2026-03-27
Catalina Farías, Elohim Monard, Fernanda Carvajal, Jiyoun Suk, Teresa Correa, Ingrid Bachmann, Christine Garlough, Dhavan V. Shah
This study advances a relational and translocal approach to hybridization through a comparative computational analysis of how feminist and anti-feminist discourses coevolve across seven Spanish-speaking Twitter communities. Drawing on 126,978 tweets from the first year of #MeToo, we use time-series analysis, topic modeling, and cross-national comparison to examine how discourses interact and how national contexts shape thematic trajectories. We identify 4 relational patterns—mutual association, feminist-driven dynamic, anti-feminist-driven dynamic, and no association—showing that these movements are not merely reactive, but dynamically shape one another. Topic modeling reveals that specific countries assert discursive leadership, illustrating that linguistic commonality does not imply homogeneous uptake. These findings provide a comparative framework for understanding how polarized movements adapt, compete, and interact in networked publics, with implications for feminist strategizing.
2026-03-13
Minchul Kim, Yanqin Lu
This study conducts an experiment to explore news selection on digital news platforms (e.g., Apple News). We found that the likelihood of selecting a certain news headline varied in terms of how newsworthy the headline is relative to other headlines available at the time of selection. This tendency to select news with relatively higher newsworthiness makes partisans more likely to engage in cross-cutting exposure, although the effects of relative newsworthiness were found to be stronger for neutral and proattitudinal news sources. These findings show the importance of examining relative newsworthiness in a high-choice and hyper-partisan context where multiple news choice options from politically polarized news sources are competing for user attention.
2026-02-26
Anne Bartsch, Christal Bürgel, Felix Frey, Sonja Kretzschmar, Verena Wassink
Environmental risks related to climate change are on the rise worldwide. This study examines how empathy with personal testimonials of homeowners affected by such risks can stimulate reflective thoughts, risk perception, and intention to take protective measures. A sample of homeowners saw risk awareness videos about different types of environmental risks (storm, hail), with or without personal testimonials of homeowners affected by those risks. The stimulus videos were embedded on an information website for homeowners about environmental risks. Participants were asked to view the video, browse the website, and report their thoughts, feelings, and behavioral intentions. As expected, personal testimonials elicited higher levels of empathy, predicting higher levels of reflective thoughts, self- and other-related risk perception, intention to protect one’s own home, and intention to share the information website with other homeowners.
2026-02-26
Kai Xiang Teo
Despite growing scholarship recognizing data as a site of contestation, research on authoritarian data governance predominantly focuses on state actors, leaving underexamined how such governance is experienced and contested by civil society. Through a case study of Singapore, this article addresses this gap by examining civil society’s data practices through semistructured interviews with 21 activists, journalists, and academics. It identifies two key contributions. First, this study reveals how authoritarian data governance is experienced as a hierarchical structure: Support for illiberal policies is datafied as technocratic evidence through selective data disclosures, while civil society expertise is marginalized through technical disaffordances and opaque administrative mechanisms. Second, this article finds that civil society’s responses to data control involve not only tactical shifts but also epistemological ones. Facing dilemmas about whether and how to engage with data shaped by technocracy and illiberalism, civil society actors develop alternative data practices that both challenge and co-opt the language of technocracy.
2026-02-26
Whitney-Jocelyn Kouaho
2026-02-13
Terry Flew
2026-02-13
Micky Lee
2026-02-13
Nathaniel Greenberg
2026-02-13
Muge Yuce
2026-02-13
Ayala Panievsky
Partisan media gained increasing traction as debates regarding disinformation, polarization, anti-media populism, and media bias have drawn attention to the rise of nonmainstream media outlets. But what does “partisan media” mean, and is it the right framework for exploring current changes to the information environment? This article claims the term “partisan media” is lacking because (a) conceptually, it is too vague and all-embracing to serve as a useful analytical category; (b) historically, it was shaped by a U.S.-centric vision of media and society, assuming objectivity as an organizing force of journalism and a two-party political system; (c) normatively, it fails to capture the nature of media outlets that weaponize the facade of journalism against the roles assigned to media in democratic theory. Drawing on media roles literature and empirical evidence, this study proposes an alternative approach, distinguishing media from anti-media media, based on facticity, loyalty, plurality, and solidarity. The article calls to measure media organizations on their societal merits through their position on a democratic spectrum, thus offering an urgent intervention in the field.
