Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Title: Mediatizing Slum Relocation in Egypt: Between Legitimization and Stigmatization
File-URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/4491
File-Format: text/html
DOI: 10.17645/mac.v9i4.4491
Journal: Media and Communication
Volume: 9
Year: 2021
Issue: 4
Pages: 345-359
Author-Name: Hassan Elmouelhi
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Urban Development, Technische Universität Berlin, Germany
Author-Name: Martin Meyer
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Urban Development, Technische Universität Berlin, Germany
Author-Name: Reham Reda
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Urban Development, Technische Universität Berlin – El Gouna, Egypt
Author-Name: Asmaa Abdelhalim
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Urban Development, Technische Universität Berlin – El Gouna, Egypt
Abstract: 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.
Keywords: informal settlements; legitimization; mediatization; relocation; social media; urban development
Handle: RePEc:cog:meanco:v9:y:2021:i:4:p:345-359

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Title: How Do Chinese Media Frame Arab Uprisings: A Content Analysis
File-URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/4466
File-Format: text/html
DOI: 10.17645/mac.v9i4.4466
Journal: Media and Communication
Volume: 9
Year: 2021
Issue: 4
Pages: 331-344
Author-Name: Shiming Hu
Author-Workplace-Name: School of Journalism and communication, Beijing Normal University, China
Author-Name: Weipeng Hou
Author-Workplace-Name: School of Journalism and communication, Beijing Normal University, China
Author-Name: Jinghong Xu
Author-Workplace-Name: School of Journalism and communication, Beijing Normal University, China
Abstract: Employing content analysis, this study compares the coverage of the Arab uprisings by the <em>People’s Daily</em> (the official newspaper of the Communist Party of China) and <em>Caixin Net</em> (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 <em>People’s Daily</em> and <em>Caixin Net</em> 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 <em>People’s Daily</em> changed from disaster to criticism, and then to comparison—its position towards the events generally negative—and how <em>Caixin Net</em> moved from a disaster to a contextual framing of the events, its position tending to be neutral.
Keywords: Arab uprisings; Chinese media; content analysis; news framing
Handle: RePEc:cog:meanco:v9:y:2021:i:4:p:331-344

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Title: From Chiapas to Palestine: Historicizing Social Movement Media Before and Beyond the Arab Uprisings
File-URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/4455
File-Format: text/html
DOI: 10.17645/mac.v9i4.4455
Journal: Media and Communication
Volume: 9
Year: 2021
Issue: 4
Pages: 320-330
Author-Name: Gretchen King
Author-Workplace-Name: Communication, Arts & Languages, Lebanese American University, Lebanon
Abstract: Critical scholarship investigating media and the Arab uprisings has called for “a return to history.” This article argues that researching the contemporary constraints and opportunities of social movement media in the Arab region requires historicizing such practices. Reflecting on the role of media activism within the Arab uprisings necessitates broadening the historical context of social movement media in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region by investigating the diversity of media tactics and alternative political economies mobilized to resist the military-industrial communications complex. This article develops a political economy framework to historicize social movement media practices from Chiapas to Palestine and provides a critical reflection on the use of media for revolution before and beyond the Arab uprisings. Learning from the long and global history of revolutionary media struggle is beneficial to media activists and researchers working in the MENA region.
Keywords: Arab uprisings; Chiapas; media activism; MENA; Mexico; revolution; Palestine; political economy of communication; social movement media
Handle: RePEc:cog:meanco:v9:y:2021:i:4:p:320-330

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Title: The Voice of Silence: Patterns of Digital Participation Among Palestinian Women in East Jerusalem
File-URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/4391
File-Format: text/html
DOI: 10.17645/mac.v9i4.4391
Journal: Media and Communication
Volume: 9
Year: 2021
Issue: 4
Pages: 309-319
Author-Name: Maya de Vries
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Communication and Journalism, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel
Author-Name: Maya Majlaton
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Communication and Journalism, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel
Abstract: Facebook is one of the world’s largest social networks, with more than 2,7 billion active users globally. It is also one of the most dominant platforms and one of the platforms most commonly used by Arabs. However, connecting via Facebook and sharing content cannot be taken for granted. While many studies have focused on the role played by networked platforms in empowering women in the Arab world in general and on feminist movements in the Arab Spring, few have explored Palestinian women’s use of Facebook. During and after the Arab Spring, social media was used as a tool for freedom of expression in the Arab world. However, Palestinians in East Jerusalem using social media witnessed a decrease in freedom of expression, especially after the Gaza war in 2014. This article focuses on the Facebook usage patterns and political participation of young adult Palestinian women living in the contested space of East Jerusalem. These women live under dynamic power struggles as they belong to a traditionally conservative society, live within a situation of intractable conflict, and are under state control as a minority group. Qualitative thematic analysis of 13 in-depth interviews reveals three patterns of usage, all related to monitoring: state monitoring, kinship monitoring, and self-monitoring. The article conceptualises these online behaviours as “participation avoidance,” a term describing users’ (non-)communicative practices in which the mundane choices of when, why, and how to <em>participate </em>also mirror users’ choices of when, why, and how to <em>avoid</em>.
Keywords: Facebook; Israeli-Palestinian conflict; Jerusalem; participation; women
Handle: RePEc:cog:meanco:v9:y:2021:i:4:p:309-319

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Title: The Role of Media and Communication in Reducing Uncertainty During the Syria War
File-URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/4352
File-Format: text/html
DOI: 10.17645/mac.v9i4.4352
Journal: Media and Communication
Volume: 9
Year: 2021
Issue: 4
Pages: 297-308
Author-Name: Claudia Kozman
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Communication Arts, Institute of Media Research and Training, Lebanese American University, Lebanon
Author-Name: Rana Tabbara
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Communication Arts, Institute of Media Research and Training, Lebanese American University, Lebanon
Author-Name: Jad Melki
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Communication Arts, Institute of Media Research and Training, Lebanese American University, Lebanon
Abstract: Ten years after the uprising in Syria, millions of its citizens remain displaced and uncertain about their fate. Throughout that period, media coverage about the ensuing civil war played a major role in informing Syrians and contributed to altering their levels of fear and anxiety about their country’s future and their survival prospects. This study examined the role of legacy media, online media, and interpersonal communication in increasing or reducing uncertainty among displaced and non-displaced Syrians. Through a revised construct of uncertainty reduction theory within the context of a civil war, we assessed the relationship between exposure to these media sources and feeling anxious, uncertain, angry, and in danger, and whether these feelings influenced information consumption trends. We also probed the connection between their anxiety levels and sharing information, both interpersonally and on social media. The study surveyed 2,192 Syrian adults (95% CI, ±2.5) living in Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Turkey, both inside and outside refugee camps, using a random multistage cluster sampling technique. The findings revealed a strong relationship between positive emotions and time spent on legacy and online media. The more secure, proud, and hopeful people felt, the more likely they were to spend time on media sources. This relationship, however, was moderated by the perceived importance of these sources. Feelings of pride, security, and hopefulness generated by television and online media correlated with the time people spent on these media sources, and the perceived importance of such media further strengthened this relationship. A different picture appeared in the relationship between positive emotions and interpersonal communication, where the perceived importance of talking to people not only significantly moderated the relationship but also canceled out the main effect of positive emotions on the time people spend communicating with others. The findings also indicated that feelings of uncertainty about these sources may stand in the way of sharing information about the war on social media.
Keywords: Arab media; crisis communication; media and war; media exposure; media literacy; uncertainty reduction
Handle: RePEc:cog:meanco:v9:y:2021:i:4:p:297-308

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Title: The Subtle Dynamics of Power Struggles in Tunisia: Local media since the Arab Uprisings
File-URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/4452
File-Format: text/html
DOI: 10.17645/mac.v9i4.4452
Journal: Media and Communication
Volume: 9
Year: 2021
Issue: 4
Pages: 286-296
Author-Name: Noah Bassil
Author-Workplace-Name: School of Social Sciences, Macquarie University, Australia
Author-Name: Nourhan Kassem
Author-Workplace-Name: School of Social Sciences, Macquarie University, Australia
Abstract: 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.
Keywords: Arab uprisings; democratisation; local media; MENA; proximity journalism; Tunisian media
Handle: RePEc:cog:meanco:v9:y:2021:i:4:p:286-296

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Title: A Case Study: Mada Masr—A Progressive Voice in Egypt and Beyond
File-URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/4492
File-Format: text/html
DOI: 10.17645/mac.v9i4.4492
Journal: Media and Communication
Volume: 9
Year: 2021
Issue: 4
Pages: 275-285
Author-Name: Nadia Leihs
Author-Workplace-Name: Independent Researcher, Germany
Abstract: This article questions the role of the media in times of political transformation. In doing so, it draws on theories on the interconnectedness of the different fields of society to explain the sets of roles that media outlets and journalists adopt during phases of transition. Before 2011, the Egyptian media mostly acted as collaborators of the ruling regime and rarely as an agent of change. Journalists took over the latter role more often following the advent of privately-owned media outlets, thus helping to pave the way for the events of the so-called Arab Spring. This case study focuses on the development of the online news portal <em>Mada Masr</em> and therefore traces the development of two newsrooms. Starting as the English edition of a privately-owned Arabic newspaper in 2009 and changing its status to an independent news outlet in 2013, <em>Mada Masr</em> is one of the few voices which still openly criticise the Egyptian government. Founded in a time of political turmoil and struggling against an increasingly authoritarian environment, the outlet implements innovative ways of producing content, securing funding, and reaching out to its readers. A group of young Egyptian and international journalists make use of new spaces for expression that have opened through the global changes in communication infrastructure while struggling with frequent attacks by representatives of the ruling regime. As such, <em>Mada Masr</em> is a role model for small and regime-critical media outlets.
Keywords: alternative media; Arab Spring; authoritarianism; Egyptian media; Mada Masr; media systems; media transitions; online journalism
Handle: RePEc:cog:meanco:v9:y:2021:i:4:p:275-285

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Title: Understanding Emerging Media: Voice, Agency, and Precarity in the Post-2011 Arab Mediasphere
File-URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/4475
File-Format: text/html
DOI: 10.17645/mac.v9i4.4475
Journal: Media and Communication
Volume: 9
Year: 2021
Issue: 4
Pages: 264-274
Author-Name: Yazan Badran
Author-Workplace-Name: Echo, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium / imec-SMIT, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium
Abstract: The decade following the 2010–2011 Arab uprisings saw a flourishing of emerging media organisations across the region. The most recognisable examples of these new independent media actors include <em>Enab Baladi</em> in Syria, <em>Mada Masr</em> in Egypt, and Inkyfada in Tunisia. However, this phenomenon comprises a much more diverse set of actors from small-scale associative radio stations in Tunisia to numerous exilic Syrian media outlets. Building on previous research as well as recent fieldwork in Tunisia and Turkey, this article is an attempt to make sense of the genesis, development, and relevance of this new class of media actors. We argue that these emerging media organisations can be seen to represent specific interventions into the politics of voice in their various national and local contexts, but ones that share similar logics. To elucidate this argument, we propose a multi-dimensional understanding of these interventions that brings together voices (actors, issues, discourses), modalities of voice (organisational models, values, production value), and the underlying political economy of these emerging media (funding, institutionalisation). However, the article also argues that these interventions, and the logics they share, themselves belie a complex interaction between the political and professional agency and precarity of these media organisations and the individuals, and groups, behind them. We believe that combining these two perspectives is a necessary step for a more nuanced understanding of the nature and practice of these emerging media organisations.
Keywords: Arab uprisings; emerging media; institutionalisation; media development; MENA; politics of voice; professionalisation
Handle: RePEc:cog:meanco:v9:y:2021:i:4:p:264-274

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Title: Beyond Mainstream Media and Communication Perspectives on the Arab Uprisings
File-URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/5151
File-Format: text/html
DOI: 10.17645/mac.v9i4.5151
Journal: Media and Communication
Volume: 9
Year: 2021
Issue: 4
Pages: 260-263
Author-Name: Hanan Badr
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Mass Communication and Media, Gulf University for Science and Technology, Kuwait
Author-Name: Lena-Maria Möller
Author-Workplace-Name: Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Private Law, Germany
Abstract: This editorial argues for more research connecting media and communication as a discipline and the Arab Uprisings that goes beyond the mainstream techno-deterministic perceptions. The contributions in this thematic issue can be summarized around three central arguments: First, mainstream media, like TV and journalism, are central and relevant actors in the post-Arab Uprisings phase which have often been overlooked in previous literature. Second, marginalized actors are still engaged in asymmetric power struggles due to their vulnerable status, the precarious political economy, or a marginalized geographic location outside centralized polities. Finally, the third strand of argument is the innovative transnational geographic and chronological synapses that studying media and Arab Uprisings can bring. The editorial calls for more critical and interdisciplinary approaches that follow a region marked by inherent instability and uncertainty.
Keywords: Arab Uprisings; critical research; interdisciplinary; journalism; media asymmetries; power dynamics; transnational comparison
Handle: RePEc:cog:meanco:v9:y:2021:i:4:p:260-263

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Title: Mediated by Code: Unpacking Algorithmic Curation of Urban Experiences
File-URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/4086
File-Format: text/html
DOI: 10.17645/mac.v9i4.4086
Journal: Media and Communication
Volume: 9
Year: 2021
Issue: 4
Pages: 250-259
Author-Name: Annelien Smets
Author-Workplace-Name: imec-SMIT, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium
Author-Name: Pieter Ballon
Author-Workplace-Name: imec-SMIT, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium
Author-Name: Nils Walravens
Author-Workplace-Name: imec-SMIT, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium
Abstract: Amid the widespread diffusion of digital communication technologies, our cities are at a critical juncture as these technologies are entering all aspects of urban life. Data-driven technologies help citizens to navigate the city, find friends, or discover new places. While these technology-mediated activities come in scope of scholarly research, we lack an understanding of the underlying curation mechanisms that select and present the particular information citizens are exposed to. Nevertheless, such an understanding is crucial to deal with the risk of the socio-cultural polarization assumedly reinforced by this kind of algorithmic curation. Drawing upon the vast amount of work on algorithmic curation in online platforms, we construct an analytical lens that is applied to the urban environment to establish an understanding of algorithmic curation of urban experiences. In this way, this article demonstrates that cities could be considered as a new materiality of curational platforms. Our framework outlines the various urban information flows, curation logics, and stakeholders involved. This work contributes to the current state of the art by bridging the gap between online and offline algorithmic curation and by providing a novel conceptual framework to study this timely topic.
Keywords: algorithmic curation; algorithmic mediators; context media; smart cities; spatiality; urban algorithms
Handle: RePEc:cog:meanco:v9:y:2021:i:4:p:250-259

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Title: What’s “Up Next”? Investigating Algorithmic Recommendations on YouTube Across Issues and Over Time
File-URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/4184
File-Format: text/html
DOI: 10.17645/mac.v9i4.4184
Journal: Media and Communication
Volume: 9
Year: 2021
Issue: 4
Pages: 234-249
Author-Name: Ariadna Matamoros-Fernández
Author-Workplace-Name: Digital Media Research Centre, Queensland University of Technology, Australia / School of Communication, Queensland University of Technology, Australia
Author-Name: Joanne E. Gray
Author-Workplace-Name: Digital Media Research Centre, Queensland University of Technology, Australia / School of Communication, Queensland University of Technology, Australia
Author-Name: Louisa Bartolo
Author-Workplace-Name: Digital Media Research Centre, Queensland University of Technology, Australia / School of Communication, Queensland University of Technology, Australia
Author-Name: Jean Burgess
Author-Workplace-Name: Digital Media Research Centre, Queensland University of Technology, Australia / School of Communication, Queensland University of Technology, Australia
Author-Name: Nicolas Suzor
Author-Workplace-Name: Digital Media Research Centre, Queensland University of Technology, Australia / School of Law, Queensland University of Technology, Australia
Abstract: YouTube’s “up next” feature algorithmically selects, suggests, and displays videos to watch after the one that is currently playing. This feature has been criticized for limiting users’ exposure to a range of diverse media content and information sources; meanwhile, YouTube has reported that they have implemented various technical and policy changes to address these concerns. However, there is little publicly available data to support either the existing concerns or YouTube’s claims of having addressed them. Drawing on the idea of “platform observability,” this article combines computational and qualitative methods to investigate the types of content that the algorithms underpinning YouTube’s “up next” feature amplify over time, using three keyword search terms associated with sociocultural issues where concerns have been raised about YouTube’s role: “coronavirus,” “feminism,” and “beauty.” Over six weeks, we collected the videos (and their metadata, including channel IDs) that were highly ranked in the search results for each keyword, as well as the highly ranked recommendations associated with the videos. We repeated this exercise for three steps in the recommendation chain and then examined patterns in the recommended videos (and the channels that uploaded the videos) for each query and their variation over time. We found evidence of YouTube’s stated efforts to boost “authoritative” media outlets, but at the same time, misleading and controversial content continues to be recommended. We also found that while algorithmic recommendations offer diversity in videos over time, there are clear “winners” at the channel level that are given a visibility boost in YouTube’s “up next” feature. However, these impacts are attenuated differently depending on the nature of the issue.
Keywords: algorithms; automation; content moderation; digital methods; platform governance; YouTube
Handle: RePEc:cog:meanco:v9:y:2021:i:4:p:234-249

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Title: Automated Trouble: The Role of Algorithmic Selection in Harms on Social Media Platforms
File-URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/4062
File-Format: text/html
DOI: 10.17645/mac.v9i4.4062
Journal: Media and Communication
Volume: 9
Year: 2021
Issue: 4
Pages: 222-233
Author-Name: Florian Saurwein
Author-Workplace-Name: Institute for Comparative Media and Communication Studies, Austrian Academy of Sciences, University of Klagenfurt, Austria
Author-Name: Charlotte Spencer-Smith
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Communication Studies, Paris Lodron University of Salzburg, Austria
Abstract: Social media platforms like Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter have become major objects of criticism for reasons such as privacy violations, anticompetitive practices, and interference in public elections. Some of these problems have been associated with algorithms, but the roles that algorithms play in the emergence of different harms have not yet been systematically explored. This article contributes to closing this research gap with an investigation of the link between algorithms and harms on social media platforms. Evidence of harms involving social media algorithms was collected from media reports and academic papers within a two-year timeframe from 2018 to 2019, covering Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and Twitter. Harms with similar casual mechanisms were grouped together to inductively develop a typology of algorithmic harm based on the mechanisms involved in their emergence: (1) algorithmic errors, undesirable, or disturbing selections; (2) manipulation by users to achieve algorithmic outputs to harass other users or disrupt public discourse; (3) algorithmic reinforcement of pre-existing harms and inequalities in society; (4) enablement of harmful practices that are opaque and discriminatory; and (5) strengthening of platform power over users, markets, and society. Although the analysis emphasizes the role of algorithms as a cause of online harms, it also demonstrates that harms do not arise from the application of algorithms alone. Instead, harms can be best conceived of as socio-technical assemblages, composed of the use and design of algorithms, platform design, commercial interests, social practices, and context. The article concludes with reflections on possible governance interventions in response to identified socio-technical mechanisms of harm. Notably, while algorithmic errors may be fixed by platforms themselves, growing platform power calls for external oversight.
Keywords: algorithmic content curation; algorithmic harm; algorithms; behavioural advertising; content moderation; internet; social media
Handle: RePEc:cog:meanco:v9:y:2021:i:4:p:222-233

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Title: One Recommender Fits All? An Exploration of User Satisfaction With Text-Based News Recommender Systems
File-URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/4241
File-Format: text/html
DOI: 10.17645/mac.v9i4.4241
Journal: Media and Communication
Volume: 9
Year: 2021
Issue: 4
Pages: 208-221
Author-Name: Mareike Wieland
Author-Workplace-Name: Institute of Journalism/Media Research, University of Hamburg, Germany
Author-Name: Gerret von Nordheim
Author-Workplace-Name: Institute of Journalism/Media Research, University of Hamburg, Germany
Author-Name: Katharina Kleinen-von Königslöw
Author-Workplace-Name: Institute of Journalism/Media Research, University of Hamburg, Germany
Abstract: Journalistic media increasingly address changing user behaviour online by implementing algorithmic recommendations on their pages. While social media extensively rely on user data for personalized recommendations, journalistic media may choose to aim to improve the user experience based on textual features such as thematic similarity. From a societal viewpoint, these recommendations should be as diverse as possible. Users, however, tend to prefer recommendations that enable “serendipity”—the perception of an item as a welcome surprise that strikes just the right balance between more similarly useful but still novel content. By conducting a representative online survey with n = 588 respondents, we investigate how users evaluate algorithmic news recommendations (recommendation satisfaction, as well as perceived novelty and unexpectedness) based on different similarity settings and how individual dispositions (news interest, civic information norm, need for cognitive closure, etc.) may affect these evaluations. The core piece of our survey is a self-programmed recommendation system that accesses a database of vectorized news articles. Respondents search for a personally relevant keyword and select a suitable article, after which another article is recommended automatically, at random, using one of three similarity settings. Our findings show that users prefer recommendations of the most similar articles, which are at the same time perceived as novel, but not necessarily unexpected. However, user evaluations will differ depending on personal characteristics such as formal education, the civic information norm, and the need for cognitive closure.
Keywords: algorithm-based recommenders; diversity; news recommender design; recommender field experiment; reliable surprise
Handle: RePEc:cog:meanco:v9:y:2021:i:4:p:208-221

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Title: When Algorithms Recommend What’s New(s): New Dynamics of Decision-Making and Autonomy in Newsgathering
File-URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/4173
File-Format: text/html
DOI: 10.17645/mac.v9i4.4173
Journal: Media and Communication
Volume: 9
Year: 2021
Issue: 4
Pages: 198-207
Author-Name: Hannes Cools
Author-Workplace-Name: Institute for Media Studies, KU Leuven, Belgium
Author-Name: Baldwin Van Gorp
Author-Workplace-Name: Institute for Media Studies, KU Leuven, Belgium
Author-Name: Michaël Opgenhaffen
Author-Workplace-Name: Institute for Media Studies, KU Leuven, Belgium
Abstract: Newsroom innovation labs have been created over the last ten years to develop algorithmic news recommenders (ANR) that suggest and summarise what news is. Although these ANRs are still in an early stage and have not yet been implemented in the entire newsroom, they have the potential to change how newsworkers fulfil their daily decisions (gatekeeping) and autonomy in setting the agenda (agenda-setting). First, this study focuses on the new dynamics of the ANR and how it potentially influences the newsworkers’ role of gatekeeping within the newsgathering process. Second, this study investigates how the dynamics of an ANR could influence the autonomy of the newsworkers’ role as media agenda setters. In order to advance our understanding of the changing dynamics of gatekeeping and agenda-setting in the newsroom, this study conducts expert interviews with 16 members of newsroom innovation labs of<em> The Washington Post</em>,<em> The Wall Street Journal</em>, <em>Der Spiegel</em>, the BBC, and the Bayerische Rundfunk (BR) radio station. The results show that when newsworkers interact with ANRs, they rely on suggestions and summaries to evaluate what is newsworthy, especially when there is a “news peak” (elections, a worldwide pandemic, etc.). With regard to the agenda-setting role, the newsworker still has full autonomy, but the ANR creates a “positive acceleration effect” on how certain topics are put on the agenda.
Keywords: agenda-setting; algorithmic news recommenders; gatekeeping; newsroom innovation labs
Handle: RePEc:cog:meanco:v9:y:2021:i:4:p:198-207

