The global pandemic threw the world in all its asymmetries and diversities into a limit situation without known coordinates. This article suggests that in its aftermath there is actually a call and an opportunity for more than rethinking existing keywords in the field. It argues that the crisis was “improbable” in the meaning of the word offered by Amitav Ghosh who traces a common sense forged by probabilistic science, that expelled the unthinkable from the modern imaginary. Tracking down this regime of certainty, the essay offers a discussion on the place or displacement of the disorderly, the uncertain, and the disruptive in media theory. It submits that reawakening to the improbable, in light of Karl Jaspers’ philosophical anthropology of the limit situation , offers a fruitful conceptual avenue ahead. Apart from introducing the concept of the (digital) limit situation , the article offers a conversation between existential media studies, critical disability studies, feminist STS, and the environmental humanities, by also inviting an extended family of unruly concepts, including dismediation and deferral . It concludes that limit situations can be transformative also for media theory, if we dare to seize them, by means of existential modes of transversal listening to ghostly pasts never fulfilled. Keywords the limit situation , Karl Jaspers , existential media studies , the disordely , disruptive events , the improbable , dismediation , deferral , existential listening
A few years after the COVID-19 pandemic swept across the globe, discussions surrounding its impact have become noticeably less frequent within communication and media research. While the pandemic no longer occupies the central place it once held in academic discourse and public debate, it is now more crucial than ever to consider how this unprecedented global event has shaped our societies, as well as its lasting implications for communication and media worldwide. This Crosscurrents themed issue invited scholars to reflect on how the cultural and social implications of this global event solicit a reorganization and reframing of some of the existing conceptual and theoretical tools that have shaped media and cultural studies as a field. Contributors moved from one specific keyword to consider how these notions are imbricated by the crisis, either COVID-19 specifically or in more general terms. This editorial provides an overview to the themed issue and highlights the benefit of considering the impact of the pandemic from a broader and longer perspective, which moves away from the language and rhetoric of emergency.
The legal environment particularly the body of laws that regulate media operations are telling, yet underexplored, indicators of press freedom. Using the analytical concept of episodes of contention based on a reading of contentious politics, the article examines the ambivalent state of press freedom in the Philippines. The argument is that the protracted issues of media access and libel serve as two episodes of contention that identify extant and emerging sets of actors, mechanisms, and claims that collectively characterize the role of media law in the body politic. Drawing from interviews with journalists and review of the Supreme Court rulings about media access and libel, the hope is to underscore the potential and limits of the Court as an ally of the media in advancing press freedom. The decision of the Court does not at all times favor a liberal interpretation of press freedom but it deploys ways including dissenting opinions that can balance, if not outrightly oppose, the occasional negative view of the Court toward media-related cases.
In the following article I analyze sports bars for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer (LGBTQ+) communities via a combination of semi-structured interviews, field studies, and archival research. In particular, I examine how sports and non-normative sexual and gender identities influence, and are influenced by, media "in situ." I also seek to better understand how LGBTQ+ sports cultures are constructed by the owners of these bars, by media technologies and rhythms, and by the patrons themselves. Within this approach I address how media and space overlap and inform one another, especially in relation to social and cultural imperatives, and I unpack how these interactions shape particular LGBTQ+ sports spaces. Guided by queer methodological and analytical approaches, I demonstrate how LGBTQ+ sports bars vary in material, contextual, and historical ways and how they are often influenced by competing concerns related to queer(ed) community and normative sports (media). Ultimately, I contend that to understand these spaces as built environments transformed by, and transforming of, LGBTQ+ communities, we must see them, as with most places of LGBTQ+ commerciality, as arenas of both queer potentiality and normalized inequality.
Popular discussions about the selfie have often centered on accusations of Narcissism and cultural decay. Alongside this, globally, the selfie has also been associated with accidents, injury, and death. Taking the case of India - the country most closely associated with selfie fatality statistics - this article examines how the equation between selfies and death is the result of the confluence of psychopathological and physio-pathological discourses, and virally circulating news. What medicalized discourse and sensational journalism often miss, is the fact that selfie fatalities are a symptom of technologically augmented spaces. Taking a humanistic approach drawing insights from photography studies, digital media studies, and studies of risk and modernity, the article unpacks how the moral panic around "killer selfies" obfuscates the contradictions of negotiating technological augmentation and spatial risks.
