Search

Twitter has pushed public opinion on foreign policy into partisan bubbles that often value alternative media sources over traditional media or political elites. Public opinion on China is no exception. On the left, some alternative media outlets support China as a socialist ideal, while others criticize it as a key player in global capitalism and neoliberal order. This leads to an important puzzle: How and why do some transnational left media disseminate pro-China messaging while others do not? We focus on two leftist alternative media outlets: the Qiao Collective and Lausan. Both organizations claim to offer a variety of counter-hegemonic-oriented discourses. We first qualitatively analyze the differences in how these two organizations frame key topics in contemporary Chinese politics including Uyghurs in Xinjiang and the Hong Kong protests. We then use quantitative social network analysis to show how their communication efforts lead to different follower audiences. In the last step, we analyze what issues the Qiao Collective is using to achieve its inward- and outward-oriented goals. Our study shows how both outlets focus on the transnational left, but each reaches distinct audiences that do not overlap. We find that the Qiao Collective jumps on traditional left-wing issues in the US to extend its reach while regularly posting positive, often revisionist perspectives about Chinese politics. This specific element conflicts with its claim of supporting anti-imperialist and pro-democracy politics and distinguishes the Qiao Collective from other transnational left outlets.

Since February 2020, the world has been facing a global pandemic of the SARS-CoV2 virus. All over the world, people have been urged to take protective measures. It is hoped that the implementation of widespread vaccination campaigns will defeat the pandemic in the long term. While many people are eager to be vaccinated against Covid-19, other voices in the population are highly critical of vaccination and protective measures, circulating much misinformation on social media. The movements opposing pandemic response measures are heterogeneous, including right-wing groups, spiritualists who deny science, citizens with existential fears, and those who equate vaccination with a loss of individual freedom. This study aims to map and compare the social media communication of anti-vaccination movements that defy social cohesion and circulate online misinformation in Germany and Brazil. By following a grounded theory approach suggested by Webb and Mallon (2007), we coded content from social media communication of opinion leaders on Twitter with extended narrative analysis methodology finding different narratives that were mapped within the inhomogeneous anti-vaccination movements. The results show that both countries’ main narratives against vaccination are very similar, but the main difference stems from Brazil’s stronger politicization of vaccines.

Focusing on Turkey, this article analyzes the role of polarization on news users’ perception of misinformation and mistrust in the news on social media. Turkey is one of the countries where citizens complain most about misinformation on the internet. The citizens’ trust in news institutions is also in continuous decline. Furthermore, both Turkish society and its media landscape are politically highly polarized. Focusing on Turkey’s highly polarized environment, the article aims to analyze how political polarization influences the users’ trust in the news and their perceptions about misinformation on social media. The study is based on multi-method research, including focus groups, media diaries, and interviews with people of different ages and socioeconomic backgrounds. The article firstly demonstrates different strategies that the users develop to validate information, including searching for any suspicious information on search engines, looking at the comments below the post, and looking at other news media, especially television. Secondly, we will discuss how more affective mechanisms of news assessment come into prominence while evaluating political news. Although our participants are self-aware and critical about their partisan attitudes in news consumption and evaluation, they also reveal media sources to which they feel politically closer. We propose the concept of “skeptical inertia” to refer to this self-critical yet passive position of the users in the face of the polarized news environment in Turkey.

During times of crisis such as the Covid-19 pandemic, digital platforms are under public scrutiny to guarantee users’ online safety and wellbeing. Following inconsistencies in how platforms moderate online content and behavior, governments around the world are putting pressure on them to curb the spread of illegal and lawful harmful content and behavior (e.g., UK’s Draft Online Safety Bill). These efforts, though, mainly focus on overt abuse and false information, which misses more mundane social media practices such as racial stereotyping that are equally popular and can be inadvertently harmful. Building on Stoever’s (2016) work on the “sonic color line,” this article problematizes sound, specifically, as a key element in racializing memetic practices on the popular short-video platform TikTok. We examine how humorous audio-visual memes about Covid-19 on TikTok contribute to social inequality by normalizing racial stereotyping, as facilitated through TikTok’s “Use This Sound” feature. We found that users’ appropriations of sounds and visuals on TikTok, in combination with the platform’s lack of clear and transparent moderation processes for humorous content, reinforce and (re)produce systems of advantage based on race. Our article contributes to remediating the consistent downplaying of humor that negatively stereotypes historically marginalized communities. It also advances work on race and racism on social media by foregrounding the sonification of race as means for racism’s evolving persistence, which represents a threat to social cohesion.