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Title: Epistemic Overconfidence in Algorithmic News Selection
File-URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/4167
File-Format: text/html
DOI: 10.17645/mac.v9i4.4167
Journal: Media and Communication
Volume: 9
Year: 2021
Issue: 4
Pages: 182-197
Author-Name: Mariken van der Velden
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Communication Science, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Author-Name: Felicia Loecherbach
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Communication Science, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Abstract: The process of news consumption has undergone great changes over the past decade: Information is now available in an ever-increasing amount from a plethora of sources. Recent work suggests that most people would favor algorithmic solutions over human editors. This stands in contrast to public and scholarly debate about the pitfalls of algorithmic news selection—i.e., the so-called “filter bubbles.” This study therefore investigates reasons and motivations which might lead people to prefer algorithmic gatekeepers over human ones. We expect that people have more algorithmic appreciation when consuming news to pass time, entertain oneself, or out of escapism than when using news to keep up-to-date with politics (H1). Secondly, we hypothesize the extent to which people are confident in their own cognitive abilities to moderate that relationship: When people are overconfident in their own capabilities to estimate the relevance of information, they are more likely to have higher levels of algorithmic appreciation, due to the third person effect (H2). For testing those two pre-registered hypotheses, we conducted an online survey with a sample of 268 US participants and replicated our study using a sample of 384 Dutch participants. The results show that the first hypothesis cannot be supported by our data. However, a positive interaction between overconfidence and algorithmic appreciation for the gratification of surveillance (i.e., gaining information about the world, society, and politics) was found in both samples. Thereby, our study contributes to our understanding of the underlying reasons people have for choosing different forms of gatekeeping when selecting news.
Keywords: algorithmic appreciation; algorithmic gatekeepers; algorithmic news selection; third person effect; uses and gratifications
Handle: RePEc:cog:meanco:v9:y:2021:i:4:p:182-197

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Title: Algorithmic or Human Source? Examining Relative Hostile Media Effect With a Transformer-Based Framework
File-URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/4164
File-Format: text/html
DOI: 10.17645/mac.v9i4.4164
Journal: Media and Communication
Volume: 9
Year: 2021
Issue: 4
Pages: 170-181
Author-Name: Chenyan Jia
Author-Workplace-Name: Moody College of Communication, The University of Texas at Austin, USA
Author-Name: Ruibo Liu
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Computer Science, Dartmouth College, USA
Abstract: The relative hostile media effect suggests that partisans tend to perceive the bias of slanted news differently depending on whether the news is slanted in favor of or against their sides. To explore the effect of an algorithmic vs. human source on hostile media perceptions, this study conducts a 3 (author attribution: human, algorithm, or human-assisted algorithm) x 3 (news attitude: pro-issue, neutral, or anti-issue) mixed factorial design online experiment (<em>N</em> = 511). This study uses a transformer-based adversarial network to auto-generate comparable news headlines. The framework was trained with a dataset of 364,986 news stories from 22 mainstream media outlets. The results show that the relative hostile media effect occurs when people read news headlines attributed to all types of authors. News attributed to a sole human source is perceived as more credible than news attributed to two algorithm-related sources. For anti-Trump news headlines, there exists an interaction effect between author attribution and issue partisanship while controlling for people’s prior belief in machine heuristics. The difference of hostile media perceptions between the two partisan groups was relatively larger in anti-Trump news headlines compared with pro-Trump news headlines.
Keywords: algorithms; automated journalism; computational method; hostile media effect; source credibility
Handle: RePEc:cog:meanco:v9:y:2021:i:4:p:170-181

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Title: Political Microtargeting and Online Privacy: A Theoretical Approach to Understanding Users’ Privacy Behaviors
File-URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/4085
File-Format: text/html
DOI: 10.17645/mac.v9i4.4085
Journal: Media and Communication
Volume: 9
Year: 2021
Issue: 4
Pages: 158-169
Author-Name: Johanna Schäwel
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Communication Science: Media Psychology, University of Hohenheim, Germany
Author-Name: Regine Frener
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Communication Science: Media Psychology, University of Hohenheim, Germany
Author-Name: Sabine Trepte
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Communication Science: Media Psychology, University of Hohenheim, Germany
Abstract: Social media allow political parties to conduct political behavioral targeting in order to address and persuade specific groups of users and potential voters. This has been criticized: Most social media users do not know about these microtargeting strategies, and the majority of people who are aware of targeted political advertising say that it is not acceptable. This intrusion on personal privacy is viewed as problematic by users and activists alike. The overarching goal of this article is to elaborate on social media users’ privacy perceptions and potential regulating behaviors in the face of political microtargeting. This work is theoretical in nature. We first review theoretical and empirical research in the field of political microtargeting and online privacy. We then analyze how privacy is experienced by social media users during political microtargeting. Building on our theoretical analysis, we finally suggest clear-cut propositions for how political microtargeting can be researched while considering users’ privacy needs on the one hand and relevant political outcomes on the other.
Keywords: online privacy; political microtargeting; social media affordances; social media privacy model
Handle: RePEc:cog:meanco:v9:y:2021:i:4:p:158-169

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Title: Algorithmic Self-Tracking for Health: User Perspectives on Risk Awareness and Coping Strategies
File-URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/4162
File-Format: text/html
DOI: 10.17645/mac.v9i4.4162
Journal: Media and Communication
Volume: 9
Year: 2021
Issue: 4
Pages: 145-157
Author-Name: Noemi Festic
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Communication and Media Research, University of Zurich, Switzerland
Author-Name: Michael Latzer
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Communication and Media Research, University of Zurich, Switzerland
Author-Name: Svetlana Smirnova
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Media and Communications, London School of Economics and Political Science, UK
Abstract: Self-tracking with wearable devices and mobile applications is a popular practice that relies on automated data collection and algorithm-driven analytics. Initially designed as a tool for personal use, a variety of public and corporate actors such as commercial organizations and insurance companies now make use of self-tracking data. Associated social risks such as privacy violations or measurement inaccuracies have been theoretically derived, although empirical evidence remains sparse. This article conceptualizes self-tracking as algorithmic-selection applications and empirically examines users’ risk awareness related to self-tracking applications as well as coping strategies as an option to deal with these risks. It draws on representative survey data collected in Switzerland. The results reveal that Swiss self-trackers’ awareness of risks related to the applications they use is generally low and only a small number of those who self-track apply coping strategies. We further find only a weak association between risk awareness and the application of coping strategies. This points to a cost-benefit calculation when deciding how to respond to perceived risks, a behavior explained as a privacy calculus in extant literature. The widespread willingness to pass on personal data to insurance companies despite associated risks provides further evidence for this interpretation. The conclusions—made even more pertinent by the potential of wearables’ track-and-trace systems and state-level health provision—raise questions about technical safeguarding, data and health literacies, and governance mechanisms that might be necessary considering the further popularization of self-tracking for health.
Keywords: algorithmic selection; coping strategies; mHealth; risk awareness; self-tracking apps; self-quantification; societal risks; user perception; wearables
Handle: RePEc:cog:meanco:v9:y:2021:i:4:p:145-157

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Title: Investigating Algorithmic Misconceptions in a Media Context: Source of a New Digital Divide?
File-URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/4090
File-Format: text/html
DOI: 10.17645/mac.v9i4.4090
Journal: Media and Communication
Volume: 9
Year: 2021
Issue: 4
Pages: 134-144
Author-Name: Brahim Zarouali
Author-Workplace-Name: Amsterdam School of Communication Research, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Author-Name: Natali Helberger
Author-Workplace-Name: Institute for Information Law, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Author-Name: Claes H. de Vreese
Author-Workplace-Name: Amsterdam School of Communication Research, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Abstract: Algorithms are widely used in our data-driven media landscape. Many misconceptions have arisen about how these algorithms work and what they can do. In this study, we conducted a large representative survey (<em>N</em> = 2,106) in the Netherlands to explore algorithmic misconceptions. Results showed that a significant part of the general population holds (multiple) misconceptions about algorithms in the media. We found that erroneous beliefs about algorithms are more common among (1) older people (vs. younger people), (2) lower-educated people (vs. higher-educated), and (3) women (vs. men). In addition, it was found that people who had no specific sources to inform themselves about algorithms, and those relying on their friends/family for information, were more likely to have algorithmic misconceptions. Conversely, media channels, school, and having one’s own (online) experiences were found to be sources associated with having fewer algorithmic misconceptions. Theoretical implications are formulated in the context of algorithmic awareness and the digital divide. Finally, societal implications are discussed, such as the need for algorithmic literacy initiatives.
Keywords: algorithms; algorithmic awareness; digital divide; misconceptions; technology
Handle: RePEc:cog:meanco:v9:y:2021:i:4:p:134-144

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Title: A Literature Review of Personalization Transparency and Control: Introducing the Transparency–Awareness–Control Framework
File-URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/4054
File-Format: text/html
DOI: 10.17645/mac.v9i4.4054
Journal: Media and Communication
Volume: 9
Year: 2021
Issue: 4
Pages: 120-133
Author-Name: Claire M. Segijn
Author-Workplace-Name: Hubbard School of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of Minnesota, USA
Author-Name: Joanna Strycharz
Author-Workplace-Name: Amsterdam School of Communication Research, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Author-Name: Amy Riegelman
Author-Workplace-Name: University Libraries, University of Minnesota, USA
Author-Name: Cody Hennesy
Author-Workplace-Name: University Libraries, University of Minnesota, USA
Abstract: Through various online activities, individuals produce large amounts of data that are collected by companies for the purpose of providing users with personalized communication. In the light of this mass collection of personal data, the transparency and control paradigm for personalized communication has led to increased attention from legislators and academics. However, in the scientific literature no clear definition of personalization transparency and control exists, which could lead to reliability and validity issues, impeding knowledge accumulation in academic research. In a literature review, we analyzed 31 articles and observed that: 1) no clear definitions of personalization transparency or control exist; 2) they are used interchangeably in the literature; 3) collection, processing, and sharing of data are the three objects of transparency and control; and 4) increased transparency does not automatically increase control because first awareness needs to be raised in the individual. Also, the relationship between awareness and control depends on the ability and the desire to control. This study contributes to the field of algorithmic communication by creating a common understanding of the transparency and control paradigm and thus improves validity of the results. Further, it progresses research on the issue by synthesizing existing studies on the topic, presenting the transparency–awareness–control framework, and formulating propositions to guide future research.
Keywords: awareness; computational advertising; consumer data; control; covert data collection; information disclosure; personalization; privacy; targeting; transparency
Handle: RePEc:cog:meanco:v9:y:2021:i:4:p:120-133

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Title: How Algorithmic Systems Changed Communication in a Digital Society
File-URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/5005
File-Format: text/html
DOI: 10.17645/mac.v9i4.5005
Journal: Media and Communication
Volume: 9
Year: 2021
Issue: 4
Pages: 116-119
Author-Name: Sanne Kruikemeier
Author-Workplace-Name: Amsterdam School of Communication Research, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Author-Name: Sophie C. Boerman
Author-Workplace-Name: Amsterdam School of Communication Research, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Author-Name: Nadine Bol
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Communication and Cognition, Tilburg Center for Cognition and Communication, Tilburg University, The Netherlands
Abstract: This thematic issue invited submissions that address the opportunities and controversies related to algorithmic influence in a digital society. A total of 11 articles address how the use of algorithms has changed communication in various contexts, and cover topics such as personalized marketing communication, self-tracking for health, political microtargeting, news recommenders, social media algorithms, and urban experiences. The articles also include a wide variety of methods such as surveys, experiments, expert interviews, computational methods, and theoretical work developing frameworks and typologies. They are all united by one central question: How have algorithms and artificial intelligence changed communication, for both senders and receivers? We believe that the collection of topics and methods provide new insights into the different perspectives regarding algorithmic-driven communication—highlighting both the opportunities and challenges—and advance the literature with new findings, frameworks, and typologies.
Keywords: algorithms; automated decision making; communication; digital divides; health trackers; media personalization; online privacy; political microtargeting; recommender systems; transparency
Handle: RePEc:cog:meanco:v9:y:2021:i:4:p:116-119

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Title: Protest Event Analysis Under Conditions of Limited Press Freedom: Comparing Data Sources
File-URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/4217
File-Format: text/html
DOI: 10.17645/mac.v9i4.4217
Journal: Media and Communication
Volume: 9
Year: 2021
Issue: 4
Pages: 104-115
Author-Name: Jan Matti Dollbaum
Author-Workplace-Name: SOCIUM Research Center on Inequality and Social Policy, University of Bremen, Germany / Research Center for East European Studies at the University of Bremen, Germany
Abstract: The investigation of long-term trends in contentious politics relies heavily on protest event analysis based on newspaper reports. This tends to be problematic in restricted media environments. To mitigate the effects of bias and (self-)censorship, researchers of protest in authoritarian regimes have experimented with other sources such as international media and dissident websites. However, even though classical news media are easier targets for repression, journalistic reports might still outperform other sources regarding the quality of information provided. Although these advantages and disadvantages are known in the literature, different types of sources have seldom been tested against each other in an authoritarian context. Using the example of Russia between 2007 and 2012, the present article systematically compares protest event data from English-language news agencies, dissident websites, and several local sources, first and foremost with a view to improving methodological knowledge. The analysis addresses broad trends across time and space as well as the coverage of specific regions and single protest events. It finds that although the data sources paint different pictures of protest in Russia, this divergence is systematic and can be put to productive use. The article closes with a discussion on how its findings can be applied in other contexts.
Keywords: authoritarian regimes; media freedom; opposition; protest event analysis; Russia
Handle: RePEc:cog:meanco:v9:y:2021:i:4:p:104-115

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Title: Resisting Perceived Interference in Journalistic Autonomy: The Study of Public Service Media in Slovakia
File-URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/4204
File-Format: text/html
DOI: 10.17645/mac.v9i4.4204
Journal: Media and Communication
Volume: 9
Year: 2021
Issue: 4
Pages: 93-103
Author-Name: Marína Urbániková
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Media Studies and Journalism, Masaryk University, Czech Republic
Abstract: Autonomy is of paramount importance for journalism, but there is little empirically based knowledge of how journalists cope when it is threatened. Using a case study approach, this contribution examines a newsroom conflict that took place in the public service Radio and Television of Slovakia. It started when the new director general, a person believed to have ties to one of the coalition political parties, was elected by the parliament in 2017, and it culminated in layoffs and resignations of more than 30 reporters and editors in 2018. The case study is based on semi-structured interviews (N = 16) with the journalists who decided to quit in protest of what they called “creeping political pressure,” those whose contracts were not prolonged, those who decided to stay at their jobs, and the members of the previous and the new management. Building on the interviews and document analysis, the article inductively develops a classification scheme for resistance practices the journalists used to cope with the perceived interference with their professional autonomy that came from within their media organisation. These practices include having internal discussions, voicing concerns during newsroom meetings, writing an internal letter to the management, meeting with the management, establishing a trade union, requesting mediation, writing an open letter to the viewers and listeners, publicly criticising the management in the media, voluntarily asking to be re-assigned to another topic area or position in order to avoid interference, staying at one’s job in open opposition to the management, and resigning in protest.
Keywords: autonomy; interference; newsroom conflict; pressure; public service media; resistance practices; RTVS; Slovakia
Handle: RePEc:cog:meanco:v9:y:2021:i:4:p:93-103

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Title: The Agency of Journalists in Competitive Authoritarian Regimes: The Case of Ukraine During Yanukovich’s Presidency
File-URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/4227
File-Format: text/html
DOI: 10.17645/mac.v9i4.4227
Journal: Media and Communication
Volume: 9
Year: 2021
Issue: 4
Pages: 82-92
Author-Name: Esther Somfalvy
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Politics and Economics, Research Centre for East European Studies at the University of Bremen, Germany
Author-Name: Heiko Pleines
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Politics and Economics, Research Centre for East European Studies at the University of Bremen, Germany
Abstract: On the example of Ukraine during the Yanukovich presidency (2010–2014) this article explores which factors support journalists’ agency in relation to censorship pressure in a competitive authoritarian regime. It shows that a critical mass of journalists existed who reacted to censorship pressure with rejection. Based, first of all, on 31 semi-structured interviews, we examine the working conditions of prominent national journalists and analyse how they describe their role and motivations. We argue that the nature of competitive authoritarianism offers journalists opportunities for critical reporting, but that it is individual characteristics of journalists—including professional ethics, networks, and job mobility—which define whether and how the respective opportunities are used.
Keywords: authoritarian regime; censorship; competitive authoritarianism; journalism; Ukraine; Yanukovich
Handle: RePEc:cog:meanco:v9:y:2021:i:4:p:82-92

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Title: Boundary Control as Gatekeeping in Facebook Groups
File-URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/4238
File-Format: text/html
DOI: 10.17645/mac.v9i4.4238
Journal: Media and Communication
Volume: 9
Year: 2021
Issue: 4
Pages: 73-81
Author-Name: Sanna Malinen
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Social Research, University of Turku, Finland
Abstract: Facebook groups host user-created communities on Facebook’s global platform, and their administrative structure consists of members, volunteer moderators, and governance mechanisms developed by the platform itself. This study presents the viewpoints of volunteers who moderate groups on Facebook that are dedicated to political discussion. It sheds light on how they enact their day-to-day moderation work, from platform administration to group membership, while acknowledging the demands that come from both these tasks. As volunteer moderators make key decisions about content, their work significantly shapes public discussion in their groups. Using data obtained from 15 face-to-face interviews, this qualitative study sheds light on volunteer moderation as a means of media control in complex digital networks. The findings show that moderation concerns not just the removal of content or contacts but, most importantly, it is about protecting group norms by controlling who has the access to the group. Facebook’s volunteer moderators have power not only to guide discussion but, above all, to decide who can participate in it, which makes them important gatekeepers of the digital public sphere.
Keywords: Facebook; Facebook groups; gatekeeping; moderation; platforms; political discussions; social networks
Handle: RePEc:cog:meanco:v9:y:2021:i:4:p:73-81

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Title: Media Control and Citizen-Critical Publics in Russia: Are Some “Pigs” More Equal Than Others?
File-URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/4233
File-Format: text/html
DOI: 10.17645/mac.v9i4.4233
Journal: Media and Communication
Volume: 9
Year: 2021
Issue: 4
Pages: 62-72
Author-Name: Rashid Gabdulhakov
Author-Workplace-Name: Centre for Media and Journalism Studies, University of Groningen, The Netherlands
Abstract: Amid the intensification of state control over the digital domain in Russia, what types of online activism are tolerated or even endorsed by the government and why? While entities such as the Anti-Corruption Foundation exposing the state are silenced through various tactics such as content blocking and removal, labelling the foundation a “foreign agent,” and deeming it “extremist,” other formations of citizens using digital media to expose “offences” performed by fellow citizens are operating freely. This article focuses on a vigilante group targeting “unscrupulous” merchants (often ethnic minorities and labour migrants) for the alleged sale of expired produce—the Hrushi Protiv. Supported by the government, Hrushi Protiv participants survey grocery chain stores and open-air markets for expired produce, a practice that often escalates into violence, while the process is filmed and edited to be uploaded to YouTube. These videos constitute unique media products that entertain the audience, ensuring the longevity of punitive measures via public exposure and shaming. Relying on Litvinenko and Toepfl’s (2019) application of Toepfl’s (2020) “leadership-critical,” “policy-critical,” and “uncritical” publics theory in the context of Russia, this article proposes a new category to describe state-approved digital vigilantes—citizen-critical publics. A collaboration with such publics allows the state to demonstrate a façade of civil society activism amid its silencing; while state-approved participants gain financial rewards and fame. Through Foucauldian discourse analysis, the article reveals that vulnerable groups such as labour migrants and ethnic minorities could fall victim to the side effects of this collaboration.
Keywords: authoritarian publics; digital vigilantism; Foucauldian discourse analysis; Hrushi Protiv; internet control; Russia; social justice
Handle: RePEc:cog:meanco:v9:y:2021:i:4:p:62-72

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Title: Media Control in the Digital Politics of Indonesia
File-URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/4225
File-Format: text/html
DOI: 10.17645/mac.v9i4.4225
Journal: Media and Communication
Volume: 9
Year: 2021
Issue: 4
Pages: 52-61
Author-Name:  Masduki
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Communication, Universitas Islam Indonesia, Indonesia
Abstract: In transitional democratic countries with significant digital media user bases, the “authoritarian turn in digital media” has resulted in new forms of media control designed to counter critical media exposure. This article investigates the ongoing digital pressures experienced by Indonesian media organizations and investigative journalists by the partisan supporters of the country’s new authoritarian political leaders. This article provides a critical review of the forms of media control that have emerged in Indonesia within the past five years (2015–2020), giving special attention to the doxing allegedly faced by several news media and journalistic projects: IndonesiaLeaks; <em>Tempo </em>magazine; and WatchDoc. Applying qualitative methods (observation, semi-structured interviews, review of documents), this study finds that the rise of non-state and societal control over critical media leads to self-censorship amongst media and journalists. This study shows that online trolls, doxing, and hyper-partisan news outlets are used as new forms of media control. Control is also exerted by paid-social media buzzers, whose online identity is established by their use of digital and social media platforms to manipulate information and counter critical news regarding incumbent and oppositional political leaders. This article contributes to the academic debate on the intended forms of media control in digital politics of transitional democracies.
Keywords: digital politics; doxing; Indonesia; journalism; media buzzers; media control
Handle: RePEc:cog:meanco:v9:y:2021:i:4:p:52-61