The development of an online screen industry, dominated by a few American and Chinese streaming TV services and video-based platforms, triggers critical questions about the commercial and technological dependence of cultural producers within this industry. Drawing on research in media industries and platform studies, this paper develops a conceptual framework to systematically examine this dependence. Pursuing this aim, we propose to shift the focus from specific video platforms or streaming TV services as the starting point of the analysis to the perspective of cultural producers. Through a discussion of current research, we identify four major sources of dependence encountered by cultural producers in the online screen industry: (1) access to data, (2) algorithmic curation, (3) contractual relations, and (4) monetization. While we recognize that there are vital differences between platforms and streaming TV services, we argue that producers throughout the online screen industry face similar challenges in trying to navigate the four sources of dependence. In short, limited access to data and lack of control over content visibility put cultural producers in a fundamentally weak position vis-& agrave;-vis tech companies when negotiating contractual relations and terms of monetization.
Grounded in the long tradition of embracing the global in communication and media studies and inspired by feminist standpoint epistemology, we argue that global communication can function as an epistemological standpoint. After summarizing the diverse and rich tradition of understanding the global in communication and media studies and beyond, we theorize that a global communication standpoint is characterized by a combination of four aspects that can be embraced across the discipline: contextualization, historical rootedness, attention to power, and engagement with issues of relationality and comparison. First, we offer examples of the four elements based on existing scholarship. Second, we analyze how these four elements can be embraced in pedagogy. Finally, we survey recent job market dynamics to analyze the definition of the global by professional practice. We conclude by arguing that the embracement of global communication as a standpoint can benefit research across our discipline, regardless of research questions, methods, contexts, or scholars' identities.
Local voices carry tremendous weight during natural disasters, yet the possibilities for employing participatory communicative practices for disaster management in India have not been fully explored. Effective community-centred disaster communication garners participation in disaster management processes that reduce vulnerabilities. This paper examines how various community-based organisations used community radio to enhance community engagement and the effectiveness of the disaster management processes in the eastern Indian state of Odisha. The research relies upon case studies of disaster communication practices of two community radio stations during the 'very severe cyclonic storm' Yaas, which made landfall in Odisha. It describes the conceptual shift in the disaster risk reduction approach towards community participation and the role of information and communication in disaster management. It then discusses the historical trajectories of disasters and vulnerabilities in Odisha. The following sections analyse how the social relationships facilitated by community radios augment the effectiveness of the disaster communication process. The paper explains how two community radio stations engaged with the communities to promote early warning, preparedness, response and revitalising measures during Cyclone Yaas. It argues for prioritising community radio as a component in all disaster communication endeavours as a means to strengthen community capacities and enhance community resilience.
What does it mean, then, when we adopt and advocate a standpoint that is not tied to a single locus or body of experience, that in fact attempts to expand possibility rather than narrow it, that simultaneously values context while recognizing disconnection from it? What are the implications for thinking, teaching and doing, when the standpoint urges us to look outward and inward at the same time, demanding that we be rooted in the local even as we trace its threads to and from the global? In this essay, I respond to the provocation offered by Girginova et al. as they argue for a global standpoint in media and communication research, asking for a nuanced approach to positionality that allows for openness in both research and teaching.
Digital identity has become a central concept in understanding how people's online presence is shaped and made sense of. Although extensively studied, the prevailing focus has been on how online identities are shaped by digital platforms or how users curate and perform these identities. How users perceive and assess this concept, however, has received comparatively less attention. In this article, we take a qualitative, user-centric approach to the meaning of digital identity, drawing on insights from 17 online focus group discussions involving 86 participants in Portugal. We identify three distinctive understandings - digital identification, self-presentation, and the datafied self - each corresponding to specific facets of users' online experiences. Our findings underscore the multidimensionality of digital identity, highlighting its dynamic nature and potential for ongoing reinterpretation. This work contributes to the existing literature by highlighting how the concept's ever-expanding complexity relates to people's sensemaking practices about identity, agency, and digital platforms in datafied societies.