This study determined the antecedents of diffusion scope (total audience), speed (number of adopters/time), and shape (broadcast vs. person-to-person transmission) for true vs. fake news about a falsely claimed stolen 2020 US Presidential election across clusters of users that responded to one another’s tweets (“user clusters”). We examined 31,128 tweets with links to fake vs. true news by 20,179 users to identify 1,069 user clusters via clustering analysis. We tested whether attributes of authors (experience, followers, following, total tweets), time (date), or tweets (link to fake [vs. true] news, retweets) affected diffusion scope, speed, or shape, across user clusters via multilevel diffusion analysis. These tweets showed no overall diffusion pattern; instead, specific explanatory variables determined their scope, speed, and shape. Compared to true news tweets, fake news tweets started earlier and showed greater broadcast influence (greater diffusion speed), scope, and person-to-person influence. Authors with more experience and smaller user clusters both showed greater speed but less scope and less person-to-person influence. Likewise, later tweets showed slightly more broadcast influence, less scope, and more person-to-person influence. By contrast, users with more followers showed less broadcast influence but greater scope and slightly more person-to-person influence. These results highlight the earlier instances of fake news and the greater diffusion speed of fake news in smaller user clusters and by users with fewer followers, so they suggest that monitors can detect fake news earlier by focusing on earlier tweets, smaller user clusters, and users with fewer followers.

In Egypt, the relocation of residents of informal areas of housing into “proper” living environments is presented as a major political achievement offering citizens a much-improved quality of life. Therefore, it is not surprising that, following the Arab Uprisings, the current regime is widely publicizing relocation projects as success stories on TV and social media. As a way of garnering legitimization and securing stability, this official representation is reshaping the residents’ urban life and evoking narratives of slum dwellers’ transformation into respected citizens. Tackling a new area of interdisciplinary research between urban studies and media and communication studies, this article investigates the portrayal in mainstream media channels and social media platforms of two relocation projects (Al-Asmarat in Cairo and Al-Max in Alexandria), contrasting them with the residents’ perceptions of their new homes and their efforts to produce counter-imagery. The authors argue that both the state-dominated representation of the Al-Asmarat resettlement as an ideal solution to the crisis of informal settlements, as well as the more bottom-up construction of the Al-Max community as a picturesque fishing community, do not reflect the material experience of the inhabitants—despite it being presented as such in nationwide reporting. The effective centering of the public debate around the mediatized images has thus deflected criticism and enabled urban development projects to be positioned to legitimize the current rule despite the shortcomings of their implementation.

This article contributes to the analysis of local media and democratic transformation in Tunisia since the Arab Uprisings. It aims to assess the extent to which pluralism, freedom of expression, and participation—central tenets of democratisation—are evident at the local level. Tunisian local media, unlike the national media, is relatively free of governmental control. Local media is also decentralised. It is this autonomy from the government which makes the analysis of local media fundamentally important for understanding politics in Tunisia. While national media is linked to the most powerful elements in the country, the diversity of voices within the media at the local level provides an opportunity to grasp the grievances, struggles, and agency of people in Tunisia, especially the most marginalised communities. This article will detail the changes in the media landscape, especially for local media, in Tunisia and connect our analysis of local media to better understand the Tunisia that has developed between dictatorship and democracy and the extent that the fledgling Tunisian democracy can withstand its most recent test.

Employing content analysis, this study compares the coverage of the Arab uprisings by the People’s Daily (the official newspaper of the Communist Party of China) and Caixin Net (a typical commercial media) with statements from the Chinese Foreign Ministry in the last decade. It shows that the overall attention given to Arab uprisings in the People’s Daily and Caixin Net declined during the period, but there were shifts in the framing of the conflicts, presentation of issues, and positions. The article demonstrates and analyses how the approach and outline of the conflicts in the People’s Daily changed from disaster to criticism, and then to comparison—its position towards the events generally negative—and how Caixin Net moved from a disaster to a contextual framing of the events, its position tending to be neutral.

