This article examines how linguistic, geographic, and racial inequalities shape journalism in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. Focusing on Southern Arizona, it analyzes the rise of two community-driven Spanish-language news startups following the closure of the city’s only Spanish-language newspaper. Emerging in connection with a bilingual journalism initiative at a local university, these projects developed through collaborative research, community engagement, and newsroom experimentation aimed at addressing gaps in local news coverage. Drawing on research-action practices, collaborative research, and self-ethnography, the study examines how marginalized communities resist exclusion by producing culturally relevant media. It situates these efforts within broader discussions of news deserts, institutional inequality, and the systemic neglect of linguistic minorities, offering insight into how grassroots journalism—and the institutional spaces that can help incubate it—can challenge dominant media norms and reimagine local news in underserved, multilingual communities.
The rise of algorithmic curation challenges the traditional authority of journalism. Focusing on Douyin, this study employed agent-based testing and temporal network analysis to examine how recommendation systems generate network cohesion around Chinese state and non-state media. Results revealed that state media’s cohesive power stemmed from news, whereas cohesion around non-state media was sustained by non-news content. However, for both media types, the cohesion generated by news showed a significant decline over time, and this trend varied by topic. These findings suggest that, beyond mere institutional status, strategic content adaptation is fundamental to building network cohesion in algorithmic environments.
This study investigates whether source citations enhance detection of false information and whether their effects depend on digital literacy and information processing style. In an experimental survey of 1,013 South Koreans, citations show no overall effect. However, they significantly improve detection of disinformation—but not misinformation—among individuals with higher digital literacy. Intuitive processing lowers detection ability, and citations do not counteract this tendency. The findings challenge assumptions that transparency universally improves evaluation, showing that citation effectiveness depends on user capabilities and the type of falsehood, and highlighting the need to strengthen digital literacy alongside transparency initiatives.
This study revisits the theory of the mediatization of politics in the era of artificial intelligence (AI), questioning its applicability beyond Western democracies and proposing an extension through the concept of generative logic. Drawing on the analysis of AI-generated parodies in China’s cyberspace, it examines a distinctive mode of political communication in which foreign political figures’ faces are superimposed onto characters from Chinese historical television dramas. These satirical videos construct five patterns of analogical displacement, enabling users to reinterpret international affairs through culturally familiar frameworks. Rather than merely destabilizing truth boundaries, this content reflects a locally embedded form of AI-mediated political expression shaped by the interplay of political logic , media logic , and generative logic . We conceptualize this configuration as a multi-logic communicative structure that sustains a stable yet dynamic mode of political discourse in authoritarian contexts. The findings contribute to a broader understanding of how generative technologies reshape political engagement, symbolic meaning-making, and mediated reality across diverse political systems.
While inequalities in technological access and use have been widely documented, few studies have examined their link to labor precarity and social inequality in journalism in the Global South. This article analyzes this relationship through a multilevel study of Worlds of Journalism Study data from 4,250 journalists in 11 Latin American countries. Results show that macro-level inequality, measured by the Gini coefficient, is not associated with the use of advanced digital technologies, including AI, while micro-level precarity, expressed in contractual instability and excessive workloads, is. Working conditions, rather than national disparities, are key to explaining inequalities in technology adoption.
This work examines the practices of news workers within the unique funding structures of nonprofit news organizations using qualitative interviews and ethnographic methods. From a political economy perspective, my findings show that organizational concerns are prioritized over journalism by news workers in nonprofit news contexts. I argue this exploits public-service oriented journalists to do unpaid labor. I suggest that dependence on external funders reduces the power of nonprofit news organizations to do journalism.