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Title: Trolls, Pressure and Agenda: The discursive fight on Twitter in Turkey
File-URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/4213
File-Format: text/html
DOI: 10.17645/mac.v9i4.4213
Journal: Media and Communication
Volume: 9
Year: 2021
Issue: 4
Pages: 39-51
Author-Name: Uğur Baloğlu
Author-Workplace-Name: Faculty of Applied Science, Istanbul Gelisim University, Turkey
Abstract: Censorship, banning, and imprisonment are different methods used to suppress dissenting voices in traditional media and have now evolved into a new form with bot and troll accounts in the digital media age in Turkey. Is it possible to construct a bloc with counter-trolls against the escalating political pressure on the media in the post-truth era? Are counter-trolls capable of setting the agenda? This article discusses the possibility of constructing a bloc against the escalating political pressure in Turkey on the media through counter-trolls in the context of communicative rationality. First, it observes the ruling party’s troll politics strategy on Twitter, then examines the counter-discourses against political pressure today; thereafter it analyzes the discourse in hashtags on the agenda of the Boğaziçi University protests. Firstly, 18,000 tweets are examined to understand the suppress-communication strategy of the AK Party trolls. Secondly, the agenda-setting capacity of counter-trolls is observed between January 1, 2020, and February 5, 2021, and 18,000 tweets regarding Boğaziçi protests are examined to analyze the communication strategy of the counter-trolls. The study shows that the populist government instrumentalizes communication in social media, and Twitter does not have enough potential for the Gramscian counter-hegemony, but the organized actions and discourses have the potential to create public opinion.
Keywords: agenda; civil society; communication strategy; counter‐trolls; populism; trolls; troll politics
Handle: RePEc:cog:meanco:v9:y:2021:i:4:p:39-51

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Title: The Vulnerabilities of Trusted Notifier-Models in Russia: The Case of Netoscope
File-URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/4237
File-Format: text/html
DOI: 10.17645/mac.v9i4.4237
Journal: Media and Communication
Volume: 9
Year: 2021
Issue: 4
Pages: 27-38
Author-Name: Liudmila Sivetc
Author-Workplace-Name: Faculty of Law, University of Turku, Finland
Author-Name: Mariëlle Wijermars
Author-Workplace-Name: Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Maastricht University, The Netherlands
Abstract: Current digital ecosystems are shaped by platformisation, algorithmic recommender systems, and news personalisation. These (algorithmic) infrastructures influence online news dissemination and therefore necessitate a reconceptualisation of how online media control is or may be exercised in states with restricted media freedom. Indeed, the degree of media plurality and journalistic independence becomes irrelevant when reporting is available but difficult to access; for example, if the websites of media outlets are not indexed or recommended by the search engines, news aggregators, or social media platforms that function as algorithmic gatekeepers. Research approaches to media control need to be broadened because authoritarian governments are increasingly adopting policies that govern the internet <em>through</em> its infrastructure; the power they leverage against private infrastructure owners yields more effective—and less easily perceptible—control over online content dissemination. Zooming in on the use of trusted notifier-models to counter online harms in Russia, we examine the Netoscope project (a database of Russian domain names suspected of malware, botnet, or phishing activities) in which federal censor Roskomnadzor cooperates with, e.g., Yandex (that downranks listed domains in search results), Kaspersky, and foreign partners. Based<strong> </strong>on publicly available reports, media coverage, and semi-structured interviews, the article analyses the degree of influence, control, and oversight of Netoscope’s participating partners over the database and its applications. We argue that, in the absence of effective legal safeguards and transparency requirements, the politicised nature of internet infrastructure makes the trusted notifier-model vulnerable to abuse in authoritarian states.
Keywords: authoritarian states; internet governance; internet sovereignty; news personalisation; Netoscope project; platformisation; Roskomnadzor; Russia; trusted notifier-model
Handle: RePEc:cog:meanco:v9:y:2021:i:4:p:27-38

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Title: From “Troll Factories” to “Littering the Information Space”: Control Strategies Over the Russian Internet
File-URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/4177
File-Format: text/html
DOI: 10.17645/mac.v9i4.4177
Journal: Media and Communication
Volume: 9
Year: 2021
Issue: 4
Pages: 16-26
Author-Name: Ilya Kiriya
Author-Workplace-Name: School of Media, HSE University, Russia
Abstract: This article explores aspects, transformations, and dynamics of the ideological control of the internet in Russia. It analyses the strategies of actors across the Russian online space which contribute to this state-driven ideological control. The tightening of legislative regulation over the last 10 years to control social media and digital self-expression in Russia is relatively well studied. However, there is a lack of research on how the control of the internet works at a structural level. Namely, how it isolates “echo chambers” of oppositional discourses while also creating a massive flood of pro-state information and opinions. This article argues that the strategy of the Russian state to control the internet over the last 10 years has changed considerably. From creating troll factories and bots to distort communication in social media, the state is progressively moving towards a strategy of creating a huge state-oriented information flood to “litter” online space. Such a strategy relies on the generation of news resources which attract large volumes of traffic, which leads to such “trash information” dominating the internet.
Keywords: alternative media; ideological control; digital self-expression; power; RuNet; Russian media; social media
Handle: RePEc:cog:meanco:v9:y:2021:i:4:p:16-26

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Title: Re-Defining Borders Online: Russia’s Strategic Narrative on Internet Sovereignty
File-URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/4292
File-Format: text/html
DOI: 10.17645/mac.v9i4.4292
Journal: Media and Communication
Volume: 9
Year: 2021
Issue: 4
Pages: 5-15
Author-Name: Anna Litvinenko
Author-Workplace-Name: Institute for Media and Communication Studies, FU Berlin, Germany
Abstract: Over the past decades, internet governance has developed in a tug-of-war between the democratic, transnational nature of the web, and attempts by national governments to put cyberspace under control. Recently, the idea of digital sovereignty has started to increasingly gain more supporters among nation states. This article is a case study on the Russian concept of a “sovereign internet.” In 2019, the so-called law on sustainable internet marked a new milestone in the development of RuNet. Drawing on document analysis and expert interviews, I reconstruct Russia’s strategic narrative on internet sovereignty and its evolution over time. I identify the main factors that have shaped the Russian concept of sovereignty, including domestic politics, the economy, international relations, and the historical trajectory of the Russian segment of the internet. The article places the Russian case in a global context and discusses the importance of strategic narratives of digital sovereignty for the future of internet governance.
Keywords: digital sovereignty; internet governance; Russia; strategic narrative
Handle: RePEc:cog:meanco:v9:y:2021:i:4:p:5-15

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Title: Understanding Media Control in the Digital Age
File-URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/4861
File-Format: text/html
DOI: 10.17645/mac.v9i4.4861
Journal: Media and Communication
Volume: 9
Year: 2021
Issue: 4
Pages: 1-4
Author-Name: Olga Dovbysh
Author-Workplace-Name: Aleksanteri Institute, University of Helsinki, Finland
Author-Name: Esther Somfalvy
Author-Workplace-Name: Research Centre for East European Studies at the University of Bremen, Germany
Abstract: Media control comprises multifaceted and amorphous phenomena, combining a variety of forms, tools, and practices. Today media control takes place in a sphere where national politics meet global technology, resulting in practices that bear features of both the (global) platforms and the affordances of national politics. At the intersection of these fields, we try to understand current practices of media control and the ways in which it may be resisted. This thematic issue is an endeavour to bring together conceptual, methodological, and empirical contributions to revise the scholarly discussion on media control. First, authors of this thematic issue re-assemble the notion of media control itself, as not being holistic and discrete (control vs freedom) but by considering it from a more critical perspective as having various modes and regimes. Second, this thematic issue brings a “micro” perspective into understanding and theorising media control. In comparison to structural and institutional perspectives on control, this perspective focuses on the agency of various actors (objects and subjects of media pressure) and their practices, motivations, and the resources with which they exert or resist control. Featuring cases from a broad range of countries with political systems ranging from democracy to electoral authoritarian regime, this issue also draws attention to the question of how media control relates to regime type.
Keywords: digital media; freedom of expression; internet governance; media pressure; media control; political regimes
Handle: RePEc:cog:meanco:v9:y:2021:i:4:p:1-4

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Title: “Chuck Norris, Please Help!” Transnational Cultural Flows in the 2017 Anti-Corruption Protests in Romania
File-URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/4260
File-Format: text/html
DOI: 10.17645/mac.v9i3.4260
Journal: Media and Communication
Volume: 9
Year: 2021
Issue: 3
Pages: 439-248
Author-Name: Delia Dumitrica
Author-Workplace-Name: Media and Communication, Erasmus School of History, Culture and Communication, Erasmus University Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Abstract: This study examines the meaning-making work of transnational cultural references in protest. Whether using the image of the superhero or re-mixing a famous painting, the presence of such references in home-made protest placards was a striking feature of the 2017 anti-corruption protests in Romania. By means of a qualitative analysis of 58 such signs, this study identifies five types of transnational cultural resources co-opted in the local protest: politics, high and popular culture, brand names, computer culture, and other motivational slogans and protest symbols. Such references are appropriated in local protest for their recognizability potential, their generic interpretive frames, or their usefulness in generating surprising re-iterations of the political cause. Yet, the use of such references remains interwoven with the symbolic and political capital of professional, middle-class elites. In the Romanian case, the use of these transnational cultural references also constructs the protesters as cosmopolitan and aligned with Western cultural consumption and political practices. In turn, this frames political opponents as backwards, parochial, and unfit for democratic politics.
Keywords: circulation of culture; glocality; hybridity; protest communication; protest visuals; transnational cultural references
Handle: RePEc:cog:meanco:v9:y:2021:i:3:p:439-248

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Title: The Loss of the Popular: Reconstructing Fifty Years of Studying Popular Culture
File-URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/4218
File-Format: text/html
DOI: 10.17645/mac.v9i3.4218
Journal: Media and Communication
Volume: 9
Year: 2021
Issue: 3
Pages: 228-238
Author-Name: Joke Hermes
Author-Workplace-Name: Research Group Creative Business, Inholland University, The Netherlands
Author-Name: Jan Teurlings
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Media Studies, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Abstract: This article starts from the observation that popular culture resides in a contradictory space. On the one hand it seems to be thriving, in that the range of media objects that were previously studied under the rubric of popular culture has certainly expanded. Yet, cultural studies scholars rarely study these media objects <em>as</em> popular culture. Instead, concerns about immaterial labor, about the manipulation of voting behavior and public opinion, about filter bubbles and societal polarization, and about populist authoritarianism, determine the dominant frames with which the contemporary media environment is approached. This article aims to trace how this change has come to pass over the last 50 years. It argues that changes in the media environment are important, but also that cultural studies as an institutionalizing interdisciplinary project has changed. It identifies “the moment of popular culture” as a relatively short-lived but epoch-defining moment in cultural studies. This moment was subsequently displaced by a set of related yet different theoretical problematics that gradually moved the study of popular culture away from the popular. These displacements are: the hollowing out of the notion of the popular, as signaled early on by Meaghan Morris’ article “The Banality of Cultural Studies” in 1988; the institutionalization of cultural studies; the rise of the governmentality approach and a growing engagement with affect theory.
Keywords: affect theory; banality; cultural studies; Foucault; governmentality; media environment; popular culture; the popular
Handle: RePEc:cog:meanco:v9:y:2021:i:3:p:228-238

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Title: The Banality of Digital Reputation: A Visual Ethnography of Young People, Reputation, and Social Media
File-URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/4176
File-Format: text/html
DOI: 10.17645/mac.v9i3.4176
Journal: Media and Communication
Volume: 9
Year: 2021
Issue: 3
Pages: 218-227
Author-Name: Sander De Ridder
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Communication Studies, University of Antwerp, Belgium
Abstract: This article relies on a visual ethnography with young people between 13 and 20 years old. Young people were asked to make visual collages of fictional social media accounts, which are used in this article to analyse the signification of “good” and “bad” reputation in digital youth culture. It explores how reputation is performed visually and aesthetically in digital youth culture. The aim is to contribute to the critical study of digital reputation, it formulates an ethical critique on how the signification of digital reputation has formed alongside values and beliefs that support the growth of platform capitalism, rather than assigning a reputational value and rank responsibly. I conclude how the signification of digital reputation is not only conformist and essentialist but also meaningless. The banality of reputation argues that, in the context of popular social media, there is no real or substantial information made available to distinguish between a “good” or a “bad” reputation, except for stylized banality, a stylistic focus on lifestyle and commodities. The point is that reputation should not be banal and meaningless. Many important political and institutional decisions in a democracy rely on the evaluation of reputation and critical assessment of the information upon which such evaluations are made. Although platform capitalism has made digital reputation meaningless, it is in fact an essential skill to critically orient oneself in digital societies.
Keywords: banality; digital media; digital reputation; Instagram; platform capitalism; social media; visual ethnography; youth culture
Handle: RePEc:cog:meanco:v9:y:2021:i:3:p:218-227

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Title: Let’s Get Loud: Intersectionally Studying the Super Bowl’s Halftime Show
File-URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/4152
File-Format: text/html
DOI: 10.17645/mac.v9i3.4152
Journal: Media and Communication
Volume: 9
Year: 2021
Issue: 3
Pages: 209-217
Author-Name: Sofie Van Bauwel
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Communication Sciences, Centre for Cinema and Media Studies, Ghent University, Belgium
Author-Name: Tonny Krijnen
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Media and Communication, Erasmus School of History, Culture and Communication, Erasmus University Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Abstract: The study of popular culture has always been closely related to the study of class, gender, race, and sexuality. An increasing number of authors have called for an intersectional approach. However, the contradictory, fluid meanings articulated in popular culture render such an approach difficult, and many ignore the call for intersectional analysis. We will not. We will try to engage with an intersectional analysis of popular culture, using Shakira and Jennifer Lopez’s performance at the 2020 Super Bowl Halftime Show as a case to study the intersections of identity markers. We aim to bridge the different meanings attributed to their performance and to understand them as different elements in the intersectional configuration. A discourse analysis of the performance, and of reviews thereof, was performed to unravel five elements highlighted in the discourse: the quality of the show, Shakira and Lopez’s empowered performances, the incorporation of Latinidad elements, the performers’ sexiness, and perceived political messages. Our aim to understand how the contradictory discourses about these elements arose urges the reader to use listening to grapple with the complexity of intersectional analysis. Truly listening includes putting effort into opening up academic cultures, finding other voices. It is important to recognize global gender inequity, but we need to start investing far more to understand the politics of media representations as a transnational affair that causes multiple conceptions of gender (and other related) concepts to clash, mesh, and integrate.
Keywords: discourse analysis; intersectionality; Latinidad; listening; popular culture; Super Bowl Halftime Show
Handle: RePEc:cog:meanco:v9:y:2021:i:3:p:209-217

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Title: The Role of Popular Culture for Queer Teen Identities’ Formation in Netflix’s Sex Education
File-URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/4115
File-Format: text/html
DOI: 10.17645/mac.v9i3.4115
Journal: Media and Communication
Volume: 9
Year: 2021
Issue: 3
Pages: 198-208
Author-Name: Lucía-Gloria Vázquez-Rodríguez
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Applied Communication Sciences, Complutense University of Madrid, Spain
Author-Name: Francisco-José García-Ramos
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Applied Communication Sciences, Complutense University of Madrid, Spain
Author-Name: Francisco A. Zurian
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Applied Communication Sciences, Complutense University of Madrid, Spain
Abstract: Queer teenagers are avid readers of popular culture; as numerous audience studies prove, television plays a significant role in identity-formation for LGBTIQ+ youth, providing them with the information about sexuality, gender roles or non-normative relationships usually unavailable in their educational and home environments. In this article we analyze how some of the protagonists of Netflix’s TV show <em>Sex Education </em>(2019-present) utilize popular culture as a tool to explore their desires, forbidden fantasies, and gender expressions, becoming instrumental in the formation of their queer identities in a way that metatextually reflects the role LGBTIQ+ shows play for their audiences. Such is the case of Adam, a bisexual teenager that masturbates to the image of a fictional actor featured in a 1980s action film poster; Lily, whose sexual fantasies of role playing with alien creatures are strongly influenced by spatial sci-fi; and Ola, whose onyric universe is influenced by David Bowie’s genderbending aesthetics. However, the most representative example of how popular culture influences the formation of queer identities is Eric, whose non-conforming gender expression follows the example set by the trans characters in <em>Hedwig and the Angry Inch</em>.
Keywords: gender identity; identity formation; LGBTIQ+ media; popular culture; queer; Sex Education; teens
Handle: RePEc:cog:meanco:v9:y:2021:i:3:p:198-208

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Title: Here Come My 600-Pound Quintuplets: A Discussion of Reality Television as a Freak Discourse
File-URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/4107
File-Format: text/html
DOI: 10.17645/mac.v9i3.4107
Journal: Media and Communication
Volume: 9
Year: 2021
Issue: 3
Pages: 189-197
Author-Name: Sandra Pitcher
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Media and Cultural Studies, University of KwaZulu-Natal – Pietermaritzburg, South Africa
Abstract: 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 &amp; 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 &amp; 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).
Keywords: freak discourse; popular culture; reality television; television studies
Handle: RePEc:cog:meanco:v9:y:2021:i:3:p:189-197

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Title: Conspiracies, Ideological Entrepreneurs, and Digital Popular Culture
File-URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/4092
File-Format: text/html
DOI: 10.17645/mac.v9i3.4092
Journal: Media and Communication
Volume: 9
Year: 2021
Issue: 3
Pages: 179-188
Author-Name: Aaron Hyzen
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Communication Studies, Antwerp University, Belgium
Author-Name: Hilde Van den Bulck
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Communication, Drexel University, USA
Abstract: This contribution starts from the contemporary surge in conspiracism to develop a theoretical framework to understand how conspiracy theories make it from the margins to the mainstream. To this end, it combines a view of conspiracy theories as ideology and its propagandists as ideological entrepreneurs with insights into how the affordances of digital media and popular culture are instrumental in propagating the conspiracy theories. It further complements sociological and psychological explanations with a fandom perspective to grasp the diversity of conspiracy audiences. Together, it is argued, these factors allow ideological entrepreneurs to push conspiracy theories from the margins to the mainstream. Alex Jones and QAnon are discussed as cases in point.
Keywords: Alex Jones; alternative media; conspiracy theories; digital popular culture; ideological entrepreneurs; popular culture; QAnon
Handle: RePEc:cog:meanco:v9:y:2021:i:3:p:179-188

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Title: An Uneasy Return to the Role of Popular Culture
File-URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/4656
File-Format: text/html
DOI: 10.17645/mac.v9i3.4656
Journal: Media and Communication
Volume: 9
Year: 2021
Issue: 3
Pages: 175-178
Author-Name: Niall Brennan
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Communication, Fairfield University, USA
Author-Name: Frederik Dhaenens
Author-Workplace-Name: Centre for Cinema and Media Studies, Ghent University, Belgium
Author-Name: Tonny Krijnen
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Media and Communication, Erasmus University, The Netherlands
Abstract: The editorial for the thematic issue of <em>Media and Communication</em>, “From Sony’s Walkman to <em>RuPaul’s Drag Race</em>: A Landscape of Contemporary Popular Culture,” looks at the prevailing themes of earlier studies of popular culture, from Raymond Williams’ organic culture to the postmodern embrace of commodity culture, in relation to the current cultural moment of disruption and unease. The editorial then synthesizes the articles contained in the issue against where the study of popular culture has been and where we may anticipate it going.
Keywords: commodification; political communication; popular culture; postmodernism
Handle: RePEc:cog:meanco:v9:y:2021:i:3:p:175-178

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Title: Mapping Transmedia Marketing in the Music Industry: A Methodology
File-URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/4064
File-Format: text/html
DOI: 10.17645/mac.v9i3.4064
Journal: Media and Communication
Volume: 9
Year: 2021
Issue: 3
Pages: 164-174
Author-Name: Linda Ryan Bengtsson
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Geography, Media and Communications, Karlstad University, Sweden
Author-Name: Jessica Edlom
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Geography, Media and Communications, Karlstad University, Sweden
Abstract: Over the last decade, the music industry has adapted its promotional strategy to take advantage of the fluid, contemporary, platform-based transmedia landscape. For researchers of contemporary culture, the multiplicity of promotional activities creates substantial methodological challenges. In this article, we present and discuss such methodological approaches using two studies of contemporary promotional music campaigns as illustrative cases. Inspired by digital and innovative methods and guided by the Association of Internet Researchers’ (AoIR’s) ethical guidelines, we developed two data collection strategies—reversed engineering and live capturing—and applied two analytical approaches—visual mapping and time-based layering. The first case study traced already staged music marketing campaigns across multiple online media platforms, and the second followed an online promotional campaign in real time for six months. Based on these case studies, we first argue for the importance of grounded manual capturing and coding in data collection, especially when working around data access limitations imposed by platforms. Second, we propose reversed engineering and live capturing as methods of capturing fragmented data, in contemporary promotional campaigns. Third, we suggest the visual mapping and time-based layering of data, enabling researchers to oscillate between qualitative and quantitative data. Finally, we argue that researchers must pool their experiences and resources regarding how to transcend platform limitations and question a lack of transparency while respecting ethical norms and guidelines. With these arguments, we assert the researcher’s necessary role in understanding and explaining the complex and hybrid contemporary promotional landscape and provide tools and strategies for further research.
Keywords: digital methods; engagement; ethics; innovative methods; music industry; promotional culture; transmedia marketing
Handle: RePEc:cog:meanco:v9:y:2021:i:3:p:164-174

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Title: The Innovation Function of Hybridization in Public Relations
File-URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/3994
File-Format: text/html
DOI: 10.17645/mac.v9i3.3994
Journal: Media and Communication
Volume: 9
Year: 2021
Issue: 3
Pages: 155-163
Author-Name: Olaf Hoffjann
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Communication Studies, University of Bamberg, Germany
Abstract: From content marketing and corporate publishing to storytelling and brand PR—the literature contains many examples of hybrid structures in strategic communication in general and more specifically in public relations (PR). The question that arises is which problem these hybrid structures solve. This article focuses on a systems theoretical basis on the function of these hybrid structures. Hybridization is understood as a process by which a social system adopts program structures of another system. Hybridization as a strategy assumes an innovation function in systems and facilitates learning. Hybridizations can be observed in PR on two logical levels: Firstly, PR is itself the result of a hybridization process. This is an example of how differentiated systems can originate from hybrid structures. Secondly, like every form of strategic communication, PR suffers from a lack of trustworthiness, attention and relevance of its communication objects. In order to be able to continue to influence decisions in the interest of those described positively, PR unscrupulously adopts structures of journalism, advertising and entertainment.
Keywords: advertising; entertainment; hybridization; public relations; public sphere; strategic communication; systems theory
Handle: RePEc:cog:meanco:v9:y:2021:i:3:p:155-163

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Title: Review Pollution: Pedagogy for a Post-Truth Society
File-URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/4015
File-Format: text/html
DOI: 10.17645/mac.v9i3.4015
Journal: Media and Communication
Volume: 9
Year: 2021
Issue: 3
Pages: 144-154
Author-Name: Emily West
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Communication, University of Massachusetts Amherst, USA
Abstract: 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.
Keywords: consumer empowerment; disinformation; online reviews; platforms; reputation economy
Handle: RePEc:cog:meanco:v9:y:2021:i:3:p:144-154