History is littered with tales of the absurd, odd, and unusual. From Gorgons and mermaids to bearded ladies and elephant men, people have, for centuries, been fascinated by those who deviate from physical and mental social norms. Such fascinations seemed to peak during the 19th century when showmen, like PT Barnum, bought and exhibited those deemed too different and macabre for “normal” society. However, as science and medicine progressed, and the protection of human rights became more important, freak shows and travelling sideshows dwindled (Nicholas & Chambers, 2016). Society’s fascination with the unusual though, did not. Despite increased political correctness and calls to end “fat shaming,” bullying and the like, reality television appears to encourage “a dehumanising process that actually lessens our regard for other people” (Sardar, 2000). While some writers have considered how reality television exploits stereotypes and links social norms to hegemonic whiteness (Cooke-Jackson & Hansen, 2008; Rennels, 2015), few have commented on the similarities between such programming and the stylings of the 19th century freak show. Utilising Thomson’s (1996) concept of freak discourse, and Bogdan’s (1996) assessment of freak narrative, this article examines how reality television programming as a genre, despite its varied plots, uses a narrative formula that can be likened to 19th century freak shows to enhance its storylines and “produce a human spectacle” (Thomson, 1996, p. 7).

Consumer reviews on platforms like Amazon are summarized into star ratings, used to weight search results, and consulted by consumers to guide purchase decisions. They are emblematic of the interactive digital environment that has purportedly transferred power from marketers to ‘regular people,’ and yet they represent the infiltration of promotional concerns into online information, as has occurred in search and social media content. Consumers’ ratings and reviews do promotional work for brands—not just for products but the platforms that host reviews—that money can’t always buy. Gains in power by consumers are quickly met with new strategies of control by companies who depend on reviews for reputational capital. Focusing on ecommerce giant Amazon, this article examines the complexities of online reviews, where individual efforts to provide product feedback and help others make choices become transformed into an information commodity and promotional vehicle. It acknowledges the ambiguous nature of reviews due to the rise of industries and business practices that influence or fake reviews as a promotional strategy. In response are yet other business practices and platform policies aiming to provide better information to consumers, protect the image of platforms that host reviews, and punish ‘bad actors’ in competitive markets. The complexity in the production, regulation, and manipulation of product ratings and reviews illustrates how the high stakes of attention in digital spaces create fertile ground for disinformation, which only emphasizes to users that they inhabit a ‘post-truth’ reality online.

We consider the potential for inspirational media content (inspiring videos about dogs) and injunctive norms (social media comments on the videos) to motivate dog adoption behaviors and intentions. In an online experiment, participants were exposed to pretested inspiring (or non-inspiring) videos and social norms cues and were given an opportunity to browse among a series of dogs on a mock adoption website. Participants also indicated their intention to adopt a dog and completed a series of socio-demographic measures. Results indicated that, although both the inspiring videos and the norm cues successfully induced inspiration and perceived injunctive norms, only injunctive norms significantly affected intention to adopt. The effect of norms remained significant when controlling for barriers to adoption such as financial, time, and space considerations. Discussion focuses on implications for inspiring entertainment and social norms theories, and implications for adoptions and other prosocial behaviors.

Media coverage often construes stories of misfortune as inspirational accounts of individuals overcoming challenges. These reports fail to address the systemic issues that have predisposed these individuals to their current situation, and may have unintended consequences when it comes to the ability to collectively address these failings as a society. The current research examines how audiences are affected by inspirational narrative framings by comparing responses to a narrative that has inspirational coverage of a social challenge to one that includes direct acknowledgement of the larger systemic failings. Participants (N = 495) were randomly assigned to 1) read an inspirational story about a boy saving up to buy a wheelchair for his friend, 2) read a version of the story that emphasized the need for increased disability funding/services, or 3) a no-story control group. Both story conditions raised readers’ willingness to help people with disabilities. Importantly, emphasizing social responsibility shifted readers’ perceptions: readers of the social responsibility story were less likely to believe an individual with a disability was responsible for paying for their medical devices, believed that some collective measures would have higher efficacy, and viewed the situation as less fair. Even though individuals in the social responsibility condition found the story less enjoyable, they were equally transported into it compared to the inspirational version, and were equally likely to want to share the story with others. Our results offer clear guidelines for media practitioners covering individual struggles and systemic issues within society.