2026-01-29
Manuel Goyanes, Taeyoung Lee
Over the past decade, the exponential growth of information consumption through social media has reshaped the media landscape in most liberal democracies. This shift has introduced significant challenges, particularly the spread of fake news and growing concerns—whether real or perceived—about its potential effects. In this study, we propose an overarching moderated mediation model to explain citizens’ concerns about fake news. Drawing on panel survey data from Spain ( N = 570), our findings reveal that social media news consumption is positively associated with individuals’ cognitive elaboration of fake news, which, in turn, influences their level of concern about fake news. However, this indirect effect is significantly stronger among individuals who perceive themselves as highly exposed to fake news on social media. Overall, our study advances the current understanding of the effects of social media news consumption, highlighting the crucial role of cognitive elaboration in shaping concerns about fake news, alongside the perceived intensity of fake news exposure in digital media environments.
2026-01-29
Weilin Zhu
2026-01-29
Facundo N. Suenzo, Annika Pinch, Ignacio F. Cruz, Calvin A. Liang, Amy Ross Arguedas
The proliferation of sexual discourses in the digital age, accompanied by ongoing media panics over the perceived adverse effects of online sexual content, reflects persistent societal tensions about technology’s role in shaping sexual norms. While previous research has examined the spread of sexual advice on social media, there is limited understanding of how users engage with and reshape this advice. This study addresses this gap by analyzing how TikTok users interact with sex experts through a qualitative content analysis of top videos and their most-liked comments ( n = 500). Our analysis reveals 4 mechanisms by which users engage with sexual advice: (1) challenging and validating expert authority, (2) collaboratively co-producing knowledge, (3) debating norms of intimacy and pleasure, and (4) finding and sharing emotional support and solidarity. Through these interactions, expertise on TikTok becomes a collective and evolving form of knowledge production.
2026-01-27
Magdalena Krysztoforska, Oliver Kenny
This article explores the ways in which popular cinema contributes to the data imaginary. We engage in a close reading of key data-related scenes in Minority Report (2002), Moneyball (2011), and Snowden (2016), and we examine their extensive reliance on formal means that are deeply entangled with cinema’s capacity for scalar distortion. Using critical scholarship on the concept of scale as our interpretative lens, we argue that the distinct aesthetic construction of filmic engagements with data-driven issues is politically performative: The sequences that contribute to the data imaginary evoke what we term the “aesthetics of boundless insight,” eminently aligned with the discourse that presents big data as the key to unlimited potential and as a powerful technology without a predetermined agenda.
2026-01-27
Maria Cristina Paganoni, Gastón Becerra
This article examines how the news media reshape discourses on technology, focusing on datafication between 2019 and 2024—from the decline of big data to the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) and generative tools such as ChatGPT. Media narratives now emphasize AI-driven technologies across multiple sectors, framed through diverse perspectives. To assess the discursive impact of AI datafication, two news corpora—English and Spanish—are analyzed using a critically informed, mixed approach combining topic modeling, linguistic framing, and critical discourse studies. The analysis identifies six key narratives: AI versus human, popularization of AI, technology as business, surveillance, data politics, and the datafied society. The study traces how discourses have evolved in the transition from big data to AI, revealing shifting meanings and power dynamics. Ultimately, it contributes to debates on technological governance by showing how news narratives engage with critical perspectives on datafication. The move from data to information raises epistemological and ethical challenges, redefining the risks and promises of innovation in society.