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Title: Spinning at the Border: Employee Activism in ‘Big PR’
File-URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/4118
File-Format: text/html
DOI: 10.17645/mac.v9i3.4118
Journal: Media and Communication
Volume: 9
Year: 2021
Issue: 3
Pages: 133-143
Author-Name: Camille Reyes
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Communication, Trinity University, USA
Abstract: This article extends Coombs and Holladay’s (2018) social issues management model to provide new perspectives on activism and public relations. It also fills a gap in the literature on internal activism by analyzing the case of The Ogilvy Group and their employees, many of whom pushed for the agency to resign its work for U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Through a textual analysis of a leaked transcript documenting a meeting between Ogilvy management and internal activist employees, the communicative tasks of definition, legitimation, and awareness (Coombs &amp; Holladay, 2018) are explored in a way that complicates identity and power. As public relations practitioners are increasingly called upon to either advocate for or against social issues, this study provides an interesting contrast, showing one interpretation of what happens when there is dissension in the ranks.
Keywords: employee activism; immigration; Ogilvy; promotional culture; public relations
Handle: RePEc:cog:meanco:v9:y:2021:i:3:p:133-143

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Title: Keep the Fire Burning: Exploring the Hierarchies of Music Fandom and the Motivations of Superfans
File-URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/4013
File-Format: text/html
DOI: 10.17645/mac.v9i3.4013
Journal: Media and Communication
Volume: 9
Year: 2021
Issue: 3
Pages: 123-132
Author-Name: Jessica Edlom
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Geography, Media and Communication, Karlstad University, Sweden
Author-Name: Jenny Karlsson
Author-Workplace-Name: CTF—Service Research Center, Karlstad Business School, Karlstad University, Sweden
Abstract: The Internet has changed how music fans come together and how the music industry connects to and communicates with fans. To understand the incentives for becoming a fan and why fans take part in an artist brand, this article considers the diversity in a particular fan community, including its hierarchy and roles. Fans have different levels of engagement, knowledge, and status, both inside and outside a fan community. To extend the existing research on fan hierarchies into the digital promotional culture, this study focuses on the case of the Swedish music artist Robyn and her Facebook fan community Konichiwa Bitches. To gain insights into a complex online research arena, we use a qualitative and digital ethnographic approach in both online and offline contexts. The article provides an understanding and conceptualization of fan hierarchies, focusing on the top of the hierarchy, superfans and executive fans, and on their incentives for engagement. These high-level fans function as a key connecting point between the brand management and the fans, thus taking fandom a step further and enhancing the brand.
Keywords: fandom; fan community; fan hierarchy; engagement; music industry; superfan; value co-creation
Handle: RePEc:cog:meanco:v9:y:2021:i:3:p:123-132

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Title: Can Pop Culture Allay Resentment? Japan’s Influence in China Today
File-URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/4117
File-Format: text/html
DOI: 10.17645/mac.v9i3.4117
Journal: Media and Communication
Volume: 9
Year: 2021
Issue: 3
Pages: 112-122
Author-Name: Yuqing Wu
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Sociology, Yale University, USA
Abstract: In China, despite the traumatic collective memory relating to militaristic Japan during World War II, an increasing number of Chinese young adults have developed an obsession with Japanese culture, due to its export of anime, movies, pop music, and other popular culture. Based on interviews with 40 Chinese and Japanese young adults, this work examines how contemporary pop culture and historical war memories related to Japan influenced Chinese young adults, who had to reconcile their contradictory sentiments toward the Japanese government, people, and culture. The success of Japanese pop culture in China also shows how the allegedly apolitical, virtual sphere of entertainment has helped build Japan’s soft power through shaping a cool image of Japan in Asia and worldwide.
Keywords: China; East Asia; Japan; national image; pop culture; soft power
Handle: RePEc:cog:meanco:v9:y:2021:i:3:p:112-122

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Title: Disability Narratives in Sports Communication: Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games’ Best Practices and Implications
File-URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/4043
File-Format: text/html
DOI: 10.17645/mac.v9i3.4043
Journal: Media and Communication
Volume: 9
Year: 2021
Issue: 3
Pages: 101-111
Author-Name: Olga Kolotouchkina
Author-Workplace-Name: School of Humanities and Communication Sciences, University CEU San Pablo, Spain
Author-Name: Carmen Llorente-Barroso
Author-Workplace-Name: Faculty of Information Sciences, Complutense University of Madrid, Spain
Author-Name: María Luisa García-Guardia
Author-Workplace-Name: Faculty of Information Sciences, Complutense University of Madrid, Spain
Author-Name: Juan Pavón
Author-Workplace-Name: Institute of Knowledge Technology, Complutense University of Madrid, Spain
Abstract: The Paralympic Games have become a relevant social and communication tool for the enhancement of global awareness and understanding of disability. The increasing visibility of this kind of global sports event, as well as the efforts of public authorities to make their host cities more accessible, evidence a relevant shift to new urban barrier-free experiences and discourses concerning disability. This research is guided by an exploratory case study approach to assess the disability representation and narratives within the context of the 2020 Tokyo Paralympic Games. The examination of some innovative communication strategies fostering the visibility of disability reveals a series of effective practices implemented in Japan. The focus on the personification of para-athletes, the celebration of public events to experience first-hand para-sports disciplines, as well as the engagement of school-children and young people in para-sports initiatives are predominant in the communication efforts of Tokyo 2020 in the pre-games period.
Keywords: disability; Paralympic Games; media; sports communication; Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games; Japan
Handle: RePEc:cog:meanco:v9:y:2021:i:3:p:101-111

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Title: Researching the Complex, Hybrid, and Liminal Nature of Contemporary Promotional Cultures
File-URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/4539
File-Format: text/html
DOI: 10.17645/mac.v9i3.4539
Journal: Media and Communication
Volume: 9
Year: 2021
Issue: 3
Pages: 97-100
Author-Name: Ian Somerville
Author-Workplace-Name: School of Media, Communication and Sociology, University of Leicester, UK
Author-Name: Lee Edwards
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Media and Communications, London School of Economics and Political Science, UK
Abstract: This thematic issue invited submissions that address the challenges of researching the complex, hybrid, and liminal nature of promotional cultures and the published articles include studies which reflect on the structures, technologies, agents, representations, effects, and ethics of promotion. They are united by a central question: What strategies do we use to explore and attempt to understand the assemblages of technologies, texts, networks, and actors in contemporary promotion? We hope the collection of perspectives gathered here help to address the challenges of researching the digital, excavating promotional ideologies, confronting professions, engaging audiences through academic work, and confronting the risks and realities of research that can equally promote change or speak into a vacuum.
Keywords: complexity; hybridity; liminality; promotional cultures; promotional ethics
Handle: RePEc:cog:meanco:v9:y:2021:i:3:p:97-100

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Title: What Constitutes a Local Public Sphere? Building a Monitoring Framework for Comparative Analysis
File-URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/3984
File-Format: text/html
DOI: 10.17645/mac.v9i3.3984
Journal: Media and Communication
Volume: 9
Year: 2021
Issue: 3
Pages: 85-96
Author-Name: Renate Fischer
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Communication and Media Research, University of Zurich, Switzerland
Author-Name: Alexa Keinert
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Political and Social Sciences, Freie Universität Berlin, Germany
Author-Name: Otfried Jarren
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Communication and Media Research, University of Zurich, Switzerland
Author-Name: Ulrike Klinger
Author-Workplace-Name: European New School of Digital Studies, Europa-Universität Viadrina, Germany
Abstract: Despite the research tradition in analyzing public communication, local public spheres have been rather neglected by communication science, although they are crucial for social cohesion and democracy. Existing empirical studies about local public spheres are mostly case studies which implicitly assume that cities are alike. Based on a participatory-liberal understanding of democracy, we develop a theoretical framework, from which we derive a monitor covering structural, social, and spatial aspects of local communication to empirically compare local public spheres along four dimensions: (1) information, (2) participation, (3) inclusion, and (4) diversity. In a pilot study, we then apply our monitor to four German cities that are comparable in size and regional function (‘regiopolises’). The monitoring framework is built on local statistical data, some of which was provided by the cities, while some came from our own research. We show that the social structures and the normative assessment of the quality of local public spheres can vary among similar cities and between the four dimensions. We hope the innovative monitor prototype enables scholars and local actors to compare local public spheres across spaces, places, and time, and to investigate the impact of social change and digitalization on local public spheres.
Keywords: comparative research; local communication; local public spheres; participation and inclusion
Handle: RePEc:cog:meanco:v9:y:2021:i:3:p:85-96

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Title: Towards (Hyper)Local Public Sphere: Comparison of Civic Engagement across the Global North
File-URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/3929
File-Format: text/html
DOI: 10.17645/mac.v9i3.3929
Journal: Media and Communication
Volume: 9
Year: 2021
Issue: 3
Pages: 74-84
Author-Name: Jaana Hujanen
Author-Workplace-Name: Swedish School of Social Science, University of Helsinki, Finland
Author-Name: Olga Dovbysh
Author-Workplace-Name: Aleksanteri Institute, University of Helsinki, Finland
Author-Name: Lottie Jangdal
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Media and Communication Science, Mid Sweden University, Sweden
Author-Name: Katja Lehtisaari
Author-Workplace-Name: Faculty of Information Technology and Communication Sciences, Tampere University, Finland
Abstract: The role of hyperlocal media is of increasing relevance as traditional local journalism experiences a decline due to centralisation and consolidation. The affordances of Internet and digital technologies also enable hyperlocal initiatives to enhance civic engagement in localities and serve as a place and resource for local deliberative processes. This study examines how the aims, perceptions and practices of hyperlocal media vary in three countries of the Global North—Sweden, Finland and Russia—and what implications this has for connectedness and civic engagement in local public spheres. The context of different media systems and local political regimes help to explore possibilities and limitations of hyperlocals as agents of place-oriented civic engagement. The data includes interviews with practitioners and analysis of selected hyperlocal media. Our results indicate that hyperlocal media practitioners in all three countries aim to provide local people and communities with a voice, and to enhance resident engagement in local life. We reveal three civic roles of hyperlocal media: (i) information provider, (ii) community builder, and (iii) civic mediator. Practices of civic engagement used by hyperlocal media range from relying on civic journalism to fostering civic debates and can be classified in two main categories: civic information and civic debate and interaction. The perceptions and practices of these hyperlocal media are, to some extent, similar because of comparable changes and challenges regarding the local media and public spheres. At the same time, the perceptions of civic roles vary, reflecting both the developments and differences in the countries’ media spheres and political regimes. This research raises a critical question about hyperlocal practitioners’ understanding of their own roles and aims, and in addition, how differences in media cultures and local regimes affect their performance as agents of local public spheres.
Keywords: civic engagement; Finland; Global North; hyperlocal media; local media; public sphere; Russia; Sweden
Handle: RePEc:cog:meanco:v9:y:2021:i:3:p:74-84

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Title: Close to Beijing: Geographic Biases in People’s Daily
File-URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/3966
File-Format: text/html
DOI: 10.17645/mac.v9i3.3966
Journal: Media and Communication
Volume: 9
Year: 2021
Issue: 3
Pages: 59-73
Author-Name: Morley J. Weston
Author-Workplace-Name: Graduate Institute of Geography, National Taiwan University, Taiwan (R.O.C)
Author-Name: Adrian Rauchfleisch
Author-Workplace-Name: Graduate Institute of Journalism, National Taiwan University, Taiwan (R.O.C)
Abstract: Inequities in China are reflected within state-run media coverage due to its specific role “guiding public opinion,” and with our study we contribute to the geographic turn in the Chinese context with regard to media and journalism. As a subject of a spatial study, China is unique due to several factors: geographic diversity, authoritarian control, and centralized media. By analyzing text from 53,000 articles published in <em>People’s Daily</em> (rénmín rìbào, 人民日報) from January 2016 to August 2020, we examine how the amount of news coverage varies by region within China, how topics and sentiments manifest in different places, and how coverage varies with regard to foreign countries. Automated methods were used to detect place names from the articles and geoparse them to specific locations, combining spatial analysis, topic modeling and sentiment analysis to identify geographic biases in news coverage in an authoritarian context. We found remarkably uniform and positive coverage domestically, but substantial differences towards coverage of different foreign countries.
Keywords: authoritarian public; China; Chinese media system; People’s Daily; propaganda; spatial analysis; news values
Handle: RePEc:cog:meanco:v9:y:2021:i:3:p:59-73

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Title: From Global Village to Identity Tribes: Context Collapse and the Darkest Timeline
File-URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/3930
File-Format: text/html
DOI: 10.17645/mac.v9i3.3930
Journal: Media and Communication
Volume: 9
Year: 2021
Issue: 3
Pages: 50-58
Author-Name: Marco Bastos
Author-Workplace-Name: School of Information and Communication Studies, University College Dublin, Ireland
Abstract: In this article we trace the development of two narratives describing social media that informed much of internet scholarship. One draws from McLuhan’s axiom positing that communication networks would bring forth a ‘global village,’ a deliberate contradiction in terms to foreground the seamless integration of villages into a global community. Social media would shrink the world and reshape it into a village by moving information instantaneously from any location at any time. By leveraging network technology, it would further increase the density of connections within and across social communities, thereby integrating geographic and cultural areas into a village stretching across the globe. The second narrative comprises a set of metaphors equally inspired by geography but emphasizing instead identity and tribalism as opposed to integration and cooperation. Both narratives are spatially inspired and foreground real-world consequences, either by supporting cooperation or by ripping apart the fabric of society. They nonetheless offer opposing accounts of communication networks: the first is centered on communication and collaboration, and the second highlights polarization and division. The article traces the theoretical and technological developments driving these competing narratives and argues that a digitally enabled global society may in fact reinforce intergroup boundaries and outgroup stereotyping typical of geographically situated communities.
Keywords: context collapse; disinformation; geography; global village; internet studies; polarization
Handle: RePEc:cog:meanco:v9:y:2021:i:3:p:50-58

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Title: Transit Zones, Locales, and Locations: How Digital Annotations Affect Communication in Public Places
File-URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/3934
File-Format: text/html
DOI: 10.17645/mac.v9i3.3934
Journal: Media and Communication
Volume: 9
Year: 2021
Issue: 3
Pages: 39-49
Author-Name: Eric Lettkemann
Author-Workplace-Name: Institute of Sociology, Technische Universität Berlin, Germany
Author-Name: Ingo Schulz-Schaeffer
Author-Workplace-Name: Institute of Sociology, Technische Universität Berlin, Germany
Abstract: The article presents an analytical concept, the Constitution of Accessibility through Meaning of Public Places (CAMPP) model. The CAMPP model distinguishes different manifestations of public places according to how they facilitate and restrict communication between urbanites. It describes public places along two analytical dimensions: their degree of perceived accessibility and the elaboration of knowledge necessary to participate in place-related activities. Three patterns of communicative interaction result from these dimensions: civil inattention, small talk, and sociability. We employ the CAMPP model as an analytical tool to investigate how digital annotations affect communicative patterns and perceptions of accessibility of public places. Based on empirical observations and interviews with users of smartphone apps that provide digital annotations, such as Foursquare City Guide, we observe that digital annotations tend to reflect and reinforce existing patterns of communication and rarely evoke changes in the perceived accessibility of public places.
Keywords: annotation; civil inattention; Foursquare; locative media; perceived accessibility; public places; small talk; sociability; social worlds; Tabelog
Handle: RePEc:cog:meanco:v9:y:2021:i:3:p:39-49

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Title: Relational Communication Spaces: Infrastructures and Discursive Practices
File-URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/3988
File-Format: text/html
DOI: 10.17645/mac.v9i3.3988
Journal: Media and Communication
Volume: 9
Year: 2021
Issue: 3
Pages: 28-38
Author-Name: Alexa Keinert
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Political and Social Sciences, Freie Universität Berlin, Germany
Author-Name: Volkan Sayman
Author-Workplace-Name: Institute of Sociology, Technical University of Berlin, Germany
Author-Name: Daniel Maier
Author-Workplace-Name: German Cancer Consortium, Heidelberg, Germany
Abstract: Digital communication technologies, social web platforms, and mobile communication have fundamentally altered the way we communicate publicly. They have also changed our perception of space, thus making a re-calibration of a spatial perspective on public communication necessary. We argue that such a new perspective must consider the relational logic of public communication, which stands in stark contrast to the plain territorial notion of space common in communication research. Conceptualising the spatiality of public communication, we draw on Löw’s (2016) sociology of space. Her relational concept of space encourages us to pay more attention to (a) the infrastructural basis of communication, (b) the operations of synthesising the relational communication space through discursive practices, and (c) power relations that determine the accessibility of public communication. Thus, focusing on infrastructures and discursive practices means highlighting crucial socio-material preconditions of public communication and considering the effects of the power relations which are inherent in their spatialisation upon the inclusivity of public communication<em>.</em> This new approach serves a dual purpose: Firstly, it works as an analytical perspective to systematically account for the spatiality of public communication. Secondly, the differentiation between infrastructural spaces and spaces of discursive practices adds explanatory value to the perspective of relational communication spaces.
Keywords: discursive practices; inclusion; infrastructures; methodological nationalism; networks; public communication; sociology of space; territory
Handle: RePEc:cog:meanco:v9:y:2021:i:3:p:28-38

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Title: Structures of the Public Sphere: Contested Spaces as Assembled Interfaces
File-URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/3932
File-Format: text/html
DOI: 10.17645/mac.v9i3.3932
Journal: Media and Communication
Volume: 9
Year: 2021
Issue: 3
Pages: 16-27
Author-Name: Cornelia Brantner
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Geography, Media and Communication, University of Karlstad, Sweden
Author-Name: Joan Ramon Rodríguez-Amat
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Media Arts and Communication, Sheffield Hallam University, UK
Author-Name: Yulia Belinskaya
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Communication, University of Vienna, Austria
Abstract: This article updates certain aspects of the normative notions of the public sphere. The complex ecosystem of social communications enhanced by mobile media platform activity has changed our perception of space. If the public sphere has to normatively assess the expected conditions for public debate and for democracy, the assemblage of devices, discourses, infrastructures, locations, and regulations must be considered together. The literature reviewed about the public sphere, spaces, and geographically-enabled mobile media leads this article to the formulation of a concept of the public sphere that considers such assemblage as an interface. As an empirically applicable update to the definition of the public sphere the text offers a model that helps analyze those factors considering how they shape the communicative space in four modes: representations, structures, textures, and connections. These modes consider the roles played by assemblages of devices, infrastructures, and content in delimiting the circulation of information. The second part of the article illustrates the model with examples from previous research, paying particular attention to the structures’ mode. The dissection of qualitative, quantitative, and geodata generated by digital and (visual) (n)ethnographic tools reveals three subcategories for the analysis of structures of space: barriers, shifts, and flows. The structures effectively enable/disable communication and define centers and peripheries in the activity flows. The contribution of this article is, thus, conceptual—it challenges and updates the notion of the public sphere; and methodological—it offers tools and outputs that align with the previously developed theoretical framework.
Keywords: assemblage; geomedia; interface; mobile media; public space; public sphere; structures of space
Handle: RePEc:cog:meanco:v9:y:2021:i:3:p:16-27

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Title: Issue Spatiality: A Conceptual Framework for the Role of Space in Public Discourses
File-URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/3958
File-Format: text/html
DOI: 10.17645/mac.v9i3.3958
Journal: Media and Communication
Volume: 9
Year: 2021
Issue: 3
Pages: 5-15
Author-Name: Daniela Stoltenberg
Author-Workplace-Name: Institute for Media and Communication Studies, Freie Universität Berlin, Germany
Abstract: Public spheres research has traditionally sidestepped questions of space by focusing on a priori delineated political territories, most prominently national public spheres. While this approach has always lacked nuance, it has become acutely insufficient nowadays, as digital communication technologies easily enable a host of heterogeneous actors to draw public attention to spaces and places at any scale, and communicatively connect places anywhere in the world. This conceptual article argues that communication scholars need to reconsider the spaces embedded in the content of public discourses. Drawing on the notion of issue publics, it understands the public definition of issues as inextricably linked to the places that are communicatively associated with them, causing issue spaces to emerge. The issue space is constructed through place-naming whenever public actors reference places in the context of issues. The article develops issue spatiality as an analytical framework to understand the role of place and space in public discourse. It discusses how issue spatiality enables a better understanding of the increasingly complex scales of public communication, and outlines several dimensions of issue spatiality. Drawing on communication infrastructure literature, it proposes socio-spatial inequalities of communicative resources as important predictors of issue spatiality, along with the habits of professional communicators, and local problem properties. Gazetteers and mapping techniques are introduced as methodological interventions required for the empirical use of issue spatiality.
Keywords: communication geography; issue space; issue spatiality; place-naming; public discourse; public sphere
Handle: RePEc:cog:meanco:v9:y:2021:i:3:p:5-15

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Title: Spaces, Places, and Geographies of Public Spheres: Exploring Dimensions of the Spatial Turn
File-URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/4679
File-Format: text/html
DOI: 10.17645/mac.v9i3.4679
Journal: Media and Communication
Volume: 9
Year: 2021
Issue: 3
Pages: 1-4
Author-Name: Annie Waldherr
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Communication, University of Vienna, Austria
Author-Name: Ulrike Klinger
Author-Workplace-Name: European New School of Digital Studies, European University Viadrina, Germany
Author-Name: Barbara Pfetsch
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Political and Social Sciences, Freie Universität Berlin, Germany
Abstract: For decades, scholars have been calling out a spatial turn in media and communication studies. Yet, in public sphere research, spatial concepts such as space and place have mainly been used metaphorically. In recent years, the abundance of digital trace data offers new opportunities to locate communicative interactions, sparking new interest in the spatial turn in media and communication and opening up new perspectives on spaces and places also within public sphere research. Digital location data enables one to: study the places and spaces in which (semi-)public communication is embedded; uncover geographical inequalities between countries, regions, cities, and peripheries; and highlight the local contexts of public spheres. This thematic issue gathers some of these endeavors in one place, bringing together conceptual, methodological, and empirical contributions that spell out the spatiality of public spheres in detail and combine the analysis of spaces, places, and geographies with long-standing concepts of public sphere research.
Keywords: communication geography; place; public communication; public sphere; space; spatial turn
Handle: RePEc:cog:meanco:v9:y:2021:i:3:p:1-4

