participation, participation primarily in interpersonal exchanges, and avoidance. Implications are discussed for how these consumer perceptions and activities might shape future funding of online news. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This case study analyzed quantitative and qualitative data to examine the role of computer-mediated communication (CMC) during social movement activities in 2006 at a university for the Deaf and hard-of-hearing. We applied Garrett's framework and focussed on aspects of the mobilizing structures component of social activism, which involves the mechanism that enables people to organize and engage in collective action. Employing a snowball sampling method, we report the data provided by 540 CMC users who said they were in some way engaged in the university conflict. These findings reinforce the escalating role of CMC in activism with the respondents using, trusting, and depending most on CMC for information about the conflict. Moreover, blogging was at the forefront of the subjects' communication activities. Subjects depended on blogs more than any other CMC activity to communicate about the conflict, and they said they trusted blogs more than any other source of information. Blogs and vlogs frequently were cited as contributing to a sense of collective identity throughout the conflict. Blogging also emerged as a communication tool important to the Deaf and hard-of-hearing subjects. The findings support the decline of traditional media in terms of use and trust for conflict information, although respondents reported that interpersonal communication was important to them as information about the conflict was being exchanged. This study suggests that private CMC is impinging on face-to-face interaction, and public CMC increasingly is encroaching on the public square. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Media culture is a firm part of youth cultures today. Media can also be seen as one empowering technology in the information society alongside traditional school and government. What kind of civic identities are young people constructing in contemporary media culture? This article discusses media-saturated youth and audience agency, drawing on Dahlgren's ideas of civic culture. Relying on empirical data from two case studies in Finland, we will introduce a typology of civic identities, which the young construct as members of the public in relation to media. Our first case study is a youth civic website called Vaikuttamo.net and the second is the Youth Voice Editorial Board, which consists of a group of young people producing news for mainstream media. Our research supports various earlier observations that young people are firmly engaged, though to a lesser extent, in the formal political realm. We particularly want to emphasize the role of the local media and the expressive potential of young people. The media should be noted as a public forum where cultural and political modes of expression and participation can be mixed - not only in global online media, but also in more traditional local media such as television and newspaper. The research shows that young people are also willing to enter generational public discussions about civic issues instead of keeping to their own forums of media publicity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is a result of a transnational comparison of two broadcast book programs' influence on readers' book choices. Online surveys and focus group interviews in Canada and the UK illustrate active audience participation in the converged era of print books, the internet, television and radio. The analysis examines readers' negotiation of book choices through uses and gratifications theory as informed by a cultural critique of the programs themselves. Readers simultaneously respond to and create a hierarchy of cultural tastes that are bound up in the cultural assumptions that they have about the different media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although widely viewed as entertainment, online amateur videos also comprise a form of interpersonal communication. In this article the author analyses communication about gender occurring on the Animutation Portal, an online website created by and for members of a subcultural group interested in a genre of animated videos termed 'animutations'. Conversations often cross from text to video and back, creating meaning that is lost if the videos are analysed solely as creative media productions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors argue that individuals, rather than family solidarities, have become the primary unit of household connectivity. Many households do not operate as traditional densely knit groups but as more sparsely knit social networks where individuals juggle their somewhat separate agendas and schedules. At a time when many people enact multiple, individual roles at home, in the community and at work, the authors ask: how do adult household members communicate with each other? How do adult household members use information and communication technologies (ICTs) to organize, communicate and coordinate their leisure and social behavior both inside and outside the home? Interviews and surveys conducted in 2004-2005 in the Toronto, Canada area of East York show that households remain connected - but as networks rather than solidary groups. The authors describe how networked individuals bridge their relationships and connect with each other inside and outside the home. ICTs have afforded household members the ability to go about on their separate ways while staying more connected - by mobile phone, email and IM - as well as by traditional landlines. In such ways, rather than pulling families apart, ICTs often facilitate communication, kinship and functional integration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]