This article refers to the concept of nuclearity as a broader technopolitical phenomenon that implies a political and cultural configuration of technical and scientific matters. The nuclear media discourses become a site of tensions, struggles, and power relations between various institutions, social groups, and agents who seek to frame nuclear issues. The Bourdieusian concept of a field as a domain of social interaction is employed by the authors of this article seeking to reveal interactions and power configurations within and between several fields: journalism and media, economy, politics, and cultural production fields (cinematography, literature, and art). Commercial and political pressures on media raise a question about the autonomy of this field. Media coverage of nuclear issues in Lithuania during the period 2018–2020, includes media framing produced by different sponsors of the nuclear media discourses and agents from the above-mentioned fields of journalism, nuclear industry, politics, cinematography or arts. The media coverage includes the news and press releases produced within PR and public communication of the atomic energy industry by representing the decommissioning of the Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant, articles written by journalists about the atomic city Visaginas, and challenges faced by the local community due to the closure of the Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant. The nuclear discourse includes debates by politicians around the topic of the lack of safety of the construction of the Astravyets Nuclear Power Plant in Belarus, and media coverage of the HBO series Chernobyl representing a strong antinuclear narrative by portraying the Chernobyl disaster crisis and expressing strong criticism of communism. The authors of this article carried out a qualitative content analysis of media coverage on nuclear issues and revealed features of the discourse: interpretative packages, frames, framing devices (Gamson & Modigliani, 1989), and dominating actors and institutions supporting the discourse.

In analyzing the distinction between flak and scandal, this investigation focuses on the discourse around Solyndra in 2011–2012 on two media platforms. Solyndra was a solar panel firm that went bankrupt after receiving American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (‘The Stimulus’) funds. The analysis shows that National Review—a rightwing journal of opinion that increasingly operates as an online platform—unswervingly utilized the Solyndra bankruptcy as an instrument of political combat. Following flak lines rehearsed by Republicans in congressional hearings, National Review narrated Solyndra as scandalous evidence of the Obama administration’s putative ineptitude and/or criminality that, moreover, discredited the efficacy of green energy. The performance of the mainstream newspaper The Washington Post presented a grab-bag mix as its objective methods insinuated flak packaged as scandal into stories when they followed Republican talking points. At the same time, The Washington Post’s discourse noted that no evidence of administration corruption was discovered despite extensive investigation and that government intervention into the economy is often highly beneficial.

Recent global social changes and phenomena like #MeToo and Time’s Up Movement, the visibility of feminism in popular media (e.g., Beyonce or the TV series Orange is the New Black), the increase of datafication and fake news have not only put pressure on the media and entertainment industry and the content produced, but also generated critique, change and questions in the public debate on gender in general and (the backlash on) gender studies around the world. But are these phenomena also game changers for research on media and gender? In this thematic issue we want to provide insight in recent developments and trends in research on gender and media. What are the dominant ideas and debates in this research field and how do they deal with all of the changes in the media scape (e.g., platformization, the dominance of algorithms and datafication, slacktivism, and gender inequalities in media production). Moreover, how do current debates, theoretical insights and methods communicate with those in the past? The research field has changed rapidly over the last 10 years with repercussions on the conceptualisation of gender, its intersections with other identities markers (e.g., age, ethnicity, class, disabilities, sexualities, etc.), and media audiences’ responses to these developments. We welcome contributions within the scope of gender and media and which are topical in the way they introduce new concepts, theoretical insights, new methods or new research subjects.