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Title: The Dark Side of Inspirational Pasts: An Investigation of Nostalgia in Right-Wing Populist Communication
File-URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/3803
File-Format: text/html
DOI: 10.17645/mac.v9i2.3803
Journal: Media and Communication
Volume: 9
Year: 2021
Issue: 2
Pages: 237-249
Author-Name: Manuel Menke
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Communication, University of Copenhagen, Denmark
Author-Name: Tim Wulf
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Media and Communication, LMU Munich, Germany
Abstract: In recent years, research found that populism employed a new strategy by using nostalgia, a sentimental longing for the past, as a communication tool to persuade citizens to support their political agendas. In populist campaigns, nostalgia is used to affectively link (alleged) crises with longing for a cherished past. In this article, we applied a mixed-methods approach to understand how populists exploit nostalgia in their communication and how nostalgic rhetoric has the potential to persuade people to support their claims. In Study 1, we conducted a case study based on a qualitative content analysis of Alternative for Germany’s (AfD) online election campaign in the 2019 Thuringia election in East Germany. The analysis revealed that the campaign was built around the nostalgic narrative of the 1989 peaceful revolution as a proud historical moment for former German Democratic Republic citizens while at the same time creating a sense of crisis supposedly caused by false post-reunification politics. To further investigate the persuasiveness of nostalgia, Study 2 used a statement from the campaign and found that participants tended to agree more with populist statements if they contained nostalgic rhetoric (compared to non-nostalgic populist and control rhetoric). These findings suggest that right-wing populists can effectively exploit nostalgia and that it may ‘sugarcoat’ populist messages.
Keywords: Alternative for Germany; collective nostalgia; German Democratic Republic; online election campaign; persuasion; political communication; populism
Handle: RePEc:cog:meanco:v9:y:2021:i:2:p:237-249

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Title: Framing Inspirational Content: Narrative Effects on Attributions and Helping
File-URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/3788
File-Format: text/html
DOI: 10.17645/mac.v9i2.3788
Journal: Media and Communication
Volume: 9
Year: 2021
Issue: 2
Pages: 226-236
Author-Name: Melissa M. Moore
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Communication, University at Buffalo–State University of New York, USA
Author-Name: Melanie C. Green
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Communication, University at Buffalo–State University of New York, USA
Author-Name: Kaitlin Fitzgerald
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Communication, University at Buffalo–State University of New York, USA
Author-Name: Elaine Paravati
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Psychology, Hamilton College, USA
Abstract: 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 (<em>N</em> = 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.
Keywords: attributions of responsibility; issue framing; narrative; prosocial
Handle: RePEc:cog:meanco:v9:y:2021:i:2:p:226-236

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Title: Inspired to Adopt: The Role of Social Norms in Media Inspiration
File-URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/3805
File-Format: text/html
DOI: 10.17645/mac.v9i2.3805
Journal: Media and Communication
Volume: 9
Year: 2021
Issue: 2
Pages: 215-225
Author-Name: Kevin Kryston
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Communication, Michigan State University, USA
Author-Name: Kaitlin Fitzgerald
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Communication, University at Buffalo–State University of New York, USA
Abstract: 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.
Keywords: inspirational media; pet adoption; prosocial behavior; selection behavior; social norms
Handle: RePEc:cog:meanco:v9:y:2021:i:2:p:215-225

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Title: The Winner Doesn’t Take It All: Analyzing Audience Responses to an Inspirational Sports Narrative
File-URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/3840
File-Format: text/html
DOI: 10.17645/mac.v9i2.3840
Journal: Media and Communication
Volume: 9
Year: 2021
Issue: 2
Pages: 202-214
Author-Name: Joshua Baldwin
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Communication, Michigan State University, USA
Author-Name: Gary Bente
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Communication, Michigan State University, USA
Abstract: Applying a dual-process rationale, this study explored the cognitive and affective mechanisms involved in the processing of hedonic versus eudaimonic film clips and their putatively distinct inspirational effects. The two types of narratives were operationalized in terms of complete and incomplete goal satisfaction in the film endings. Participants either watched the final boxing match from <em>Rocky</em>, where the protagonist loses the fight, but achieves self-mastery and finds love (eudaimonic narrative) or from <em>Rocky II</em>, where he wins against his opponent (hedonic narrative). A combination of continuous measures of how pleasant participants felt (slider ratings) and psychophysiological measures (heart rate, galvanic skin response [GSR], pulse volume amplitude [PVA]) indicating cognitive load and arousal was used to track the audience responses while watching a compilation of the same intro and the different fight versions. Results revealed that arousal was more strongly associated with participants’ affective scores during the hedonic (winning) version than during the eudaimonic (losing) one. Furthermore, participants experience more positive affect and arousal after watching the protagonist win the match compared to those that watched him lose. Lastly, participants in the eudaimonic condition were more likely to be inspired to exercise afterward. Implications of our results are discussed.
Keywords: arousal; entertainment; eudaimonic media; hedonic media; inspirational media; psychophysiology
Handle: RePEc:cog:meanco:v9:y:2021:i:2:p:202-214

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Title: The Bright and Dark Side of Eudaimonic Emotions: A Conceptual Framework
File-URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/3825
File-Format: text/html
DOI: 10.17645/mac.v9i2.3825
Journal: Media and Communication
Volume: 9
Year: 2021
Issue: 2
Pages: 191-201
Author-Name: Helen Landmann
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Community Psychology, FernUniversität in Hagen, Germany
Abstract: Based on a review of eudaimonic emotion concepts, definitional and empirical overlaps between the concepts are identified and a framework of eudaimonic emotions is developed. The framework proposes that feelings of elevation, awe, tenderness, and being moved can be differentiated based on their feeling components, thus constituting the feeling-specific types of eudaimonic emotions. A variety of other emotion concepts rely on reference to their elicitors, such as moral elevation (i.e., being moved by moral virtue), aesthetic awe (i.e., being moved by beauty), kama muta (i.e., being moved by communal sharing) and admiration (i.e., being moved by achievements), thus constituting elicitor-specific types of eudaimonic emotions. Structuring eudaimonic emotions along these lines allows for integrating research on these emotions. This integration leads to the proposition of general eudaimonic effects and value-specific effects of positive eudaimonic emotions on behaviour. Considering these effects can enhance understanding of how positive eudaimonic emotions affect pro-social intentions—the bright side of being moved—as well as the manipulating effects of propaganda—the dark side of being moved.
Keywords: admiration; appreciation; awe; being moved; elevation; propaganda; tenderness
Handle: RePEc:cog:meanco:v9:y:2021:i:2:p:191-201

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Title: The ‘Eudaimonic Experience’: A Scoping Review of the Concept in Digital Games Research
File-URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/3824
File-Format: text/html
DOI: 10.17645/mac.v9i2.3824
Journal: Media and Communication
Volume: 9
Year: 2021
Issue: 2
Pages: 178-190
Author-Name: Rowan Daneels
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Communication Studies, University of Antwerp, Belgium
Author-Name: Nicholas D. Bowman
Author-Workplace-Name: College of Media and Communication, Texas Tech University, USA
Author-Name: Daniel Possler
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Journalism and Communication Research, Hanover University of Music, Drama, and Media, Germany
Author-Name: Elisa D. Mekler
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Computer Science, Aalto University, Finland
Abstract: Digital games have evolved into a medium that moves beyond basic toys for distraction and pleasure towards platforms capable of and effective at instigating more serious, emotional, and intrapersonal experiences. Along with this evolution, games research has also started to consider more deeply affective and cognitive reactions that resemble the broad notion of eudaimonia, with work already being done in communication studies and media psychology as well as in human–computer interaction. These studies offer a large variety of concepts to describe such eudaimonic reactions—including eudaimonia, meaningfulness, appreciation, and self-transcendence—which are frequently used as synonyms as they represent aspects not captured by the traditional hedonic focus on enjoyment. However, these concepts are potentially confusing to work with as they might represent phenomenological distinct experiences. In this scoping review, we survey 82 publications to identify different concepts used in digital gaming research to represent eudaimonia and map out how these concepts relate to each other. The results of this scoping review revealed four broad conceptual patterns: (1) appreciation as an overarching (yet imprecise) eudaimonic outcome of playing digital games; (2) covariation among meaningful, emotionally moving/challenging, and self-reflective experiences; (3) the unique potential of digital games to afford eudaimonic social connectedness; and (4) other eudaimonia-related concepts (e.g., nostalgia, well-being, elevation). This review provides a conceptual map of the current research landscape on eudaimonic game entertainment experiences and outlines recommendations for future scholarship, including how a focus on digital games contributes to a more comprehensive understanding of eudaimonic media experiences broadly.
Keywords: appreciation; digital games; emotional challenge; emotionally moved; eudaimonia; meaningfulness; media entertainment; self-reflection; social connectedness
Handle: RePEc:cog:meanco:v9:y:2021:i:2:p:178-190

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Title: ‘A Shared Reality between a Journalist and the Audience’: How Live Journalism Reimagines News Stories
File-URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/3809
File-Format: text/html
DOI: 10.17645/mac.v9i2.3809
Journal: Media and Communication
Volume: 9
Year: 2021
Issue: 2
Pages: 167-177
Author-Name: Juho Ruotsalainen
Author-Workplace-Name: Finland Futures Research Centre, University of Turku, Finland
Author-Name: Mikko Villi
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Language and Communication Studies, University of Jyväskylä, Finland
Abstract: Live journalism is a new journalistic genre in which journalists present news stories to a live audience. This article investigates the journalistic manuscripts of live journalism performances. With the focus on texts, the article reaches beyond the live performance to explore the wider implications and potentials pioneered by live journalists. The data were gathered from <em>Musta laatikko</em> (‘Black Box’) manuscripts, a live journalism production by the Finnish newspaper <em>Helsingin Sanomat</em>. The manuscripts were analysed as <em>eudaimonic journalism</em> through four conceptual dimensions: self-transcendence, autonomy, competence, and relatedness. The results show how eudaimonic journalism can contemplate history, the future, and the meaning of finite human life. Moreover, by describing self-determinant individuals and communal social relationships, eudaimonic news stories can foster a sense of meaning and agency in audience members. By employing eudaimonia, journalists at large can reflect on the meaning and purpose of contemporary life and offer a more comprehensive understanding of the world. Such understanding includes not only facts and analysis, but also values, affects, and collective meanings mediated through the subjectivity of a journalist.
Keywords: eudaimonia; live journalism; reciprocal journalism; self-determination theory; self-transcendence; slow journalism
Handle: RePEc:cog:meanco:v9:y:2021:i:2:p:167-177

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Title: The Promises and Pitfalls of Inspirational Media: What do We Know, and Where do We Go from Here?
File-URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/4271
File-Format: text/html
DOI: 10.17645/mac.v9i2.4271
Journal: Media and Communication
Volume: 9
Year: 2021
Issue: 2
Pages: 162-166
Author-Name: Lena Frischlich
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Communication, Westphalian Wilhelms-University, Germany / Department of Media and Communication, LMU Munich, Germany
Author-Name: Lindsay Hahn
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Communication, University at Buffalo–State University of New York, USA
Author-Name: Diana Rieger
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Media and Communication, LMU Munich, Germany
Abstract: This editorial introduces the thematic issue on inspirational media; including its role in the elicitation of meaning and self-transcendence, audience responses to inspirational narratives, and the potential for inspirational media to be used for manipulative purposes. We first set the stage for the thematic issue by describing an organizing framework by Thrash and Elliot (2003) to study inspiration. We then situate the seven articles published in this thematic issue along the logic of different components of this framework, namely media <em>content</em> capable of invoking <em>transcendence</em> through emotions and excitatory responses, and a <em>motivational</em> impulse to act upon the ideas acquired from content. This thematic issue thereby highlights unique perspectives for understanding media’s ability to serve as the source of inspiration<em>—</em>be it for social benefit or detriment. Finally, we consider directions for future research on inspirational media.
Keywords: eudaimonic entertainment; inspiration; inspirational media; narratives; manipulation; media; motivation
Handle: RePEc:cog:meanco:v9:y:2021:i:2:p:162-166

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Title: Framing Nuclearity: Online Media Discourses in Lithuania
File-URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/3818
File-Format: text/html
DOI: 10.17645/mac.v9i2.3818
Journal: Media and Communication
Volume: 9
Year: 2021
Issue: 2
Pages: 150-161
Author-Name: Natalija Mažeikienė
Author-Workplace-Name: Faculty of Social Sciences, Vytautas Magnus University, Lithuania
Author-Name: Judita Kasperiūnienė
Author-Workplace-Name: Faculty of Informatics, Vytautas Magnus University, Lithuania
Author-Name: Ilona Tandzegolskienė
Author-Workplace-Name: Academy of Education, Vytautas Magnus University, Lithuania
Abstract: 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 <em>Chernobyl</em> 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 &amp; Modigliani, 1989), and dominating actors and institutions supporting the discourse.
Keywords: Astravyets nuclear power plant; Chernobyl; framing theory; Ignalina nuclear power plant; nuclear culture; nuclear imagery; nuclear media discourses; nuclearity; Visaginas
Handle: RePEc:cog:meanco:v9:y:2021:i:2:p:150-161

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Title: Disenchanting Trust: Instrumental Reason, Algorithmic Governance, and China’s Emerging Social Credit System
File-URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/3806
File-Format: text/html
DOI: 10.17645/mac.v9i2.3806
Journal: Media and Communication
Volume: 9
Year: 2021
Issue: 2
Pages: 140-149
Author-Name: Sheng Zou
Author-Workplace-Name: International Institute, University of Michigan, USA
Abstract: Digital technologies have provided governments across the world with new tools of political and social control. The development of algorithmic governance in China is particularly alarming, where plans have been released to develop a digital Social Credit System (SCS). Still in an exploratory stage, the SCS, as a collection of national and local pilots, is framed officially as an all-encompassing project aimed at building trust in society through the regulation of both economic and social behaviors. Grounded in the case of China’s SCS, this article interrogates the application of algorithmic rating to expanding areas of everyday life through the lens of the Frankfurt School’s critique of instrumental reason. It explores how the SCS reduces the moral and relational dimension of trust in social interactions, and how algorithmic technologies, thriving on a moral economy characterized by impersonality, impede the formation of trust and trustworthiness as moral virtues. The algorithmic rationality underlying the SCS undermines the ontology of relational trust, forecloses its transformative power, and disrupts social and civic interactions that are non-instrumental in nature. Re-reading and extending the Frankfurt School’s theorization on reason and the technological society, especially the works of Horkheimer, Marcuse, and Habermas, this article reflects on the limitations of algorithmic technologies in social governance. A Critical Theory perspective awakens us to the importance of human reflexivity on the use and circumscription of algorithmic rating systems.
Keywords: algorithmic rationality; Frankfurt School; instrumental reason; Social Credit System; social governance; trust
Handle: RePEc:cog:meanco:v9:y:2021:i:2:p:140-149

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Title: Mobile Journalists as Traceable Data Objects: Surveillance Capitalism and Responsible Innovation in Mobile Journalism
File-URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/3804
File-Format: text/html
DOI: 10.17645/mac.v9i2.3804
Journal: Media and Communication
Volume: 9
Year: 2021
Issue: 2
Pages: 130-139
Author-Name: Anja Salzmann
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Information Science and Media Studies, University of Bergen, Norway
Author-Name: Frode Guribye
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Information Science and Media Studies, University of Bergen, Norway
Author-Name: Astrid Gynnild
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Information Science and Media Studies, University of Bergen, Norway
Abstract: This article discusses how Shosana Zuboff’s critical theory of surveillance capitalism may help to understand and underpin responsible practice and innovation in mobile journalism. Zuboff conceptualizes surveillance capitalism as a new economic logic made possible by ICT and its architecture for extracting and trading data products of user behavior and preferences. Surveillance is, through these new technologies, built into the fabric of our economic system and, according to Zuboff, appears as deeply anti-democratic and a threat to human sovereignty, dignity, and autonomy. In Europe, the framework of responsible research and innovation is promoted as an approach and a meta-concept that should inform practice and policy for research and innovation to align with societal values and democratic principles. Within this approach, ICT is framed as a risk technology. As innovation in mobile journalism is inextricably tied to the technologies and infrastructure of smartphones and social media platforms, the apparent question would be how we can envision responsible innovation in this area. Zuboff provides a critical perspective to study how this architecture of surveillance impedes the practice of mobile journalism. While the wide adoption of smartphones as a key tool for both producing and consuming news has great potential for innovation, it can also feed behavioral data into the supply chain of surveillance capitalism. We discuss how potentially harmful implications can be met on an individual and organizational level to contribute to a more responsible adoption of mobile technologies in journalism.
Keywords: innovation; journalism; mobile journalism; mobile technology; responsible innovation; responsible research; risk technology; surveillance capitalism; Zuboff
Handle: RePEc:cog:meanco:v9:y:2021:i:2:p:130-139

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Title: Training for the Algorithmic Machine
File-URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/3773
File-Format: text/html
DOI: 10.17645/mac.v9i2.3773
Journal: Media and Communication
Volume: 9
Year: 2021
Issue: 2
Pages: 119-129
Author-Name: Stefka Hristova
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Humanities, Michigan Technological University, USA
Abstract: In thinking about the ubiquity of algorithmic surveillance and the ways our presence in front of a camera has become engaged with the algorithmic logics of testing and replicating, this project summons Walter Benjamin’s seminal piece <em>The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility </em>with its three versions, which was published in the United States under the editorial direction of Theodore Adorno. More specifically, it highlights two of the many ways in which the first and second versions of Benjamin’s influential essay on technology and culture resonate with questions of photography and art in the context of facial recognition technologies and algorithmic culture more broadly. First, Benjamin provides a critical lens for understanding the role of uniqueness and replication in a technocratic system. Second, he proposes an analytical framework for thinking about our response to visual surveillance through notions of training and performing a constructed identity—hence, being intentional about the ways we visually present ourselves. These two conceptual frameworks help to articulate our unease with a technology that trains itself using our everyday digital images in order to create unique identities that further aggregate into elaborate typologies and to think through a number of artistic responses that have challenged the ubiquity of algorithmic surveillance. Taking on Benjamin’s conceptual apparatus and his call for understanding the politics of art, I focus on two projects that powerfully critique algorithmic surveillance. Leo Selvaggio’s URME (you are me) Personal Surveillance Identity Prosthetic<em> </em>offers a critical lens through the adoption of algorithmically defined three-dimensional printed faces as performative prosthetics designed to be read and assessed by an algorithm. Kate Crawford and Trevor Paglen’s project Training Humans is the first major exhibition to display a collection of photographs used to train an algorithm as well as the classificatory labels applied to them both by artificial intelligence and by the freelance employees hired to sort through these images.
Keywords: algorithmic culture; artificial intelligence; critical theory; facial recognition; selfies; surveillance; technological reproducibility
Handle: RePEc:cog:meanco:v9:y:2021:i:2:p:119-129

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Title: The Commodification, Spatialization and Structuration of Social Media in the Indonesian Cyber Media News
File-URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/3752
File-Format: text/html
DOI: 10.17645/mac.v9i2.3752
Journal: Media and Communication
Volume: 9
Year: 2021
Issue: 2
Pages: 110-118
Author-Name: Muslikhin Muslikhin
Author-Workplace-Name: Faculty of Communication Sciences, Padjadjaran University, Indonesia
Author-Name: Deddy Mulyana
Author-Workplace-Name: Faculty of Communication Sciences, Padjadjaran University, Indonesia
Author-Name: Dadang Rahmat Hidayat
Author-Workplace-Name: Faculty of Communication Sciences, Padjadjaran University, Indonesia
Author-Name: Prahastiwi Utari
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Communication Science, Sebelas Maret University, Indonesia
Abstract: This research aims to uncover the commodification, spatialization, and structuration of Social Media within Cyber Media News in Indonesia. A critical perspective was used to conduct the study using a case study method. Through the use of Vincent Mosco political economy theory of media, the authors conclude that <em>Tribunnews.com</em>, the cyber media news, and the object of this research, makes social media a commodity and a content distribution channel, by involving all parts of the newsroom to utilize social media (structuration). The commodification of content is carried out by making information on social media an initial source for news production. Audience commodification by using the followers of social media accounts as a source of income. This was achieved by offering social media accounts to the advertisers to put their advertisement on official social media accounts. Through the use of social media, journalists are used by <em>Tribunnews.com</em> for profit. Utilization is carried out by distributing journalists’ work to social media, and to other cyber media news included in the media group—without providing additional wages. Spatialization was carried out by using social media as a means of news distribution or amplification. The goal is to reach readers who mostly get their information through the Internet, including through smartphones and social media. Structuration achieved through the formation of a team dedicated to managing the use of social media in the production and distribution of news.
Keywords: commodification; distribution; followers; Indonesia; journalism; news; social media
Handle: RePEc:cog:meanco:v9:y:2021:i:2:p:110-118

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Title: The Commodification of Virtual Community Content in Increasing Media Traffic
File-URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/3737
File-Format: text/html
DOI: 10.17645/mac.v9i2.3737
Journal: Media and Communication
Volume: 9
Year: 2021
Issue: 2
Pages: 98-109
Author-Name: Tuti Widiastuti
Author-Workplace-Name: Communication Department, Bakrie University, Indonesia
Abstract: Traffic is activity on a page of a site resulting from Internet visits and activity on that page. The more a site is visited, and the more activity Internet users engage in on the site’s pages, the higher its traffic. Traffic is like an audience on a television station, listener to the radio station, or circulation on print media. Traffic is the overall activity of readers on online media sites. Data collection from cnnindonesia.com is the commodification of content in an online forum, as in Kaskus and Kompasiana. The media are certainly competing to present exciting news content so that their readers remain loyal to their online. Exciting content on news portals and other efforts are employed solely to increase traffic. One such effort is the use of referral traffic, that is traffic which comes from other websites other than the major search engines, sources such as forums, blogs, and minor search engines are categorized as referral traffic. Visitors come to the online media portal through other websites and blog intermediaries. Although the contribution of made by referral traffic is not as great as the other sources, this practice considered quite useful as it does increase traffic in the media, traffic which is essential—and a measure of success.
Keywords: commodification of content; media traffic; online forum; virtual community
Handle: RePEc:cog:meanco:v9:y:2021:i:2:p:98-109

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Title: Making Watergate “Look Like Child’s Play”: The Solyndra Discourse (2011–2012) as Flak
File-URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/3692
File-Format: text/html
DOI: 10.17645/mac.v9i2.3692
Journal: Media and Communication
Volume: 9
Year: 2021
Issue: 2
Pages: 88-97
Author-Name: Brian Michael Goss
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Communication, Saint Louis University—Madrid Campus, Spain
Abstract: 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 <em>National Review</em>—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, <em>National Review</em> 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 <em>The Washington Post </em>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, <em>The Washington Post</em>’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.
Keywords: Democrats; flak; National Review; political scandal; Republicans; Solyndra; The Washington Post
Handle: RePEc:cog:meanco:v9:y:2021:i:2:p:88-97