Platforms are increasingly part of everyday life, but they remain opaque and impenetrable spaces for most users. To manage life on platforms, users thus need to engage with sense-making practices that help them understand and navigate online spaces. This paper studies how far-right populist activists interpret and navigate their presence on Twitter, using the concept of platform folklore, that is, unofficial and collective narratives aimed at relieving feelings of uncertainty associated with the opacity of platforms. The data consists of 20 life-history interviews with Swedish and American Twitter activists from right-wing populist communities, who all participated in populist Twitter debates. The analysis shows how platform folklore is constructed not only based on observations of content moderation, as emphasized in previous research, but also in correspondence with the political ideology and identities of the activists. This led them to interpret Twitter as a leftist organization that disfavored them, which stopped them from developing strategies to reach the goals they held as central to their Twitter activism. The paper concludes by discussing the role of emotions and ideology in platform folklore within political communities and suggesting directions for future research.
Recently, cultural crowdfunding has emerged as a prominent funding mechanism, enabling the efficient collection of micro-donations from supporters. Despite its growing significance, research on cultural crowdfunding remains limited. This paper seeks to make an original contribution by examining the impacts of cultural crowdfunding in Japan, focussing on the perspectives of performing artists and representatives of cultural organisations. It underscores the importance of considering local contexts and developing a nuanced understanding of crowdfunding’s role in the cultural and creative industries. To explore artists’ attitudes and approaches towards cultural crowdfunding, this study employs Boltanski and Thévenot’s theories of justification, specifically contrasting the values of the inspired world and the market world. By analysing cultural crowdfunding in Japan, this paper aims to enhance the understanding of artists’ policies and the role of public support for culture in the post-pandemic society.
This article contributes to the rethinking of the relationship between news media and democracy by adopting the perspective of 'epistemic democracy', characterised by universal and equal participation of all knowers. While this perspective foregrounds the tension between the normative vision of news media as facilitators of democratic deliberation and their actual socio-political position as part of the hegemonic domain, it also enables the reconceptualisation of media's democratic role as the cultivation of 'democratic imagination'. On the one hand, media can exercise democratic imagination in their reporting by promoting epistemic diversity. On the other hand, they may extend the public's horizon of democratic imagination by generating epistemic friction. The article operationalises this process as countering epistemic exclusion of minoritised knowers and employs the three-tier framework borrowed from feminist philosophy as its main heuristic. Empirically, the investigation focuses on the Polish liberal news media's coverage of minoritised activism. This is a particularly relevant case due to the liberal media's stake in reimagining democracy in Poland. The article finds that the Polish liberal media were ready to include minoritised perspectives and relay minoritised experiential knowledge, though they were unable to offer them an equal platform.
The arrival of refugees in large numbers has created heated political and public debates across various arenas. Online spaces, specifically social networking platforms, have become a major site for people to express their opinions, feelings, and beliefs toward refugees. Drawing on the principles of corpus analysis, the Discourse-Historical Approach, and multimodal critical discourse analysis, this mixed-methods study explores how online discourses are utilized to portray Ukrainian refugees in Turkish tweets in the aftermath of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The findings showed that the linguistic and visual elements used to characterize Ukrainian refugees, as well as the characteristics attributed to and presumptions and justifications made about them, constructed a positive portrayal, unlike the portrayals of other major refugee groups reported in the literature. This positive representation of Ukrainian refugees as welcomed guests was reinforced through the negative depiction of other refugee groups in Türkiye, particularly Syrians and Afghans, as threats.
In today's global media landscape, the integration of LGBTQ characters and storylines in children's television has transformed media representations for young audiences. However, little is known about the way parents evaluate this on-screen presence. By means of interview with 53 Flemish parents, this study uncovered a complex interplay of considerations related to children, media, gender, and sexuality. In terms of possible opportunities associated with LGBTQ characters, parents referred to possibilities of information, socialization, promoting prosocial behavior, and aiding identification. However, parents also harbored some concerns regarding characteristics of the viewers (children's young age and gender differences) as well as characteristics of these media representations (as to quantity, quality, and physicality between characters). Parents mentioned they were worried about the perceived maturity needed to comprehend what these LGBTQ characters represent, and they showed more discomfort with gender diversity (trans and non-binary characters) than sexual diversity (non-heterosexual characters). They also feared that an overabundance of LGBTQ references might prioritize "political correctness" over authentic representation, which moreover could confuse children.