The term deepfake was first used in a Reddit post in 2017 to refer to videos manipulated using artificial intelligence techniques and since then it is becoming easier to create such fake videos. A recent investigation by the cybersecurity company Deeptrace in September 2019 indicated that the number of what is known as fake videos had doubled in the last nine months and that most were pornographic videos used as revenge to harm many women. The report also highlighted the potential of this technology to be used in political campaigns such as in Gabon and Malaysia. In this sense, the phenomenon of deepfake has become a concern for governments because it poses a short-term threat not only to politics, but also for fraud or cyberbullying. The starting point of this research was Twitter’s announcement of a change in its protocols to fight fake news and deepfakes. We have used the Social Network Analysis technique, with visualization as a key component, to analyze the conversation on Twitter about the deepfake phenomenon. NodeXL was used to identify main actors and the network of connections between all these accounts. In addition, the semantic networks of the tweets were analyzed to discover hidden patterns of meaning. The results show that half of the actors who function as bridges in the interactions that shape the network are journalists and media, which is a sign of the concern that this sophisticated form of manipulation generates in this collective.

‘Fake news’ has been a topic of controversy during and following the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Much of the scholarship on it to date has focused on the ‘fakeness’ of fake news, illuminating the kinds of deception involved and the motivations of those who deceive. This study looks at the ‘newsness’ of fake news by examining the extent to which it imitates the characteristics and conventions of traditional journalism. Through a content analysis of 886 fake news articles, we find that in terms of news values, topic, and formats, articles published by fake news sites look very much like traditional—and real—news. Most of their articles included the news values of timeliness, negativity, and prominence; were about government and politics; and were written in an inverted pyramid format. However, one point of departure is in terms of objectivity, operationalized as the absence of the author’s personal opinion. The analysis found that the majority of articles analyzed included the opinion of their author or authors. Ministry of Education (MOE) Published version The first author’s work on this project was also supported by a Tier 1 Academic Grant from the Singapore Ministry of Education.

Debates about post-truth need to take into account how news re-disseminates in a hybrid media system in which social networks and audience participation play a central role. Hence, there is a certain risk of reducing citizens’ exposure to politically adverse news content, creating ‘echo chambers’ of political affinity. This article presents the results of research conducted in agreement with 18 leading Spanish online news media, based on a survey (N = 6625) of their registered users. The results highlight that high levels of selective exposure that are a characteristic of offline media consumption are being moderated in the online realm. Although most of the respondents get news online from like-minded media, the figures related to those who also get news from media with a different media ideology should not be underestimated. As news consumption is becoming more ‘social,’ our research points out that Spanish citizens who are more active on social media sites are more likely to be exposed to news content from different ideological positions than those who are less active users. There is a weak association between the use of a particular social network site and gaining access to like- and non-like-minded news.

Several scholars have attributed high hopes to social media regarding their alleged ability to enable a nonhierarchical and freely accessible debate among the citizenship (Loader & Mercea, 2011; Shirky, 2011). Those hopes have culminated in theses such those describing the social web as being a ‘new public sphere’ (Castells, 2009, p. 125) as well as in expectations regarding its revitalizing potential for the ‘Habermas’s public sphere’ (Kruse, Norris, & Flinchum, 2018, p. 62). Yet, these assumptions are not uncontested, particularly in the light of socially mediated populism (Mazzoleni & Bracciale, 2018). Interestingly, research on populism in the social web is still an exception. The same is true for the populist permeation of the social media discourse on migration, as a highly topical issue. This study seeks to elaborate on this research gap by examining to what extent the Twitter debate on the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly, and Regular Migration (GCM) was permeated by populist content. For this purpose, almost 70,000 tweets on the most important Hashtags referring to the GCM that took place in Marrakesh in December 2018 were collected and the 500 widest-reaching tweets analysed in terms of their populist permeation. Against initial expectations, the empirical findings show that populist narratives did not dominate the Twitter debate on migration. However, the empirical results indicate that ordinary citizens play an important role in the creation and dissemination of populist content. It seems that the social web widens the public sphere, including those actors who do not communicate in accordance with the Habermasian conceptualization of it.