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Title: Critical Theory and Being Critical: Connections and Contradictions
File-URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/4264
File-Format: text/html
DOI: 10.17645/mac.v9i2.4264
Journal: Media and Communication
Volume: 9
Year: 2021
Issue: 2
Pages: 86-87
Author-Name: Robert E. Gutsche, Jr.
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Sociology, Lancaster University, UK
Abstract: This editorial responds to a professionalization and constrained notion of “critical theory” to argue for an academic and humanist-centered approach to developing debates and discussions around the future of critical theory and “being critical.”
Keywords: critical theory; digital media; journalism
Handle: RePEc:cog:meanco:v9:y:2021:i:2:p:86-87

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Title: Casting for Change: Tracing Gender in Discussions of Casting through Feminist Media Ethnography
File-URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/3878
File-Format: text/html
DOI: 10.17645/mac.v9i2.3878
Journal: Media and Communication
Volume: 9
Year: 2021
Issue: 2
Pages: 72-85
Author-Name: Joke Hermes
Author-Workplace-Name: Research Group Creative Business, Inholland University, the Netherlands
Author-Name: Linda Kopitz
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Media Studies, University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands
Abstract: The moment of casting is a crucial one in any media production. Casting the ‘right’ person shapes the narrative as much as the way in which the final product might be received by critics and audiences. For this article, casting—as the moment in which gender is hypervisible in its complex intersectional entanglement with class, race and sexuality—will be our gateway to exploring the dynamics of discussion of gender conventions and how we, as feminist scholars, might manoeuvre. To do so, we will test and triangulate three different forms of ethnographically inspired inquiry: 1) ‘collaborative auto-ethnography,’ to discuss male-to-female gender-bending comedies from the 1980s and 1990s, 2) ‘netnography’ of online discussions about the (potential) recasting of gendered legacy roles from <em>Doctor Who</em> to <em>Mary Poppins</em>, and 3) textual media analysis of content focusing on the casting of cisgender actors for transgender roles. Exploring the affordances and challenges of these three methods underlines the duty of care that is essential to feminist audience research. Moving across personal and anonymous, ‘real’ and ‘virtual,’ popular and professional discussion highlights how gender has been used and continues to be instrumentalised in lived audience experience and in audience research.
Keywords: audience research; casting; ethnography; feminist media studies; feminist method; gender; humour
Handle: RePEc:cog:meanco:v9:y:2021:i:2:p:72-85

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Title: Gender, Voice and Online Space: Expressions of Feminism on Social Media in Spain
File-URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/3851
File-Format: text/html
DOI: 10.17645/mac.v9i2.3851
Journal: Media and Communication
Volume: 9
Year: 2021
Issue: 2
Pages: 62-71
Author-Name: Cilia Willem
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Communication Studies, Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Spain
Author-Name: Iolanda Tortajada
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Communication Studies, Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Spain
Abstract: Feminism’s current momentum, encouraged by movements such as #NiUnaMenos or #MeToo, has caused many social media agents to adopt some degree of feminism as a part of their online image or personal brand. ‘Being a feminist,’ for some, has become a marketing strategy in times of great polarisation between progressive forces and a reactionary backlash against feminism. The appropriation of feminism by the global market challenges public opinion, media, and academia to think and rethink feminism, and to consider whether these changes have voided it of political meaning (Banet-Weiser, 2012, 2018; Gill, 2016b). In Spain, the (extreme) right is continually launching attacks against feminism. At the same time, minority collectives such as LGBTQ+ or Roma are helping to spread feminist values into the mainstream, denouncing one of its main struggles: structural and intersectional violence against women, including online hate and harassment. In this context of confrontation, social media agents are keeping the debate about feminism alive and are picking up Spanish grassroots movements’ claims (Araüna, Tortajada, &amp; Willem, in press). In this article we outline the latest trends in feminist media research in Spain, examining 20+ years of postfeminism as an analytical tool, and highlighting new trends. Through recent research results, we show that in the Spanish (social) media landscape many different strands of feminism are entangled, all struggling to impose their narrative of what feminism looks like in the post-#MeToo<em> </em>era. We will examine the main fault lines along which feminism is divided into different undercurrents, some of which are fostering the progress of feminism, and some of which are undermining it: age (generation), class, race, and sexual identity.
Keywords: feminism; feminist media studies; intersectionality; postfeminism; Spain; social media
Handle: RePEc:cog:meanco:v9:y:2021:i:2:p:62-71

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Title: Breaking the Rules: Zodwa Wabantu and Postfeminism in South Africa
File-URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/3830
File-Format: text/html
DOI: 10.17645/mac.v9i2.3830
Journal: Media and Communication
Volume: 9
Year: 2021
Issue: 2
Pages: 52-30
Author-Name: Priscilla Boshoff
Author-Workplace-Name: School of Journalism and Media Studies, Rhodes University, South Africa
Abstract: Zodwa Wabantu, a South African celebrity recently made popular by the <em>Daily Sun</em>, a local tabloid newspaper, is notorious as an older working-class woman who fearlessly challenges social norms of feminine respectability and beauty. Her assertion of sexual autonomy and her forays into self-surveillance and body-modification, mediated by the <em>Daily Sun</em> and other tabloid and social media platforms, could be read as a local iteration of a global postfeminist subjectivity. However, the widespread social opprobrium she faces must be accounted for: Using Connell’s model of the gender order together with a coloniality frame, I argue that northern critiques of postfeminism omit to consider the forms of patriarchy established by colonialism in southern locales such as South Africa. The local patriarchal gender order, made visible within the tabloid reportage, provides the context within which the meaning of Zodwa Wabanu’s contemporary postfeminist identity is constructed. I examine a range of Zodwa Wabantu’s (self)representations in <em>Daily Sun</em> and other digital media in the light of this context, and conclude that a close examination of the local gender order assists in understanding the limits of postfeminism’s hegemony.
Keywords: coloniality; Daily Sun; gender; postfeminism; South Africa; tabloid
Handle: RePEc:cog:meanco:v9:y:2021:i:2:p:52-30

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Title: Feminist Stereotypes and Women’s Roles in Spanish Radio Ads
File-URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/3762
File-Format: text/html
DOI: 10.17645/mac.v9i2.3762
Journal: Media and Communication
Volume: 9
Year: 2021
Issue: 2
Pages: 39-51
Author-Name: Anna Fajula
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Advertising, Public Relations and Audiovisual Communication, Autonomous University of Barcelona, Spain
Author-Name: Mariluz Barbeito
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Advertising, Public Relations and Audiovisual Communication, Autonomous University of Barcelona, Spain
Author-Name: Estrella Barrio
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Advertising, Public Relations and Audiovisual Communication, Autonomous University of Barcelona, Spain
Author-Name: Ana Maria Enrique
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Advertising, Public Relations and Audiovisual Communication, Autonomous University of Barcelona, Spain
Author-Name: Juan José Perona
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Advertising, Public Relations and Audiovisual Communication, Autonomous University of Barcelona, Spain
Abstract: This article takes a quantitative approach to Spanish radio advertising and the stereotypes and female roles that it broadcasts in a medium that has traditionally had high female audience rates in our country. From content analysis of 679 radio ads extracted from the 3 main general Spanish radio stations and collected 10 years apart, the study attempts to show the evolution (or regression) of how radio advertising portrays women. The radio in Spain has always been a medium anchored in the real world that has also provided some degree of space to broadcast social movement. #MeToo, as a phenomenon promoting female empowerment, was no exception. Therefore, this longitudinal study aims to demonstrate whether the social movements that led to increased female activism have been reflected in a change of roles and stereotypes projected by radio advertising messages. The work presented here looks at the concept of role from a dual perspective: firstly, it focuses on the role played by female voices in radio advertising items. Secondly, it works on the concept of role by assimilating it into the female image projected in radio advertising items. The results obtained between the two samples are remarkably similar, demonstrating a clear tendency to polarise the female image and confirming that women are still being portrayed in significantly traditional roles.
Keywords: #MeToo movement; advertising; feminism; gender studies; radio; roles; Spain; stereotypes; women
Handle: RePEc:cog:meanco:v9:y:2021:i:2:p:39-51

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Title: What a Girl Wants, What a Girl Needs: Analyzing Postfeminist Themes in Girls’ Magazines
File-URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/3757
File-Format: text/html
DOI: 10.17645/mac.v9i2.3757
Journal: Media and Communication
Volume: 9
Year: 2021
Issue: 2
Pages: 27-38
Author-Name: Marieke Boschma
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Communication Science, Radboud University, The Netherlands
Author-Name: Serena Daalmans
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Communication Science, Radboud University, The Netherlands / Behavioral Science Institute, Radboud University, The Netherlands
Abstract: Girls’ magazines play an important role in the maintenance of gender perceptions and the creation of gender by young girls. Due to a recent resurgence within public discussion and mediated content of feminist, postfeminist, and antifeminist repertoires, centered on what femininity entails, young girls are growing up in an environment in which conflicting messages are communicated about their gender. To assess, which shared norms and values related to gender are articulated in girl culture and to what extent these post/anti/feminist repertoires are prevalent in the conceptualization of girlhood, it is important to analyze magazines as vehicles of this culture. The current study analyzes if and how contemporary postfeminist thought is articulated in popular girl’s magazines. To reach this goal, we conducted a thematic analysis of three popular Dutch teenage girls’ magazines (N = 27, from 2018), <em>Fashionchick</em>, <em>Cosmogirl</em>, and <em>Girlz</em>. The results revealed that the magazines incorporate feminist, antifeminist, and as a result, postfeminist discourse in their content. The themes in which these repertoires are articulated are centered around: the body, sex, male–female relationships, female empowerment, and self-reflexivity. The magazines function as a source of gender socialization for teenage girls, where among other gendered messages a large palette of postfeminist themes are part of the magazines’ articulation of what it means to be a girl in contemporary society.
Keywords: feminism; gender; girl magazines; postfeminism; The Netherlands
Handle: RePEc:cog:meanco:v9:y:2021:i:2:p:27-38

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Title: Pitching Gender in a Racist Tune: The Affective Publics of the #120decibel Campaign
File-URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/3749
File-Format: text/html
DOI: 10.17645/mac.v9i2.3749
Journal: Media and Communication
Volume: 9
Year: 2021
Issue: 2
Pages: 16-26
Author-Name: Shari Adlung
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Journalism Studies, Freie Universität Berlin, Germany
Author-Name: Margreth Lünenborg
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Journalism Studies, Freie Universität Berlin, Germany
Author-Name: Christoph Raetzsch
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Media and Journalism Studies, Aarhus University, Denmark
Abstract: This article analyses the changed structures, actors and modes of communication that characterise ‘dissonant public spheres.’ With the #120decibel campaign by the German Identitarian Movement in 2018, gender and migration were pitched in a racist tune, absorbing feminist concerns and positions into neo-nationalistic, misogynist and xenophobic propaganda. The article examines the case of #120decibel as an instance of ‘affective publics’ (Lünenborg, 2019a) where forms of feminist protest and emancipatory hashtag activism are absorbed by anti-migration campaigners. Employing the infrastructure and network logics of social media platforms, the campaign gained public exposure and sought political legitimacy through strategies of dissonance, in which a racial solidarity against the liberal state order was formed. Parallel structures of networking and echo-chamber amplification were established, where right-wing media articulate fringe positions in an attempt to protect the rights of white women to be safe in public spaces. #120decibel is analysed and discussed here as characteristic of the ambivalent role and dynamics of affective publics in societies challenged by an increasing number of actors forming an alliance on anti-migration issues based on questionable feminist positions.
Keywords: #120decibel; affective publics; dissonant public spheres; feminism; Germany; hashjacking; migration; racism; right-wing activism; populism
Handle: RePEc:cog:meanco:v9:y:2021:i:2:p:16-26

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Title: “It’s Not Just Instagram Models”: Exploring the Gendered Political Potential of Young Women’s Instagram Use
File-URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/3731
File-Format: text/html
DOI: 10.17645/mac.v9i2.3731
Journal: Media and Communication
Volume: 9
Year: 2021
Issue: 2
Pages: 5-15
Author-Name: Sofia P. Caldeira
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Communication Sciences, Ghent University, Belgium
Abstract: With over one billion monthly users worldwide (Constine, 2018) and being embedded in the everyday lives of many young people, Instagram has become a common topic of discussion both in popular media and scholarly debates. As young women are amongst the predominant active users of Instagram (WeAreSocial, 2019) and the demographic stereotypically associated with online self-representation (Burns, 2015), Instagram carries an underlying gendered political potential. This is manifested through online political practices such as hashtag activism (Highfield, 2016), as well as through Instagram’s use of user-generated content to challenge existing politics of representation, broadening the scope of who is considered photographable (Tiidenberg, 2018). This article explores how this gendered political potential is understood by young women using Instagram. This research is based on 13 in-depth interviews with a theoretical sample of female ‘ordinary’ Instagram users (i.e., not celebrities or Insta-famous), aged 18–35. Our findings illustrate how the perception of political potential is grounded in the participants’ understanding of Instagram as an aesthetically-oriented platform (Manovich, 2017). Most participants recognised the potential for engaging in visibility politics (Whittier, 2017), representing a wider diversity of femininities often absent from popular media. However, this was seen as tempered by the co-existence of idealised beauty conventions and the politics of popularity within social media (Van Dijck &amp; Poell, 2013). Furthermore, this political potential is accompanied by the possibility of receiving backlash or being dismissed as a slacktivist (Glenn, 2015). As Instagram becomes a central part of contemporary visual cultures, this article seeks to critically explore the nuanced ways in which young women’s everyday experiences of Instagram intersect with broader cultural and political questions of gender representation.
Keywords: everyday politics; gender; Instagram; social media; young women
Handle: RePEc:cog:meanco:v9:y:2021:i:2:p:5-15

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Title: Contemporary Research on Gender and Media: It’s All Political
File-URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/3997
File-Format: text/html
DOI: 10.17645/mac.v9i2.3997
Journal: Media and Communication
Volume: 9
Year: 2021
Issue: 2
Pages: 1-4
Author-Name: Sofie Van Bauwel
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Communication Sciences, Centre for Cinema and Media Studies, Ghent University, Belgium
Author-Name: Tonny Krijnen
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Media and Communication, Erasmus School of History, Culture and Communication, Erasmus University Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Abstract: 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 <em>Orange is the New Black</em>), 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.
Keywords: #MeToo; gender; gender politics; media; post-feminism; representation
Handle: RePEc:cog:meanco:v9:y:2021:i:2:p:1-4

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Title: Journalism Students and Information Consumption in the Era of Fake News
File-URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/3516
File-Format: text/html
DOI: 10.17645/mac.v9i1.3516
Journal: Media and Communication
Volume: 9
Year: 2021
Issue: 1
Pages: 338-350
Author-Name: Santiago Tejedor
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Journalism and Communication Sciences, Autonomous University of Barcelona, Spain
Author-Name: Marta Portalés-Oliva
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Journalism and Communication Sciences, Autonomous University of Barcelona, Spain
Author-Name: Ricardo Carniel-Bugs
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Journalism and Communication Sciences, Autonomous University of Barcelona, Spain
Author-Name: Laura Cervi
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Journalism and Communication Sciences, Autonomous University of Barcelona, Spain
Abstract: Technological platforms, such as social media, are disrupting traditional journalism, as a result the access to high-quality information by citizens is facing important challenges, among which, disinformation and the spread of fake news are the most relevant one. This study approaches how journalism students perceive and assess this phenomenon. The descriptive and exploratory research is based on a hybrid methodology: Two matrix surveys of students and a focus group of professors (n = 6), experts in Multimedia Journalism. The first survey (n = 252), focused on students’ perception of fake news, the second (n = 300) aims at finding out the type of content they had received during the recent confinement caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. Results show that most of the students prefer online media as a primary source of information instead of social media. Students consider that politics is the main topic of fake news, which, according to the respondents, are mainly distributed by adult users through social networks. The vast majority believe that fake news are created for political interests and a quarter of the sample considers that there is a strong ideological component behind disinformation strategies. Nonetheless, the study also reveals that students do not trust in their ability to distinguish between truthful and false information. For this reason, this research concludes, among other aspects, that the promotion of initiatives and research to promote media literacy and news literacy are decisive in the training of university students.
Keywords: fake news; information consumption; journalism; media literacy; university
Handle: RePEc:cog:meanco:v9:y:2021:i:1:p:338-350

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Title: Digital Disinformation and Preventive Actions: Perceptions of Users from Argentina, Chile, and Spain
File-URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/3521
File-Format: text/html
DOI: 10.17645/mac.v9i1.3521
Journal: Media and Communication
Volume: 9
Year: 2021
Issue: 1
Pages: 323-337
Author-Name: Jordi Rodríguez-Virgili
Author-Workplace-Name: University of Navarra, Spain
Author-Name: Javier Serrano-Puche
Author-Workplace-Name: University of Navarra, Spain
Author-Name: Carmen Beatriz Fernández
Author-Workplace-Name: University of Navarra, Spain
Abstract: This article explores audience perceptions of different types of disinformation, and the actions that users take to combat them, in three Spanish-speaking countries: Argentina, Chile, and Spain. Quantitative data from the Digital News Report (2018 and 2019), based on a survey of more than 2000 digital users from each country was used for the analysis. Results show remarkable similarities among the three countries, and how digital users identically ranked the types of problematic information that concerned them most. Survey participants were most concerned by stories where facts are spun or twisted to push a particular agenda, followed by, those that are completely made up for political or commercial reasons, and finally, they were least concerned by poor journalism (factual mistakes, dumbed-down stories, misleading headlines/clickbait). A general index of “Concern about disinformation” was constructed using several sociodemographic variables that might influence the perception. It showed that the phenomenon is higher among women, older users, those particularly interested in political news, and among left-wingers. Several measures are employed by users to avoid disinformation, such as checking a number of different sources to see whether a news story is reported in the same way, relying on the reputation of the news company, and/or deciding not to share a news story due to doubts regarding its accuracy. This article concludes that the perceived relevance of different types of problematic information, and preventive actions, are not homogeneous among different population segments.
Keywords: Argentina; audience; Chile; digital journalism; digital media; disinformation; fake-news; information vulnerability; misinformation; Spain
Handle: RePEc:cog:meanco:v9:y:2021:i:1:p:323-337

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Title: Post-Truth as a Mutation of Epistemology in Journalism
File-URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/3529
File-Format: text/html
DOI: 10.17645/mac.v9i1.3529
Journal: Media and Communication
Volume: 9
Year: 2021
Issue: 1
Pages: 313-322
Author-Name: Pablo Capilla
Author-Workplace-Name: Blanquerna Institute of Research in Communication and International Relations, Ramon Llull University, Spain
Abstract: In recent years, many authors have observed that something is happening to the truth, pointing out that, particularly in politics and social communication, there are signs that the idea of truth is losing consideration in media discourse. This is no minor issue: Truth, understood as the criterion for the justification of knowledge, is the essential foundation of enlightened rationality. The aim of this article, based on prior research on social communication (especially as regards journalism), is to elucidate an explanation of this phenomenon, known as ‘post-truth.’ Because it is an epistemological question, the three main variables of the problem (reality, subject and truth) have been analysed by taking into account the manner in which digital social communication is transforming our perception of reality. By way of a conclusion, we propose that (a) the ontological complexity of reality as explained by the news media has accentuated the loss of confidence in journalism as a truth-teller, and that (b) truth is being replaced by sincerity, as an epistemological value, in people’s understanding of the news. The result, using Foucault’s concept of Regime of Truth, suggests a deep change in the global framework of political, economic, social and cultural relations, of which post-truth is a symptom.
Keywords: epistemology; fake news; journalism; ontology; post-truth; reality; social media; truth
Handle: RePEc:cog:meanco:v9:y:2021:i:1:p:313-322

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Title: Deepfakes on Twitter: Which Actors Control Their Spread?
File-URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/3433
File-Format: text/html
DOI: 10.17645/mac.v9i1.3433
Journal: Media and Communication
Volume: 9
Year: 2021
Issue: 1
Pages: 301-312
Author-Name: Jesús Pérez Dasilva
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Journalism II, University of the Basque Country, Spain
Author-Name: Koldobika Meso Ayerdi
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Journalism II, University of the Basque Country, Spain
Author-Name: Terese Mendiguren Galdospin
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Journalism II, University of the Basque Country, Spain
Abstract: 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.
Keywords: cybersecurity; deepfake; fake news; NodeXL; social media; Social Network Analysis; Twitter
Handle: RePEc:cog:meanco:v9:y:2021:i:1:p:301-312

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Title: Fighting Deepfakes: Media and Internet Giants’ Converging and Diverging Strategies Against Hi-Tech Misinformation
File-URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/3494
File-Format: text/html
DOI: 10.17645/mac.v9i1.3494
Journal: Media and Communication
Volume: 9
Year: 2021
Issue: 1
Pages: 291-300
Author-Name: Ángel Vizoso
Author-Workplace-Name: Faculty of Communication Sciences, University of Santiago de Compostela, Spain
Author-Name: Martín Vaz-Álvarez
Author-Workplace-Name: Faculty of Communication Sciences, University of Santiago de Compostela, Spain
Author-Name: Xosé López-García
Author-Workplace-Name: Faculty of Communication Sciences, University of Santiago de Compostela, Spain
Abstract: Deepfakes, one of the most novel forms of misinformation, have become a real challenge in the communicative environment due to their spread through online news and social media spaces. Although fake news have existed for centuries, its circulation is now more harmful than ever before, thanks to the ease of its production and dissemination. At this juncture, technological development has led to the emergence of deepfakes, doctored videos, audios or photos that use artificial intelligence. Since its inception in 2017, the tools and algorithms that enable the modification of faces and sounds in audiovisual content have evolved to the point where there are mobile apps and web services that allow average users its manipulation. This research tries to show how three renowned media outlets—<em>The Wall Street Journal</em>,<em> The Washington Post</em>,<em> </em>and<em> Reuters</em>—and three of the biggest Internet-based companies—Google, Facebook, and Twitter—are dealing with the spread of this new form of fake news. Results show that identification of deepfakes is a common practice for both types of organizations. However, while the media is focused on training journalists for its detection, online platforms tended to fund research projects whose objective is to develop or improve media forensics tools.
Keywords: deepfake; Facebook; fact-checking; fake news; information verification; Google; misinformation; social media; Twitter
Handle: RePEc:cog:meanco:v9:y:2021:i:1:p:291-300