This paper takes the recent introduction of AI-powered television news anchors in China as an invitation to explore the technologies and techniques that have long been used in the anchor's voice production. Analyzing Chinese Broadcasting Science, the first pedagogical standards for broadcasters across mainland China, published in 1993, this paper demonstrates how the perception of the anchor's voice as something that can be measured, manipulated, and programmed has predated the AI industry. We examine guidelines, diagrams, and figures used to instruct news anchor wannabes on training their physiological voicing "engine," tracing the continuities between this model of television anchoring and AI-generated news anchors. We propose technovocality as a conceptual framework for considering the various social, political, and ethical questions arising from the intersections between voices and media, past and present and Western and non-Western cultural contexts.
In today’s hybrid media landscape, scholars have questioned the “protest paradigm” as the leading interpretation of news coverage of protest action. While the press tends to cover protests in rather antagonistic terms, it is simultaneously highly celebratory of the digital, rehearsing long standing techno-utopian and techno-deterministic discourses. This study zooms in on the Iranian #WomanLifeFreedom movement, investigating how the political power of digital technologies is articulated in Time and Wired magazine. The findings highlight an overarching discourse of technology as a double-edged sword intersecting with discourses of tactical creativity, horizontalism, and digital “witnessing”; as well as two marginal but interlinked discourses: technology as last resort and human right. Findings show that while the protest paradigm persists in the contemporary coverage of the #WomanLifeFreedom movement, legitimizing and delegitimizing frames coexist to produce a more nuanced view of the movement, highlighting activist goals and grievances alongside elements of conflict and spectacle. Considering the transnational dimension of the protests, and the U.S. – Iran political context, the paper concludes that both the geography of protest and the integration of digital technologies in activism shape the coverage of contemporary movements.
If social media are generally considered workplace distractions, how does Meta promote their enterprise social medium, Workplace? Analyzing Meta's corporate communication, I explore their emphasis on "connectivity" as Workplace's key selling point, aligning with existing research on Meta's self-construction. Highlighting three pertinent themes in the corporate communication, I explore how Workplace is promised to (1) subsume the gray media of corporate life (2) turn companies into communities where workers share information boundlessly, even about their personal lives and (3) that these streams of communicative data are ultimately used as a datafied proxy for corporate health via Workplace. I propose that the productivity claimed to result from Workplace's connectivity hinges on a subtle merging of personal and professional aspects in employees' lives, which is in line with broader Silicon Valley trends and Meta's own organizational image. I discuss the implications and limitations of these findings.
We examine how globally oriented-influencers from India utilize specific strategies of content creation to negotiate with the dominant logic of platform affordances to engage with global audiences. It involves individual negotiations by the influencers with the platform affordances in creating content that foregrounds their cultural realities and aspirations while remaining relevant to global audiences. We do so by deploying the critical technocultural discourse analysis (CTDA) framework to understand influencers' strategic choices and discursive practices as they interact and negotiate with the platform affordances. Our analysis shows two processes that help the influencers communicate their content to the global audience and sustain their local connections and followership: (1) Templatization: a process through which influencers from the global South attune themselves to the technological possibilities of the platform and utilize its features to produce content with a set of replicable patterns, formats, and practices; and (2) Cultural brokering: a negotiation strategy which allows the influencers to foreground and express their quotidian lived realities and cultural experiences in an increasingly globalized digital environment.
This article traces the history of commercial attempts to merge olfactory mediated scents with visual media and the ensuing turn toward domestic olfactory mediation. From the earliest attempts at scented cinema to the emergence of consumer-grade odor mediating products as Little Trees and Glade, we conceptualize smell as a neglected site ripe for critical media analysis. We argue that the commercial rise of domestic odor mediating technology, such as air fresheners, facilitate a unique form of nature-based simulation where audiences desire the fake over the real and confuse familiar natural odors.
