This article responds to recent calls to expand political communication research through renewed engagement with propaganda studies. It addresses two related challenges: the need for a deeper understanding of organized, manipulative communication in liberal democracies and the need for terminological clarification in its analysis. The article develops the analytical category of Organized Psychology-based, Persuasive Communication (OPPC) that provides a framework for the examination of the deliberate use of soft-power-techniques within organized, persuasive communication. The interdisciplinary OPPC model used to illustrate the analytical category of OPPC includes five key elements of the communicative process (transmitter, receiver, process, effects, and feedback loop) and adds a psychological layer by distinguishing between inner-, and extrapsychological aspects and by integrating the inner-psychological process of information processing into the communicative framework. Furthermore, it embeds the individuals within their social, historical, and cultural contexts. The model is intended as a medium-level analytical framework and starting point for future empirical research rather than as a complete account of psychological mechanisms. Its contribution is to provide a clearer conceptual and interdisciplinary basis for analyzing the construction, dissemination, processing and effects of organized persuasive communication.
This study examines how international graduate students at U.S. universities experience chilled academic speech under conditions of surveillance, visa precarity, and institutional monitoring. Existing research documents chilling effects, but less attention has been paid to how they shape the everyday academic lives of noncitizen students. Drawing on 12 in-depth interviews, the study uses an inductive thematic approach to analyze how students perceive and manage risk in research, writing, teaching, and classroom participation. Findings show that students engage in anticipatory self-regulation, including moderating tone, narrowing research agendas, and adopting defensive methodological strategies under conditions of perceived risk and unequal consequence. Academic freedom emerges as conditional and unevenly experienced. These dynamics reshape not only expression but also knowledge production, limiting which questions are pursued and whose perspectives enter scholarly discourse.
This study examines how an IKEA advertising campaign in Spain titled Efectos Colaterales (“Collateral Effects”) interacts with structural violence and socio-cultural peace in the country. For this investigation, we conduct a visual analysis on all four advertisements comprising Efectos Colaterales . While the campaign was found to effectively utilize humor and several other narrative techniques to portray a lifestyle adhering to the brand's identity, its storyline implicitly makes the customer solely responsible for attaining this aspirational lifestyle, thereby ignoring the institutional and socio-political realities that currently limit a substantial portion of the population's ability to obtain affordable housing. This article draws attention to the importance of studying truth claims embedded in everyday advertising and the ways in which these shape our construction and understanding of what a peace culture—or a lack thereof—could potentially look like.
Incarceration means more than physical isolation; it disconnects prisoners from society, culture, and community. In U.S. prisons, access to media is shaped both by institutional structures and informal social processes. Although state and federal regulations set regulations, wardens have broad discretionary power and often use media access as a tool for reward or punishment. Media use and access in prisons becomes a form of currency that affects status, relationships, and perceived legitimacy within prison life. Through in-depth interviews with 26 individuals formerly incarcerated in Georgia, we examine how access to media resources defines and distributes power in closed and surveilled environments. With Bourdieu's field theory as a conceptual framework, we investigate how media becomes economic, political, cultural, social, and symbolic capital. We foreground the voices of those with lived experience and find that media is a mechanism for preserving identity, navigating social hierarchies, and maintaining ties to life beyond prison.
This study explores how Latinx content creators harness social media to challenge established mental health narratives in postcolonial family systems. Using Social Media Grounded Theory, we coded 69 Instagram and TikTok posts about mental health from 23 social media accounts, including Latinx influencers, advocacy organizations, therapists, and artists/musicians. Our findings demonstrate that Latinx mental health content creators act as intercultural super peers-thought leaders who create online counterspaces that destigmatize conversations about mental health. They help young Hispanic Americans resist colonial logics by transforming discourse about familismo, generational trauma, and machismo. As intercultural super peers, content creators also help audiences navigate nepantla, a Nahuatl word used by Gloria Anzald & uacute;a to describe the state of cultural in-betweenness. Together, Latinx content creators and their audiences interrogate cultural expectations that suffering is an anticipated part of existence.
Objective This study analyzed language found in executive orders (EOs) issued during the first 100 days of the Trump administration (2025) with specific emphasis on how word choice characterized federal and non-federal programs targeted for removal.Method Semantic and thematic analysis examined 36 EOs eliminating programs or freezing funding and the rationale offered for doing this.Findings Sentiment analysis revealed while the orders were predominantly positive, negative emotions focusing on anger, fear, and trust were common. A lexicon of 830 negative words and phrases in these documents was compiled. Four themes illustrating exclusion were identified. Arguments supporting these themes claimed that the 1) border was overrun by illegal immigrants, 2) other countries have taken unfair advantage of America's generosity, 3) diversity, equity, and inclusion is illegal, and 4) biological sex at birth is the legal standard.Conclusion While calling for restoration to a golden age, the overall impact of these orders describes the U.S. as a dumping ground for everybody else's problems.