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Title: Political Memes and Fake News Discourses on Instagram
File-URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/3533
File-Format: text/html
DOI: 10.17645/mac.v9i1.3533
Journal: Media and Communication
Volume: 9
Year: 2021
Issue: 1
Pages: 276-290
Author-Name: Ahmed Al-Rawi
Author-Workplace-Name: School of Communication, Simon Fraser University, Canada
Abstract: Political memes have been previously studied in different contexts, but this study fills a gap in literature by employing a mixed method to provide insight into the discourses of fake news on Instagram. The author collected more than 550,000 Instagram posts sent by over 198,000 unique users from 24 February 2012 to 21 December 2018, using the hashtag #fakenews as a search term. The study uses topic modelling to identify the most recurrent topics that are dominant on the platform, while the most active users are identified to understand the nature of the online communities that discuss fake news. In addition, the study offers an analysis of visual metadata that accompanies Instagram images. The findings indicate that Instagram has become a weaponized toxic platform, and the largest community of active users are supporters of the US President Donald Trump and the Republican Party, mostly trolling liberal mainstream media especially CNN, while often aligning themselves with the far-right. On the other hand, a much smaller online community attempts to troll Trump and the Republicans. Theoretically, the study relies on political memes literature and argues that Instagram has become weaponized through an ongoing ‘Meme War,’ for many members in the two main online communities troll and attack each other to exert power on the platform.
Keywords: fake news; Instagram; polarization; political memes; social media
Handle: RePEc:cog:meanco:v9:y:2021:i:1:p:276-290

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Title: Debunking Political Disinformation through Journalists’ Perceptions: An Analysis of Colombia’s Fact-Checking News Practices
File-URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/3374
File-Format: text/html
DOI: 10.17645/mac.v9i1.3374
Journal: Media and Communication
Volume: 9
Year: 2021
Issue: 1
Pages: 264-275
Author-Name: Carlos Rodríguez-Pérez
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Journalism, University of Ibagué, Colombia
Author-Name: Francisco J. Paniagua-Rojano
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Journalism, University of Malaga, Spain
Author-Name: Raúl Magallón-Rosa
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Communication, Carlos III University of Madrid, Spain
Abstract: Fact-checking alliances emerged worldwide to debunk political disinformation in electoral contexts because of social concerns related to information authenticity. This study, thus, included the Latin American context in fact-checking journalism studies as a journalistic practice to fight political disinformation. Through analyzing RedCheq, the first fact-checking journalism alliance in an electoral regional context led by Colombiacheck, 11 in-depth interviews were conducted to identify the perceptions of regional fact-checkers regarding the usefulness of this journalistic practice, its achievements, and the key aspects for incorporating fact-checking into the regional media ecosystem. The study results revealed that RedCheq achieved the goal of fighting disinformation, and that fact-checking developed as transformational leverage for the regional media. Regional journalists perceived fact-checking as an element that restores credibility and social trust in regional media as the epistemology of this journalistic practice neglects the power pressure and dissemination of official narratives. Finally, this study highlighted how fact-checking journalism contributes to the democratic quality and civic empowerment in silenced and polarized environments. In addition, it discussed the need to expand fact-checking journalism’s coverage to new geographical areas and improve journalists’ professional competencies and training, thereby enabling them to function as using verification tools based on regional journalists’ requirements.
Keywords: Colombia; disinformation; elections; fact-checking; journalism; political communication; political journalism; verification
Handle: RePEc:cog:meanco:v9:y:2021:i:1:p:264-275

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Title: Fact-Checking Interventions as Counteroffensives to Disinformation Growth: Standards, Values, and Practices in Latin America and Spain
File-URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/3443
File-Format: text/html
DOI: 10.17645/mac.v9i1.3443
Journal: Media and Communication
Volume: 9
Year: 2021
Issue: 1
Pages: 251-263
Author-Name: Victoria Moreno-Gil
Author-Workplace-Name: Nebrija University, Spain
Author-Name: Xavier Ramon
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Communication, Pompeu Fabra University, Spain
Author-Name: Ruth Rodríguez-Martínez
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Communication, Pompeu Fabra University, Spain
Abstract: As democracy-building tools, fact-checking platforms serve as critical interventions in the fight against disinformation and polarization in the public sphere. The Duke Reporters’ Lab notes that there are 290 active fact-checking sites in 83 countries, including a wide range of initiatives in Latin America and Spain. These regions share major challenges such as limited journalistic autonomy, difficulties of accessing public data, politicization of the media, and the growing impact of disinformation. This research expands upon the findings presented in previous literature to gain further insight into the standards, values, and underlying practices embedded in Spanish and Latin American projects while identifying the specific challenges that these organizations face. In-depth interviews were conducted with decision-makers of the following independent platforms: <em>Chequeado</em> (Argentina), <em>UYCheck</em> (Uruguay), <em>Maldita.es</em> and <em>Newtral</em> (Spain), <em>Fact Checking</em> (Chile), <em>Agência Lupa</em> (Brazil), <em>Ecuador Chequea</em> (Ecuador), and <em>ColombiaCheck</em> (Colombia). This qualitative approach offers nuanced data on the volume and frequency of checks, procedures, dissemination tactics, and the perceived role of the public. Despite relying on small teams, the examined outlets’ capacity to verify facts is noteworthy. Inspired by best practices in the US and Europe and the model established by <em>Chequeado</em>, all the sites considered employ robust methodologies while leveraging the power of digital tools and audience participation. Interviewees identified three core challenges in fact-checking practice: difficulties in accessing public data, limited resources, and the need to reach wider audiences. Starting from these results, the article discusses the ways in which fact-checking operations could be strengthened.
Keywords: disinformation; fact-checking; journalism; Latin America; Spain
Handle: RePEc:cog:meanco:v9:y:2021:i:1:p:251-263

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Title: Cross-Media Alliances to Stop Disinformation: A Real Solution?
File-URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/3535
File-Format: text/html
DOI: 10.17645/mac.v9i1.3535
Journal: Media and Communication
Volume: 9
Year: 2021
Issue: 1
Pages: 239-250
Author-Name: Bella Palomo
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Journalism, University of Malaga, Spain
Author-Name: Jon Sedano
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Journalism, University of Malaga, Spain
Abstract: Social networks have surpassed their intermediary role and become gatekeepers of online content and traffic. This transformation has favored the spread of information disorders. The situation is especially alarming in Spain, where 57% of Spaniards have at some moment believed false news. Since 2016, First Draft has promoted several collaborative verification projects that brought together newsrooms to fact-check false, misleading and confusing claims circulating online during presidential elections in several countries. The main objective of this article is to study the collaboration forged between newsrooms in Spain in order to debunk disinformation contents in 2019 under the name of Comprobado (Verified) and the impact of this initiative. Applying a methodological approach based on non-participant observation, interviews, content analysis of reports, scientific articles, books and media archives, we examine the internal uses of this platform, how journalists verified public discourse, the strategies and internal agreements implemented, and the degree of participation of the 16 media involved. Results show that only half of the initiatives begun were transformed into published reports, and the media impact achieved was limited. Finally, we note that the principal reasons for the frustration of the project were its improvised implementation, due to the date of the election being brought forward, and the scant culture of collaboration in the sector. In Spain at least, cross-media alliances are still an exception.
Keywords: alliance; collaboration; collaborative journalism; cross-media; disinformation; fact-checking; newsroom
Handle: RePEc:cog:meanco:v9:y:2021:i:1:p:239-250

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Title: Gender Differences in Tackling Fake News: Different Degrees of Concern, but Same Problems
File-URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/3523
File-Format: text/html
DOI: 10.17645/mac.v9i1.3523
Journal: Media and Communication
Volume: 9
Year: 2021
Issue: 1
Pages: 229-238
Author-Name: Ester Almenar
Author-Workplace-Name: Blanquerna School of Communication and International Relations, Ramon Llull University, Spain
Author-Name: Sue Aran-Ramspott
Author-Workplace-Name: Blanquerna School of Communication and International Relations, Ramon Llull University, Spain
Author-Name: Jaume Suau
Author-Workplace-Name: Blanquerna School of Communication and International Relations, Ramon Llull University, Spain
Author-Name: Pere Masip
Author-Workplace-Name: Blanquerna School of Communication and International Relations, Ramon Llull University, Spain
Abstract: In the current media ecosystem, in which the traditional media coexists with new players who are able to produce information and spread it widely, there is growing concern about the increasing prominence of fake news. Despite some significant efforts to determine the effects of misinformation, the results are so far inconclusive. Previous research has sought to analyze how the public perceive the effects of disinformation. This article is set in this context, and its main objective is to investigate users’ perception of fake news, as well as identify the criteria on which their recognition strategies are based. The research pays particular attention to determining whether there are gender differences in the concern about the effects of fake news, the degree of difficulty in detecting fake news and the most common topics it covers. The results are based on the analysis of a representative survey of the Spanish population (N = 1,001) where participants were asked about their relationship with fake news and their competence in determining the veracity of the information, and their ability to identify false content were assessed. The findings show that men and women’s perception of difficulty in identifying fake news is similar, while women are more concerned than men about the pernicious effects of misinformation on society. Gender differences are also found in the topics of the false information received. A greater proportion of men receive false news on political issues, while women tend to more frequently receive fake news about celebrities.
Keywords: disinformation; fake news; gender; misinformation; perception; Spain
Handle: RePEc:cog:meanco:v9:y:2021:i:1:p:229-238

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Title: Disinformation in Facebook Ads in the 2019 Spanish General Election Campaigns
File-URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/3335
File-Format: text/html
DOI: 10.17645/mac.v9i1.3335
Journal: Media and Communication
Volume: 9
Year: 2021
Issue: 1
Pages: 217-228
Author-Name: Lorena Cano-Orón
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Language Theory and Communication Sciences, University of Valencia, Spain
Author-Name: Dafne Calvo
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Early Modern History, Modern History and History of America, Journalism and Audiovisual Communication and Advertising, University of Valladolid, Spain
Author-Name: Guillermo López García
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Language Theory and Communication Sciences, University of Valencia, Spain
Author-Name: Tomás Baviera
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Economics and Social Sciences, Universitat Politècnica de València, Spain
Abstract: As fake news elicits an emotional response from users, whose attention is then monetised, political advertising has a significant influence on its production and dissemination. Facebook ads, therefore, have an essential role in contemporary political communication, not only because of their extensive use in international political campaigns, but also because they address intriguing questions about the regulation of disinformation on social networking sites. This research employs a corpus of 14,684 Facebook ads published by the major national political parties during their campaigns leading up to the two Spanish general elections held in 2019. A manual content analysis was performed on all the visually identical ads so as to identify those containing disinformation and those denouncing it. The topics addressed in these ads were then examined. The results show that the political parties’ Facebook ad strategies were akin to those of conventional advertising. Disinformation messages were infrequent and mainly posted by Ciudadanos and VOX. Nonetheless, it is striking that the main topic addressed in the ads was the unity of Spain—precisely the issue of Catalonia’s independence. In light of this, it can be deduced that ‘traditional’ parties are taking longer to renounce classical forms of campaigning than their ‘new’ counterparts, thus demonstrating that the actors implementing disinformation strategies are not only restricted to the extreme right of the ideological spectrum.
Keywords: campaigns; disinformation; elections; Facebook; fake news; political communication; political parties; Spain
Handle: RePEc:cog:meanco:v9:y:2021:i:1:p:217-228

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Title: Beyond the Darkness: Research on Participation in Online Media and Discourse
File-URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/3815
File-Format: text/html
DOI: 10.17645/mac.v9i1.3815
Journal: Media and Communication
Volume: 9
Year: 2021
Issue: 1
Pages: 215-216
Author-Name: Claes de Vreese
Author-Workplace-Name: Amsterdam School of Communication Research, The Netherlands
Abstract: This commentary reflects on the notion of ‘dark participation’ which is central in this thematic issue. It asks whether there are patches of light and whether our research is becoming too obsessed with the darkness?
Keywords: democratic backsliding; misinformation; participation; polarization; trust
Handle: RePEc:cog:meanco:v9:y:2021:i:1:p:215-216

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Title: Advancing Research into Dark Participation
File-URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/1770
File-Format: text/html
DOI: 10.17645/mac.v9i1.1770
Journal: Media and Communication
Volume: 9
Year: 2021
Issue: 1
Pages: 209-214
Author-Name: Oscar Westlund
Author-Workplace-Name: Oslo Metropolitan University, Norway / Volda University College, Norway / University of Gothenburg, Sweden
Abstract: Dark participation is and should be an essential concept for scholars, students and beyond, considering how widespread disinformation, online harassment, hate speech, media manipulation etc. has become in contemporary society. This commentary engages with the contributions to this timely thematic issue, which advance scholarship into dark participation associated with news and misinformation as well as hate in a worthwhile way. The commentary closes with a call for further research into four main areas: 1) the motivations that drive dark participation behaviors by individuals and coordinated groups; 2) how these individuals and groups exploit platforms and technologies for diverse forms of dark participation; 3) how news publishers, journalists, fact-checkers, platform companies and authorities are dealing with dark participation; and 4) how the public can advance their media literacy for digital media in order to better deal with dark participation. Authorities must advance and broaden their approaches focused on schools and libraries, and may also use emerging technologies in doing so.
Keywords: dark participation; disinformation; journalism; misinformation; platforms; platform exploitation
Handle: RePEc:cog:meanco:v9:y:2021:i:1:p:209-214

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Title: Roots of Incivility: How Personality, Media Use, and Online Experiences Shape Uncivil Participation
File-URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/3360
File-Format: text/html
DOI: 10.17645/mac.v9i1.3360
Journal: Media and Communication
Volume: 9
Year: 2021
Issue: 1
Pages: 195-208
Author-Name: Lena Frischlich
Author-Workplace-Name: Institute for Communication, University of Münster, Germany / Department of Media and Communication, University of Munich, Germany
Author-Name: Tim Schatto-Eckrodt
Author-Workplace-Name: Institute for Communication, University of Münster, Germany
Author-Name: Svenja Boberg
Author-Workplace-Name: Institute for Communication, University of Münster, Germany
Author-Name: Florian Wintterlin
Author-Workplace-Name: Institute for Communication, University of Münster, Germany
Abstract: Online media offer unprecedented access to digital public spheres, largely enhancing users’ opportunities for participation and providing new means for strengthening democratic discourse. At the same time, the last decades have demonstrated that online discourses are often characterised by so-called ‘dark participation’ the spreading of lies and incivility. Using ‘problematic behaviour theory’ as framework and focusing on incivility as a specific form of dark participation, this article investigates the role of users’ personal characteristics, media use, and online experiences in relation to offensive and hateful online behaviour. Using a random-quota survey of the German population, we explored how dark personality traits, political attitudes and emotions, the frequency and spaces of online-media use, and users’ experiences with both civil and uncivil online discourses predicted participants own uncivil behaviour, such as posting, sharing, or liking uncivil content. We found that 46% of the participants who had witnessed incivility in the last three months also engaged in uncivil participation. A hierarchical logistic regression analysis showed that incivility was associated with manipulative personality traits as measured by the dark triad, right-wing populist voting intentions, and frequent social-media use. Experiences with both civil comments and hate speech predicted higher levels of uncivil participation. The strongest predictor was participants’ personal experiences with online victimisation. Overall, the results confirmed that dark participation in the sense of uncivil engagement results from the interplay of personality traits, an online environment that allows for deviant engagement, and, most importantly, participants’ experiences in said environment.
Keywords: dark participation; dark triad; hate speech; incivility; offensive speech; personality; political anger; problematic behaviour theory; social media; victimisation
Handle: RePEc:cog:meanco:v9:y:2021:i:1:p:195-208

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Title: Constructive Aggression? Multiple Roles of Aggressive Content in Political Discourse on Russian YouTube
File-URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/3469
File-Format: text/html
DOI: 10.17645/mac.v9i1.3469
Journal: Media and Communication
Volume: 9
Year: 2021
Issue: 1
Pages: 181-194
Author-Name: Svetlana S. Bodrunova
Author-Workplace-Name: School of Journalism and Mass Communications, St. Petersburg State University, Russia
Author-Name: Anna Litvinenko
Author-Workplace-Name: Institute for Media and Communication Studies, Freie Universität Berlin, Germany
Author-Name: Ivan Blekanov
Author-Workplace-Name: School of Mathematics and computer Science, Yan’an University, China / Faculty of Applied Mathematics and Control Processes, St. Petersburg State University, Russia
Author-Name: Dmitry Nepiyushchikh
Author-Workplace-Name: Faculty of Applied Mathematics and Control Processes, St. Petersburg State University, Russia
Abstract: Today, aggressive verbal behavior is generally perceived as a threat to integrity and democratic quality of public discussions, including those online. However, we argue that, in more restrictive political regimes, communicative aggression may play constructive roles in both discussion dynamics and empowerment of political groups. This might be especially true for restrictive political and legal environments like Russia, where obscene speech is prohibited by law in registered media and the political environment does not give much space for voicing discontent. Taking Russian YouTube as an example, we explore the roles of two under-researched types of communicative aggression—obscene speech and politically motivated hate speech—within the publics of video commenters. For that, we use the case of the Moscow protests of 2019 against non-admission of independent and oppositional candidates to run for the Moscow city parliament. The sample of over 77,000 comments for 13 videos of more than 100,000 views has undergone pre-processing and vocabulary-based detection of aggression. To assess the impact of hate speech upon the dynamics of the discussions, we have used Granger tests and assessment of discussion histograms; we have also assessed the selected groups of posts in an exploratory manner. Our findings demonstrate that communicative aggression helps to express immediate support and solidarity. It also contextualizes the criticism towards both the authorities and regime challengers, as well as demarcates the counter-public.
Keywords: communicative aggression; hate speech; networked discussions; obscene speech; political protest; Russia; verbal aggression; YouTube
Handle: RePEc:cog:meanco:v9:y:2021:i:1:p:181-194

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Title: From Insult to Hate Speech: Mapping Offensive Language in German User Comments on Immigration
File-URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/3399
File-Format: text/html
DOI: 10.17645/mac.v9i1.3399
Journal: Media and Communication
Volume: 9
Year: 2021
Issue: 1
Pages: 171-180
Author-Name: Sünje Paasch-Colberg
Author-Workplace-Name: Institute for Media and Communication Studies, Freie Universität Berlin, Germany
Author-Name: Christian Strippel
Author-Workplace-Name: Institute for Media and Communication Studies, Freie Universität Berlin, Germany
Author-Name: Joachim Trebbe
Author-Workplace-Name: Institute for Media and Communication Studies, Freie Universität Berlin, Germany
Author-Name: Martin Emmer
Author-Workplace-Name: Institute for Media and Communication Studies, Freie Universität Berlin, Germany
Abstract: In recent debates on offensive language in participatory online spaces, the term ‘hate speech’ has become especially prominent. Originating from a legal context, the term usually refers to violent threats or expressions of prejudice against particular groups on the basis of race, religion, or sexual orientation. However, due to its explicit reference to the emotion of hate, it is also used more colloquially as a general label for any kind of negative expression. This ambiguity leads to misunderstandings in discussions about hate speech and challenges its identification. To meet this challenge, this article provides a modularized framework to differentiate various forms of hate speech and offensive language. On the basis of this framework, we present a text annotation study of 5,031 user comments on the topic of immigration and refuge posted in March 2019 on three German news sites, four Facebook pages, 13 YouTube channels, and one right-wing blog. An in-depth analysis of these comments identifies various types of hate speech and offensive language targeting immigrants and refugees. By exploring typical combinations of labeled attributes, we empirically map the variety of offensive language in the subject area ranging from insults to calls for hate crimes, going beyond the common ‘hate/no-hate’ dichotomy found in similar studies. The results are discussed with a focus on the grey area between hate speech and offensive language.
Keywords: comment sections; content analysis; Facebook; hate speech; refugees; text annotation; user comments; YouTube
Handle: RePEc:cog:meanco:v9:y:2021:i:1:p:171-180

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Title: Investigating Visual Content Shared over Twitter during the 2019 EU Parliamentary Election Campaign
File-URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/3421
File-Format: text/html
DOI: 10.17645/mac.v9i1.3421
Journal: Media and Communication
Volume: 9
Year: 2021
Issue: 1
Pages: 158-170
Author-Name: Nahema Marchal
Author-Workplace-Name: Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford, UK
Author-Name: Lisa-Maria Neudert
Author-Workplace-Name: Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford, UK
Author-Name: Bence Kollanyi
Author-Workplace-Name: Doctoral School of Sociology, Corvinus University of Budapest, Hungary
Author-Name: Philip N. Howard
Author-Workplace-Name: Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford, UK
Abstract: Political communication increasingly takes on visual forms. Yet, despite their ubiquity in everyday communication and digital campaigning, the use of these visuals remains critically understudied. In this article, we investigate the formats and modes of visual content deployed by Twitter users over a two-week period leading up to the 2019 EU Parliamentary elections and across two publics: those discussing the election at large and those discussing the more contentious issue of EU membership. Conducting a multilingual, cross-comparative content and thematic analysis of a sample of 1,097 images, we find that<em>: </em>(1) Visuals originating from traditional political actors prevailed among both Twitter discourses; (2) users shared substantial amounts of anti-EU, populist and, to a lesser extent, extremist images, though this content remained largely disjointed from the mainstream public debate; and (3) political humor emerged as a vector for anti-establishment and Eurosceptic themes, especially in discussions critical of the European project. We discuss the implications of our findings for the study of visual political communication and social media manipulation.
Keywords: elections; European politics; populism; social media; visual communication
Handle: RePEc:cog:meanco:v9:y:2021:i:1:p:158-170

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Title: Digital Civic Participation and Misinformation during the 2020 Taiwanese Presidential Election
File-URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/3405
File-Format: text/html
DOI: 10.17645/mac.v9i1.3405
Journal: Media and Communication
Volume: 9
Year: 2021
Issue: 1
Pages: 144-157
Author-Name: Ho-Chun Herbert Chang
Author-Workplace-Name: Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, University of Southern California, USA / Information Sciences Institute, University of Southern California, USA
Author-Name: Samar Haider
Author-Workplace-Name: Information Sciences Institute, University of Southern California, USA
Author-Name: Emilio Ferrara
Author-Workplace-Name: Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, University of Southern California, USA / Information Sciences Institute, University of Southern California, USA
Abstract: From fact-checking chatbots to community-maintained misinformation databases, Taiwan has emerged as a critical case-study for citizen participation in politics online. Due to Taiwan’s geopolitical history with China, the recent 2020 Taiwanese Presidential Election brought fierce levels of online engagement led by citizens from both sides of the strait. In this article, we study misinformation and digital participation on three platforms, namely Line, Twitter, and Taiwan’s Professional Technology Temple (PTT, Taiwan’s equivalent of Reddit). Each of these platforms presents a different facet of the elections. Results reveal that the greatest level of disagreement occurs in discussion about incumbent president Tsai. Chinese users demonstrate emergent coordination and selective discussion around topics like China, Hong Kong, and President Tsai, whereas topics like Covid-19 are avoided. We discover an imbalance of the political presence of Tsai on Twitter, which suggests partisan practices in disinformation regulation. The cases of Taiwan and China point toward a growing trend where regular citizens, enabled by new media, can both exacerbate and hinder the flow of misinformation. The study highlights an overlooked aspect of misinformation studies, beyond the veracity of information itself, that is the clash of ideologies, practices, and cultural history that matter to democratic ideals.
Keywords: 2020 Taiwanese Presidential Election; digital civic participation; foreign interference; misinformation; Taiwan
Handle: RePEc:cog:meanco:v9:y:2021:i:1:p:144-157