The World Health Organization has declared that misinformation shared on social media about Covid-19 is an “infodemic” that must be fought alongside the pandemic itself. We reflect on how news literacy and science literacy can provide a foundation to combat misinformation about Covid-19 by giving social media users the tools to identify, consume, and share high-quality information. These skills can be put into practice to combat the infodemic by amplifying quality information and actively correcting misinformation seen on social media. We conclude by considering the extent to which what we know about these literacies and related behaviors can be extended to less-researched areas like the Global South.

The communication of the Coronavirus crisis in Spain has two unexpected components: the rise of the information on social networks, especially WhatsApp, and the consolidation of TV programs on mystery and esotericism. Both have emerged to “tell the truth” in opposition to official sources and public media. For a country with a long history of treating science and the media as properties of the state, this very radical development has surprised communication scholars.

The commentary focuses on the spread of Covid-19 misinformation in Italy, highlighting the dynamics that have impacted on its pandemic communication. Italy has recently been affected by a progressive erosion of trust in public institutions and a general state of information crisis regarding matters of health and science. In this context, the politicization of health issues and a growing use of social media to confront the Coronavirus “infodemic” have led the Italian Ministry of Health to play a strategic role in using its official Facebook page to mitigate the spread of misinformation and to offer updates to online publics. Despite this prompt intervention, which increased the visibility and reliability of public health communication, coordinated efforts involving different institutions, media and digital platform companies still seem necessary to reduce the impact of misinformation, as using a multichannel strategy helps avoid increasing social and technological disparities at a time of crisis.

Despite reporting early cases, Japan’s infection rates of Covid-19 have remained low. This commentary considers how a discourse of cultural exceptionalism dispersed across the networked global public sphere as an explanation for Japan’s low case count. It also discusses the consequences for wider public understanding of evidence-based public-health interventions to reduce the transmission of the coronavirus.

Initially offered as a digital public sphere forum, comments sections became the preferred democratic arena for gatekeepers to encourage their readers to engage in constructive dialogue about relevant issues. However, news sites require commenters to remain civil in their interactions, which led users to seek alternative ways of commenting on the news. This article explores in-depth the contents of a sample of 98,426 user-comments collected between February March 2019 from three major Spanish digital native newspapers: ElDiario.es, ElEspañol.com, and ElConfidencial.com. The main goals were to analyze whether comments in news outlets are deliberative, to assess the quality of the debate that takes place in them, and to describe their specific features. Discourse ethics were explored to determine the discussions’ impact, the language used, the acceptance of arguments, and the recognition and civility of participants. Findings reveal that comments sections in news outlets do not have a dialogic nature and that the debates have a low-quality profile. Nonetheless, the degree of mutual respect in interaction is acceptable, with slightly observed levels of incivility. Finally, the data suggest that the focused comments are higher on social media and that memes and emojis represent a new form of digital discourse. This research was supported by the Spanish Ministry o fScience, Innovation and Universities (“News, Networksand Users in the Hybrid Media System: Shared Creationand Dissemination of News in Online Media,” RTI2018-095775-B-C41). It was carried out within the Consoli-dated Research Group ‘Gureiker’ (A) (IT1112-16), fundedby the Basque Government

It has been traditionally estimated that children begin to understand the persuasive intent of advertising at about the age of 8 which is when they acquire the skills of adult consumers. The ability to identify and interpret the persuasive content that minors are exposed to via mobile phones was analyzed through semi‐structured interviews of children aged 10 to 14 years along with their parents in 20 households. Although minors seem to be able to recognize the persuasive intent of advertising, this does not necessarily mean that they have a deep understanding of the new digital formats that combine persuasion and entertainment. Data analysis of the interviews shows low recognition of the persuasive intent of commercial messages that are not explicitly identified as such, particularly on social networks. Data collected after minors viewing of different examples allowed researchers to conclude that standardized advertising is mainly identified by its format. Three levels of advertising processing were detected in minors: the liking of the advertisement, the affinity for the advertised product, and the ability to contrast the claims with searches for comments, forums or opinions of influencers. Recent research verified that conceptual knowledge of the persuasive intention of the advertising does not suffice for minors to interpret the message, a fact that must be taken into account when developing advertising literacy. For parents, the amount of time spent on these devices and the type of use minors make of their cellphones or the relationships they establish on them are more relevant than exposure to advertising itself.