2026-01-05
Murat Akser
2026-01-05
Anna Tous Rovirosa, Raquel Crisóstomo, Elena Fedotova, Natividad Ramajo
The paradigm shift in televised/streamed sports-themed series is examined from an intersectional and feminist studies perspective using a mixed-methods approach. Quantitatively, the study investigates 208 characters across 15 U.S. and European series broadcast in Spain on leading audiovisual platforms and television channels between 2018 and 2023. Female characters remain invisible, objectified, and in secondary positions, and are underrepresented as players, coaches, and managers. The analysis of recurring traits confirms false empowerment, substantiated by the persistence of traditional stereotypes and the emergence of new chauvinistic traits. Qualitatively, focus groups revealed antagonistic views between male and female viewers on fundamental gender issues. The analysis of production and male reception confirms the hypothesis on the representation of women in sports fiction, which appears to remain rooted in gender stereotypes while rejecting feminist demands. By contrast, the analysis of female reception does not align with the hypothesis, consistent with the approaches of gender studies.
2026-01-05
Inbar Illouz, Tal Orian Harel, Ifat Maoz
This study investigates the extent to which Israeli Jews’ exposure to Israeli news coverage through social media platforms and their distrust of Palestinians predict their sense of humanitarian responsibility toward Palestinians, within the context of the 2023–2025 Israel-Hamas war. Our analysis is based on a representative sample of Israeli Jews ( N = 903) obtained through public opinion polling. In line with our expectation, exposure to Israeli news coverage and distrust of Palestinians each made a significant contribution to explaining a Jewish-Israeli (decreased) sense of humanitarian responsibility toward Palestinians ( R 2 = .30). Distrust also partially mediated the association between news exposure and humanitarian responsibility. In addition, hawkishness and level of religiosity significantly contributed to the overall explanatory power of the model ( R 2 = .43). Higher levels of all predictor variables were associated with a decreased sense of humanitarian responsibility toward Palestinians. The implications of our findings for understanding the role of media coverage in shaping humanitarian responsibility toward the opponent in asymmetric conflict are discussed.
2026-01-05
Théophile Lenoir, Christopher Anderson
This study examines how nonscientific organizations participate in debates on the environmental footprint of artificial intelligence (AI) through the publication of reports, thus shaping the acquisition and distribution of expertise in the technical public sphere. Drawing on Eyal’s two dimensions of expertise, as tacit versus explicit and individual versus distributed, we use three concepts that best exemplify the various combinations of expert attributes, namely, communities of practice, epistemic communities, and international knowledge institutions. Our findings show reports on AI’s environmental footprint enable organizations to simultaneously engage with communities of practice and epistemic communities, thereby blurring the boundary between practical and epistemic expertise. This development creates challenges for international knowledge institutions, which promote inclusion and global dialogue, but do not always account for disparities in the quality of evidence produced. We conclude by suggesting that reports provide a valuable lens for examining expert organizations’ tacit knowledge and discuss the implications for the technical public sphere’s capacity to advance notions of objectivity.
2026-01-05
Roni Danziger, Hadar Levy-Landesberg, Aya Yadlin, Ido Ramati, Lidor Ivan, Ilan Manor
On June 9, 2025, the DAN Department of Communication at Tel Aviv University convened a roundtable to explore the evolving intersections of artificial intelligence and communication research. The event brought together communication scholars from multiple universities in Israel for a wide-ranging conversation about AI’s place in the field of communication—as an object of study, a methodological tool, and, increasingly, as part of a broader cultural and technological climate that shapes new horizons for analytical thinking. The article is an edited and truncated version of the panel: “AI in Communication Research.” The panel was hosted and moderated by Dr. Hadar Levy-Landesberg and Dr. Roni Danziger and features Dr. Aya Yadlin, Dr. Ido Ramati, Dr. Lidor Ivan, and Dr. Ilan Manor.
2026-01-05
Wendy Willems
The media and cultural imperialism paradigm’s reliance on Marxist world-system analysis and class, alongside the globalization paradigm’s faith in cosmopolitanism, has made debates on race relatively uncommon in global media and communication studies. Recent literature on race and digital technology has placed race more firmly on the map within our wider field, but the bulk of this work remains nation-centric and has not addressed the tensions in transnational articulations of (anti)-racism(s). This article develops an analytical framework—“the scalar politics of race”—to understand how various actors strategically deploy scale to address race via social media, legacy media, and physical space. I apply this framework to 3 case studies, examining the global disciplining of national forms of racism, the hegemony of transnational forms of anti-racism and solidarity, and translocal appropriations of anti-racism.