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Title: From Dark to Light: The Many Shades of Sharing Misinformation Online
File-URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/3409
File-Format: text/html
DOI: 10.17645/mac.v9i1.3409
Journal: Media and Communication
Volume: 9
Year: 2021
Issue: 1
Pages: 134-143
Author-Name: Miriam J. Metzger
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Communication, University of California, USA
Author-Name: Andrew J. Flanagin
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Communication, University of California, USA
Author-Name: Paul Mena
Author-Workplace-Name: Writing Program, University of California, USA
Author-Name: Shan Jiang
Author-Workplace-Name: Khoury College of Computer Sciences, Northeastern University, USA
Author-Name: Christo Wilson
Author-Workplace-Name: Khoury College of Computer Sciences, Northeastern University, USA
Abstract: Research typically presumes that people believe misinformation and propagate it through their social networks. Yet, a wide range of motivations for sharing misinformation might impact its spread, as well as people’s belief of it. By examining research on motivations for sharing news information generally, and misinformation specifically, we derive a range of motivations that broaden current understandings of the sharing of misinformation to include factors that may to some extent mitigate the presumed dangers of misinformation for society. To illustrate the utility of our viewpoint we report data from a preliminary study of people’s dis/belief reactions to misinformation shared on social media using natural language processing. Analyses of over 2,5 million comments demonstrate that misinformation on social media is often disbelieved. These insights are leveraged to propose directions for future research that incorporate a more inclusive understanding of the various motivations and strategies for sharing misinformation socially in large-scale online networks.
Keywords: credibility; fake news; misinformation; news sharing
Handle: RePEc:cog:meanco:v9:y:2021:i:1:p:134-143

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Title: You’re Definitely Wrong, Maybe: Correction Style Has Minimal Effect on Corrections of Misinformation Online
File-URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/3519
File-Format: text/html
DOI: 10.17645/mac.v9i1.3519
Journal: Media and Communication
Volume: 9
Year: 2021
Issue: 1
Pages: 120-133
Author-Name: Cameron Martel
Author-Workplace-Name: Sloan School of Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA
Author-Name: Mohsen Mosleh
Author-Workplace-Name: Sloan School of Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA / Science, Innovation, Technology, and Entrepreneurship Department, University of Exeter, UK
Author-Name: David G. Rand
Author-Workplace-Name: Sloan School of Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA / Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA
Abstract: How can online communication most effectively respond to misinformation posted on social media? Recent studies examining the content of corrective messages provide mixed results—several studies suggest that politer, hedged messages may increase engagement with corrections, while others favor direct messaging which does not shed doubt on the credibility of the corrective message. Furthermore, common debunking strategies often include keeping the message simple and clear, while others recommend including a detailed explanation of why the initial misinformation is incorrect. To shed more light on how correction style affects correction efficacy, we manipulated both correction strength (direct, hedged) and explanatory depth (simple explanation, detailed explanation) in response to participants from Lucid (<em>N</em> = 2,228) who indicated they would share a false story in a survey experiment. We found minimal evidence suggesting that correction strength or depth affects correction engagement, both in terms of likelihood of replying, and accepting or resisting corrective information. However, we do find that analytic thinking and actively open-minded thinking are associated with greater acceptance of information in response to corrective messages, regardless of correction style. Our results help elucidate the efficacy of user-generated corrections of misinformation on social media.
Keywords: cognitive reflection test; corrections; dark participation; debunking; fake news; misinformation; social media
Handle: RePEc:cog:meanco:v9:y:2021:i:1:p:120-133

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Title: What Is (Fake) News? Analyzing News Values (and More) in Fake Stories
File-URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/3331
File-Format: text/html
DOI: 10.17645/mac.v9i1.3331
Journal: Media and Communication
Volume: 9
Year: 2021
Issue: 1
Pages: 110-119
Author-Name: Edson C. Tandoc Jr.
Author-Workplace-Name: Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
Author-Name: Ryan J. Thomas
Author-Workplace-Name: Missouri School of Journalism, University of Missouri, USA
Author-Name: Lauren Bishop
Author-Workplace-Name: Missouri School of Journalism, University of Missouri, USA
Abstract: ‘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.
Keywords: content analysis; disinformation; fake news; inverted pyramid; news values; objectivity; traditional news
Handle: RePEc:cog:meanco:v9:y:2021:i:1:p:110-119

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Title: Communities of Darkness? Users and Uses of Anti-System Alternative Media between Audience and Community
File-URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/3418
File-Format: text/html
DOI: 10.17645/mac.v9i1.3418
Journal: Media and Communication
Volume: 9
Year: 2021
Issue: 1
Pages: 99-109
Author-Name: Christian Schwarzenegger
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Media, Knowledge and Communication, University of Augsburg, Germany
Abstract: The hopes regarding the positive impact of the Internet and digital participation in civic society have faded in recent years. The digital realm is now increasingly discussed regarding its role in putting democracy in jeopardy and polarizing public debate by propagating extremist views and falsehoods. Likewise, the perception of so-called alternative media as beneficial carriers of counter-public spheres and as important complements to mainstream positions in social debate has flipped. Alternative media are now often associated with the “Wicked web” of disinformation, political populism, or even radicalization. Following Quandt’s (2018) notion of ‘dark participation’ and Phillips and Milner’s (2017) description of the Internet as ambivalent, this article asks, whether the same holds true for the users of alternative media: a segment of the audience traditionally discussed in terms of community, engagement, participation, and strong ideological identification with progressive political causes. Do users of ‘dark’ alternative media bond with their media in similar ways to constitute communities of darkness? Based on interviews with 35 users of alternative media from a left-leaning, right-wing, Russian-tied and/or conspiracy spectrum users, uses of alternative media are pictured as grey rather than black or white. The findings illuminate the ambivalences within alternative media users as audiences and communities. Ambivalences are found regarding the use of alternative sources as audience or community members, regarding a shared attitude of criticality and anti-systemness, which connects trans-medially and trans-ideologically, as well as the experienced comfort of community, which can become a main motivation for use.
Keywords: alternative media; anti-system; audience; community; dark participation; populism
Handle: RePEc:cog:meanco:v9:y:2021:i:1:p:99-109

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Title: Uninvited Dinner Guests: A Theoretical Perspective on the Antagonists of Journalism Based on Serres’ Parasite
File-URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/3419
File-Format: text/html
DOI: 10.17645/mac.v9i1.3419
Journal: Media and Communication
Volume: 9
Year: 2021
Issue: 1
Pages: 88-98
Author-Name: Gerret von Nordheim
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of Hamburg, Germany
Author-Name: Katharina Kleinen-von Königslöw
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of Hamburg, Germany
Abstract: In the digital age, the crisis of journalism has been exacerbated by antagonistic actors infiltrating the journalistic system without adhering to its norms or logic. Journalism itself has been ill-prepared to respond to this challenge, but journalism theory and research have also had trouble in grasping these phenomena. It is thus the aim of this article to propose a theoretical perspective on a specific set of antagonists characterized by its paradoxical nature. It is ‘the excluded third, included’ as described by Serres, the parasite that is both part of the system and its antagonist. From the perspective of systems theory, the parasite is a subsystem that threatens the integrity of the primary system. Thus, the parasite is defined by the relations that describe its position, its behaviour towards the host system. Due to these peculiarities—this contradiction, this vagueness—it evades a classical bivalent logic. This may be one reason why the paradoxical nature of the antagonist from within, the ‘uninvited dinner guest,’ has not been described as such until now. The parasitic practices follow the logic of the hacker: He is the digital manifestation of Serres’ parasite. Accordingly, parasitic strategies can be described as news hacks whose attack vectors target a system’s weak points with the help of specific strategies. In doing so, they not only change the system output but also compromise its values and exploit its resources.
Keywords: antagonists; attack vector; hacking; news hacks; parasite; Serres; systems theory
Handle: RePEc:cog:meanco:v9:y:2021:i:1:p:88-98

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Title: Can We Hide in Shadows When the Times are Dark?
File-URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/4020
File-Format: text/html
DOI: 10.17645/mac.v9i1.4020
Journal: Media and Communication
Volume: 9
Year: 2021
Issue: 1
Pages: 84-87
Author-Name: Thorsten Quandt
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Communication, University of Münster, Germany
Abstract: The editorial discusses the relevance of analyzing some problematic aspects of online participation in consideration of events that happened during the preparation of this thematic issue. It critically challenges the eponymous ‘dark participation’ concept and its reception in the field, and calls for a deeper exploration of epistemological questions — questions that may be uneasy and difficult to answer, as they also refer to the issue of balance and scientific positioning in the face of threats to public communication and democratic ideals.
Keywords: dark participation; disinformation; duality; epistemology; participatory journalism; public communication; online communication
Handle: RePEc:cog:meanco:v9:y:2021:i:1:p:84-87

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Title: Against Game Studies
File-URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/3315
File-Format: text/html
DOI: 10.17645/mac.v9i1.3315
Journal: Media and Communication
Volume: 9
Year: 2021
Issue: 1
Pages: 73-83
Author-Name: Alex Gekker
Author-Workplace-Name: Media Studies, University of Amsterdam, The
Netherlands
Abstract: The article explores the limitations of the current scholarly game studies (GS) field. Its central presuppositions are (1) that there are certain attributes broadly understood as “GS” by those writing in or adjacent to the field; (2) that those attributes are historically rooted in an attempt to disassociate videogames from other types of electronic (and later—digital) media; and that (3) the preconditions that have led to this split are currently moot. In the first section of this article, I elaborate on these presuppositions through reading GS as a historically rooted field, centred around the videogame artefact. Following, by examining the notion of being ‘against’ something in academic work, I move to my central claim for the article: that maintaining this conception of GS is counterproductive to the state of contemporary videogames scholarship and that adopting a post-dualistic and post-humanities stance will greatly contribute to the broadening of the field. I break down this claim into three separate threads. Ontologically, I show that videogames are much closer to non-videogames than they used to be. Methodologically, I point out how re-integrating methodologies from outside the field is crucial to address the complex phenomena evolved in and around gaming. Politically, I highlight the importance of games in contemporary digital culture and show how boundary-work and gatekeeping might harm the attempt to make game scholarship engage with larger political issues. The article concludes with suggestions for a more inclusive and intermingled vision for the field, focusing on the notion of play rather than games.
Keywords: game studies; methodology; play; post-humanities
Handle: RePEc:cog:meanco:v9:y:2021:i:1:p:73-83

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Title: Crooked Views and Relaxed Rules: How Teenage Boys Experience Parents’ Handling of Digital Gaming
File-URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/3193
File-Format: text/html
DOI: 10.17645/mac.v9i1.3193
Journal: Media and Communication
Volume: 9
Year: 2021
Issue: 1
Pages: 62-72
Author-Name: Mikko Meriläinen
Author-Workplace-Name: Game Research Lab, Tampere University, Finland
Abstract: Digital gaming is a major part of the current media landscape. Parents employ a variety of practices, such as limiting gaming time and discussing games, when addressing their childrens’ gaming. Yet, there is still a notable gaming-related generational gap between adolescents and their parents. In this qualitative study, gaming-related parenting practices and parents’ and teenagers’ views are examined through a thematic analysis of reports from Finnish, 16–19-year-old, active game players. The results suggest a core tension between elements of protection and understanding. Perceived parental attitudes towards gaming ranged from excessively negative to indifferent to very positive. These attitudes were not static, but instead changed according to life situations and parents’ familiarity with gaming. Young game players’ perceptions and views were also not uniform. Respondents indicated the need for both parental understanding of games and gaming, and parents’ responsibilities in limiting gaming, particularly in the case of younger children. Implications for parenting and future research are discussed.
Keywords: digital gaming; gaming literacy; media education; parental mediation; parenting
Handle: RePEc:cog:meanco:v9:y:2021:i:1:p:62-72

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Title: Assassins, Gods, and Androids: How Narratives and Game Mechanics Shape Eudaimonic Game Experiences
File-URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/3205
File-Format: text/html
DOI: 10.17645/mac.v9i1.3205
Journal: Media and Communication
Volume: 9
Year: 2021
Issue: 1
Pages: 49-61
Author-Name: Rowan Daneels
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Communication Studies, University of Antwerp, Belgium
Author-Name: Steven Malliet
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Communication Studies, University of Antwerp, Belgium / Inter-Actions Research Unit, LUCA School of Arts, Belgium
Author-Name: Lieven Geerts
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Sociology, University of Antwerp, Belgium
Author-Name: Natalie Denayer
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Communication Studies, University of Antwerp, Belgium
Author-Name: Michel Walrave
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Communication Studies, University of Antwerp, Belgium
Author-Name: Heidi Vandebosch
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Communication Studies, University of Antwerp, Belgium
Abstract: Emerging research has suggested that digital games can generate entertainment experiences beyond hedonic enjoyment towards eudaimonic experiences: Being emotionally moved, stimulated to reflect on one’s self or a sense of elevation. Studies in this area have mainly focused on individual game characteristics that elicit singular and static eudaimonic game moments. However, such a focus neglects the interplay of multiple game aspects as well as the dynamic nature of eudaimonic experiences. The current study takes a novel approach to eudaimonic game research by conducting a qualitative game analysis of three games (Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, Detroit: Become Human, and God of War) and taking systematic notes on game experiences shortly after playing. Results reveal that emotionally moving, reflective, and elevating eudaimonic experiences were elicited when gameplay notes suggested a strong involvement with the game’s narrative and characters (i.e., narrative engagement) and, in some cases, narrative-impacting choices. These key aspects, in turn, are enhanced by clean player interfaces, graphically realistic characters, close camera perspectives, tone-appropriate soundtrack scores, and both narrative-enhancing (e.g., God of War’s health mechanic) and choice-enhancing mechanics (e.g., Detroit: Become Human’s flowchart). Eudaimonic experiences were also found to evolve throughout the game, with more powerful experiences occurring near the end of the game and some narrative themes fueling the eudaimonic flow of experiences throughout the overall game narrative. This study adds to academic research studying digital games by suggesting an innovative methodological approach that provides a detailed, integrative, and dynamic perspective on eudaimonic game experiences.
Keywords: digital games; dynamic approach; eudaimonic entertainment experiences; games; mechanics; narratives; qualitative game analysis
Handle: RePEc:cog:meanco:v9:y:2021:i:1:p:49-61

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Title: The Role of Spontaneous Digital Play during Young Patients’ Cancer Treatment
File-URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/3216
File-Format: text/html
DOI: 10.17645/mac.v9i1.3216
Journal: Media and Communication
Volume: 9
Year: 2021
Issue: 1
Pages: 39-48
Author-Name: Teresa de la Hera
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Media and Communication, Erasmus University Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Author-Name: Camila Sarria Sanz
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Media and Communication, Erasmus University Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Abstract: In Europe alone, more than 120,000 children and 150,000 adolescents are diagnosed with cancer every year. Thanks to treatment innovations the survival rates of young patients’ cancer increase substantially every year, but improved prognoses are in many cases linked to longer treatments. To cope with the social, emotional, and developmental challenges associated with cancer, play and playful activities are widely recognized as fundamental for adolescents and children. This article presents the results of an exploratory study conducted to better understand the role of free digital play for young cancer patients (0–17 years). Methodology: 15 semi-structured qualitative interviews were conducted, divided into two groups. The first group consisted of four experts and the second group consisted of 11 parents of young cancer patients. Conversations with the participants revolved around children’s use of digital platforms during cancer treatment, emphasizing their motivations to play digitally, methods and patterns of use, perceived benefits, and impact on children’s social interactions, identity development, and personal narrative. The results show that digital play becomes a valuable activity for young cancer patients during three phases of the treatment: (1) inpatient care; (2) outpatient care; and (3) remission. We also identified three types of digital play patients engage with: (1) playing with digital games; (2) playfully interacting with digital technologies; and (3) the overlap between digital and non-digital play. Finally, the results also show that digital play has an impact on at least three aspects of young patients’ lives: (1) social interactions; (2) identity development; and (3) communication.
Keywords: digital play; digital games; meaningful play; qualitative interviews; pediatric cancer; serious digital play
Handle: RePEc:cog:meanco:v9:y:2021:i:1:p:39-48

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Title: Winning Over the Players: Investigating the Motivations to Play and Acceptance of Serious Games
File-URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/3308
File-Format: text/html
DOI: 10.17645/mac.v9i1.3308
Journal: Media and Communication
Volume: 9
Year: 2021
Issue: 1
Pages: 28-38
Author-Name: Ruud S. Jacobs
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Communication Science, University of Twente, The Netherlands
Abstract: Serious games are designed to educate, train, or persuade their players on specific topics and issues. While a lot of studies have sought to prove the effects of these games, the overall image and legitimization of serious games has not benefited fully from these efforts. Indicating that the issue stems from the difference between the captive audience exposed to games in effects studies and the contexts in which people come to play serious games in everyday life, the current article sketches out the research that needs to be performed before this gap can be filled. Three theoretical perspectives are offered, in turn looking at serious games as forms of (promotional) communication, personal media experiences, and technological innovations. This analysis results in insights relating to (among others), how the identity of serious games might hinder their diffusion, how expected gratifications could fail to match the intentions of these games, and what could cause someone to ‘adopt’ a serious game. Based on the insights gained by applying these lenses, potential factors are listed and linked to methodologies that could prove or disprove their importance. These methodologies involve quantitative and qualitative investigations to create a deeper picture of how potential players approach serious games. The article concludes with open questions to investigators and industry professionals generated from this process.
Keywords: acceptance; adoption; attitudes; games for change; media psychology; motivation; persuasive games; serious games
Handle: RePEc:cog:meanco:v9:y:2021:i:1:p:28-38

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Title: Merging the Analogue and the Digital: Combining Opposite Activities in a Mixed Media Game
File-URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/3203
File-Format: text/html
DOI: 10.17645/mac.v9i1.3203
Journal: Media and Communication
Volume: 9
Year: 2021
Issue: 1
Pages: 17-27
Author-Name: Ulf Wilhelmsson
Author-Workplace-Name: Division of Game Development, University of Skövde, Sweden
Author-Name: Tarja Susi
Author-Workplace-Name: Division of Game Development, University of Skövde, Sweden
Author-Name: Niklas Torstensson
Author-Workplace-Name: Division of Game Development, University of Skövde, Sweden
Abstract: While much of the games research field for the last two decades has focused on digital games, this article draws attention to the benefits of combining analogue and digital game components to cater for a serious but fun game experience. In this case, the game design provides a set of game rules for players, where the goal is to win by finding another player’s hidden treasure. But, the game also includes deceptive characters, initially unknown to the players, whose goal is to lure the players to reveal information, which will make a player lose the game. Hence, the players and the unknown characters are involved in opposite but intertwined activities. To describe the differing activities we use the activity system model found in Activity Theory. The theoretical conceptualisation, the game design and the play situation create what we term a <em>zone of experience</em> where young players can experience the consequences of sharing too much information. The game design mimics real world online interactions, but under safe off-line conditions. The zone of experience also creates the foundation for an ensuing activity that fits well within the concept of the zone of proximal development: A follow-up conversation under adult guidance of game experiences aimed at raising children’s online risk awareness.
Keywords: activity theory; mixed media; online risk awareness; serious game; zone of experience
Handle: RePEc:cog:meanco:v9:y:2021:i:1:p:17-27

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Title: The Slippery Path to Total Presence: How Omnidirectional Virtual Reality Treadmills Influence the Gaming Experience
File-URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/3170
File-Format: text/html
DOI: 10.17645/mac.v9i1.3170
Journal: Media and Communication
Volume: 9
Year: 2021
Issue: 1
Pages: 5-16
Author-Name: Lars-Ole Wehden
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Communication, University of Muenster, Germany
Author-Name: Felix Reer
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Communication, University of Muenster, Germany
Author-Name: Robin Janzik
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Communication, University of Muenster, Germany
Author-Name: Wai Yen Tang
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Communication, University of Muenster, Germany
Author-Name: Thorsten Quandt
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Communication, University of Muenster, Germany
Abstract: Researchers, game designers, and consumers place great hopes into the potential benefits of virtual reality (VR) technology on the user experience in digital games. Indeed, initial empirical research has shown that VR technology can improve the gaming experience in a number of ways compared to traditional desktop gaming, for instance by amplifying immersion and flow. However, on the downside, a mismatch between physical locomotion and the movements of the avatar in the virtual world can also lead to unpleasant feelings when using VR technology—often referred to as cybersickness. One solution to this problem may be the implementation of novel passive repositioning systems (also called omnidirectional treadmills) that are designed to allow a continuous, more natural form of locomotion in VR. In the current study, we investigate how VR technology and the use of an omnidirectional treadmill influence the gaming experience. Traditional desktop gaming, VR gaming, and omnidirectional treadmill gaming are compared in a one-factorial experimental design (<em>N</em> = 203). As expected, we found that VR gaming on the one hand leads to higher levels of flow, presence, and enjoyment, but at the same time also is accompanied by higher levels of cybersickness than traditional desktop gaming. The use of the omnidirectional treadmill did not significantly improve the gaming experience and also did not reduce cybersickness. However, this more physically demanding form of locomotion may make omnidirectional treadmills interesting for exergame designers.
Keywords: cybersickness; digital games; experimental research; gaming experience; locomotion; omnidirectional treadmill; passive repositioning systems; virtual reality
Handle: RePEc:cog:meanco:v9:y:2021:i:1:p:5-16

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Title: Looking Ahead in Games Research: Entry Points into a Pragmatic Field of Inquiry
File-URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/3685
File-Format: text/html
DOI: 10.17645/mac.v9i1.3685
Journal: Media and Communication
Volume: 9
Year: 2021
Issue: 1
Pages: 1-4
Author-Name: Marko Siitonen
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Language and Communication Studies, University of Jyväskylä, Finland
Author-Name: Teresa de la Hera
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Media and Communication, Erasmus University Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Author-Name: Felix Reer
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Communication, University of Muenster, Germany
Abstract: This thematic issue presents a number of emerging scholarships into the study of digital gaming. The articles are based on a 2019 symposium on game studies hosted by the Digital Games Research section of ECREA. As the phenomena related to digital gaming keep on evolving and emerging, so must research keep up with the times and constantly challenge itself. Whether speaking about validating previously developed research methods, imagining totally new ones, or even challenging the whole philosophy of science on which research is being done, there is a constant need for reappraisal and introspection within games research. As a cultural medium that has become deeply embedded into the social fabric of the 2020s, digital gaming continues to excite and challenge academia. This thematic issue provides a collection of approaches to look into the future that addresses some of the challenges associated with game research.
Keywords: digital games; game studies; methodology; serious games
Handle: RePEc:cog:meanco:v9:y:2021:i:1:p:1-4