Social media have become one of the most important news delivery channels due to their interactivity and large audiences. The content published by news organizations on social networking sites is of particular value to sociologists, because it allows measurement of users’ attitude to certain events. However, we understand that the media choose which events become news in accordance with certain criteria, such as news values. In this study, we decided to examine how news values determine the public’s response as expressed by likes, reposts, and comments. To analyze the characteristics of different media and their audiences, we selected four popular newsgroups on the social networking site Vkontakte: TASS and Russia Today, representing the state media, alongside RBC and Meduza, representing the private media. The posts of the selected newsgroups were coded and analyzed by means of Harcup and O’Neill taxonomy of values (2016). The study showed that news organizations tend to have preferences for some news values rather than others. Regression analysis revealed positive relationships between 1) the sharing of likes and good and entertaining content, 2) the sharing of comments and the presence of celebrities or conflicts in news, 3) the sharing of reposts and comments and significant events. An unexpected discovery was a negative dependency between the number of comments and the presence of exclusive content.

Currently, the transformations occurring in media systems (especially those relating to technologies, the Internet and social networks) have led to a renewed interest in analysing the conditions that potentially foster selective exposure and, specifically, politically-oriented selection. As a result, that theory is now among the 21st century’s top eight most used approaches (Bryant & Miron, 2004, p. 696). This thematic issue addresses some of the key questions about selective exposure and associated phenomena by means of two comment articles and three research articles.

This article addresses the strategic use of Instagram in election campaigns for the office of the Austrian Federal President in 2016. Based on a comprehensive visual analysis of 504 Instagram posts from Green-backed but independent presidential candidate Alexander Van der Bellen, who resulted as winner after almost one year of campaigning, this contribution reconstructs key aspects of digital storytelling on Instagram. By identifying relevant image types central to the self-representation of the candidate, this article shows how a politician makes use of a digital platform in order to project and manage desired images. The salience of image types allows for the reconstruction of underlying visual strategies: (1) the highlighting of the candidate’s biography (biographical strategy), (2) the presentation of his campaign team (team strategy), and (3) the presentation of the candidate as a legitimate office holder (incumbent strategy). The article thus sheds light on visual aspects of digital storytelling as relevant factor of political communication.

This article examines the growing use of digital-networked images, specifically online self-portraits or “selfies”, as deliberate and personal acts of political expression and the ways in which meaning evolves and expands from their presence on the Internet. To understand the role of digital-networked images as a site for engaging in a personal and connective “visual” action that leads to formation of transient communities, the author analyzes the nude self-portrait of the young Egyptian woman Aliaa Magda Elmahdy, which during the Egyptian uprisings in 2011 drew attention across social media. As an object of analysis this image is a prime example of the use of digital-networked images in temporally intentional distribution, and as an instance of political enactment unique to this era. This article also explains the concept of participatory narratives as an ongoing process of meaning formation in the digital-networked image, shaped by the fluidity of the multiple and immediate textual narratives, visual derivatives, re-appropriation, and remixes contributed by other interested viewers. The online circulation of digital-networked images in fact culminates in a flow of ever-changing and overarching narratives, broadening the contextual scope around which images are traditionally viewed.

The study focuses on whether and to what extent advertisers influence the editorial content of free newspapers in the German part of Switzerland. The contribution analyzes, grounded on an historic approach, the most competitive period in Switzerland, 2008, when not less than five freesheets were competing for advertisers and public attention. By using Altmeppen’s (2006) organizational theory, the paper offers a theoretical frame able to describe the vanishing co-orientation between the media management and the newsroom, a trend that aggravates commercialization processes in news organizations. In a situation of economic turmoil, so the hypothesis, newsrooms are more inclined to positively adapt the valence of their coverage about their main advertisers in order to keep them in the portfolio. Using a content analysis, the author examined the editorial coverage of six among the most important advertisers of Swiss free newspapers, carrying out an aggregated statistical analysis based on logistic regression. The study revealed that free newspapers with a strong market orientation display a higher chance to publish positive facts and evaluations about advertisers with a high advertising expenditure.