This article introduces the concept of shared press distress-the emotional and psychological strain of watching, reading, or hearing about a fellow journalist's trauma or distress. Shared press distress does not stem from direct exposure to trauma but rather from the far-reaching ripple effect one journalist's distress can have on others in the profession. This concept is grounded in the lived experience of 19 journalists in Kansas, where police raided a fellow state newspaper. The in-depth interviews revealed emotional and practical responses from the journalists. Emotionally, there was a sense of disbelief as they watched a colleague endure a perceived violation of press freedoms. On the practical side, witnessing a fellow journalist face a perceived retaliatory raid for carrying out the core function of accountability journalism compelled them to reassess themselves, raising difficult questions about the risks of holding the powerful in check. The emotional weight of the experience and the practical reevaluation intertwined, emphasizing the grim reality that if it could happen to one Kansas journalist, it could happen to any of them-an attack not just on one newsroom, but on journalism itself.
Over the last three decades, the relationship between ethnography and communication studies has deepened. Yet, the meaning of "media ethnography" remains contested, as communication scholars describe a wide variety of research practices as "ethnographic." This article overviews the broader literature on ethnography in communication research with a focus on the contributions of media production ethnography. Specifically, the paper examines the value of long-term, in-depth engagement with research subjects. It concentrates on ethnographic methods' capacity to open a unique and behind-the-scenes view of media production and examines the readable and engaging storytelling style of this type of research. To illustrate the value of media production research, this article draws on contemporary newsroom ethnographies as well as the recently published books of Natalia Roudakova's Losing Pravda, Alexander Fattal's Guerrilla Marketing, and Narges Bajoghli's Iran Reframed. The analysis reveals that despite the challenges, ethnographic research remains invaluable to the study of media.
This paper theorized the concept of “factional journalism” and media capture within South Africa's privately owned print media landscape. This theorization attemps to understand media capture along partisan and factional cleavages in the post democractic dispensation. To understand the factional journalism phenomena in South Africa, we employ a case study design that relies on interviews with Media24 and Independent News and Media (also known as Independent Media) aligned political editors and journalists who have covered the Jacob Zuma and Cyril Ramaphosa's presidencies. Theoretically, we rely on the political economy framework of the media. For this investigation, we wanted to understand how, if at all, media ownership structures and political-economic interests influence journalistic bias in how the Zuma and Ramaphosa presidencies are/have been represented. Findings from this study confirmed the enduring political and business pressures exerted on journalists when covering political elites. While our study observed few cases of outliers, the general trend confirms the continued relevance of the political economy framework as a viable model when seeking to understand editorial bias when covering political elites.
The October 2018 killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi was a highly publicized event worldwide, shedding light on critical issues such as journalists’ safety, US-Saudi relations, press freedom, and democratic values. This study is a critical discourse analysis of editorials published in the Washington Post after Khashoggi's disappearance. Key themes emerging from the analysis include the dilemma between press freedom and the strategic interest in preserving good U.S. – Saudi relations, detecting the political motive behind Khashoggi's murder, and the role of media as fourth estate.
In 2020, the Release the Pressure Campaign, a joint public health campaign was started to address the high rates of heart disease, and particularly hypertension, experienced among Black women in the United States. Through a Critical Discourse Analysis of mass media contents related to the campaign, this study sought to answer how the campaign used race to re-center Black women's heart health. Three discourses were determined, focused on embodiment of racism, self-care and community care, and addressing ways Black women treat heart disease. The discourses indicate the campaign is culturally focused and theoretically set up for success as a race-conscious public health campaign that has been advocated for. Future research is also discussed.
Mad Men is often assumed to be “subversive” in the academic literature whereas this investigation interprets the astutely promoted series as questioning capitalism before it ratifies market relations. Alongside convulsive change under capitalism that Mad Men captures, class-striated market societies require narratives that posit class division as compatible with meritocracy. Mad Men delivers such legitimizing narratives through Don Draper's and Peggy Olson's realization of class promotions—whereas Roger Sterling, Jr. and Pete Campbell present the privileges of inherited wealth. Don's performance in advertising illustrates Mad Men's often divided view of capitalism. Don melts down during one pitch and reveals his primordial experiences of capitalism as conditioned by poverty, theft and prostitution. However, by the final episode, Don's Coke ad affirms the market as a vehicle toward transcendental community. While Mad Men interrogates capitalism, it is solidly neoliberal in its disregard for State activity (regulation, implications of elected office). The narratively privileged moment of the series’ extended closing montage doubles-down on capitalism as the flawed but optimal steering mechanism for human aspiration. With the conspicuous exception of Betty Draper Francis who never participated in corporate work, core characters realize wealth and fulfillment by mastering market relations.