In many European countries, populist right-wing parties have been most noticeable representatives of Euroscepticism. In Finland, the Finns Party (Perussuomalaiset) has been a constant promoter of organisational Euroscepticism through its leader, Timo Soini. The party broke through in Finland’s ‘big bang elections’ of 2011, when the most debated issue was the European economic crisis, which was dominated by Eurosceptic Soini. Research concerning the relationship between the media, populism and Euroscepticism usually focus on national or European Parliament elections. This study analyses the media portrayal of the Eurosceptic Finns Party during times other than elections, focusing on the Finland’s overall Euro crisis press coverage in 2010–2012. The analysis shows that the populist Finns Party has been a minor player in that coverage, which was dominated by the Euro positive political and economic elites. Differences between newspapers indicate that journalistic routines and political context direct media coverage toward particular framings, even when the media proclaims itself politically independent and neutral.

Dramatic symmetries in strategies and techniques of persuasion create challenges to the functioning of established actors in the global media ecology, including international broadcasters. This essay articulates an adaptation of the concept of asymmetric warfare to the field of propaganda, persuasion and recruitment. It examines the particular challenge of certain asymmetric entrants, including ISIS and categorizes how the more traditional entities and government institutions react to these new entrants in markets for loyalties. (author's abstract)

This paper examines the nature and impacts of two information intervention radio programmes broadcast on Radio Okapi - the radio service of the UN Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo. A matched randomization technique was used to assign Rwandan Hutus and Congolese autochthons in South Kivu to listen to either of the two programmes within their naturalistic contexts for 13 months. At the end of the treatment, participants’ perceptions of barriers to peace; descriptive and prescriptive interventions; victimhood and villainity; opportunities for personal development and civic engagement; and knowledge of repatriation processes were assessed in 16 focus groups across four contexts. The study concludes that international media intervention programmes that provide robust information and a platform for objective analyses within a multiple narrative and participatory framework can enhance greater engagement with nascent democratic reforms, positive perception of long term opportunities for personal development and empathy with the ethnic Other. (author's abstract)

For the news industry, information is used to tell stories, which have traditionally been organized around “facts”. A growing problem, however, is that fact-based evidence is not relevant to a growing segment of the populace. Journalists need facts to tell stories, but they need data to understand how to engage audiences with this accurate information. The implementation of data is part of the solution to countering the erosion of trust and the decay of social discourse across networked spaces. Rather than following “trends”, news organizations should establish the groundwork to make facts “matter” by shaping the narrative instead of following deceptive statements.

In the Declaration of the Committee of Ministers on the role of community media in promoting social cohesion and intercultural dialogue passed on 11 February 2009 by the Council of Europe, stations run by religious institutions were explicitly excluded from the community media definition, as being too dependent on the Church. But the reality seems to be far from this definition. In practice, in many countries the religious radio stations officially belong to - or even dominate - this sector. In 2011 a new period began for community broadcasting in Hungary. While most of the former community media broadcasters could not find resources with which to operate, the community media landscape was dramatically overwhelmed by religious broadcasters both on regional and local levels. The legally-recognised third tier of broadcasting in Poland called 'social broadcasting' is actively and exclusively used by religious radio - seven stations broadcast locally and one is a powerful nationwide radio station called Radio Maryja. The authors gathered information and points of views from radio experts, organizations and activists living and working in different EU and non-EU states about the place of religious broadcasting in the community media sector. Two case-studies (Hungary and Poland) may be of interest for countries considering the introduction or reorganisation of regulations regarding community broadcasting. (author's abstract)

This commentary suggests that Naomi Klein’s influential book This changes everything: Capitalism vs. the climate, implicitly points to the influence of media institutions on societal response to the crisis, yet does not analyze them explicitly. Communication scholars could help fill that gap. Conversely however, Klein’s work suggests productive avenues for media researchers to explore, including a fresh take on the relationship between climate crisis, communication and capitalism as a system, and the potential for alternative media to challenge dominant cultural narratives.