The process of transforming a story from written text into a visual medium is known as film adaptation. This research examines the differences between John Green’s 2017 novel and the 2024 film adaptation of Turtles All the Way Down. It examines shifts in the plot, characters, and setting, breaking them down into three main types of change—reduction, addition, and variation—based on Eneste’s 1991 theory of ecranization. Multimodal Discourse Analysis (MDA) by Kress and van Leeuwen is also applied to explore how meaning is constructed through visual, auditory, gestural, and linguistic elements in the film. This research takes a qualitative approach with document analysis as the primary data collection method. The data were collected by reading the novel and watching the film adaptation, while taking detailed notes on the key narrative elements. The results show twelve reductions (46%), seven additions (27%), and seven variations (27%). Most of the reductions involve emotional subplots and supporting characters. In contrast, the additions are mainly used to strengthen the emotional resolution of the story and to emphasize a sense of hope. Variations are evident in the visual presentation of several scenes, which do not always align with the novel’s descriptions. These changes enable the film to communicate the novel’s central message—particularly regarding mental health and healing—in a manner suited to the expressive and emotional strengths of cinematic storytelling.
Digital literacy is the skill of people to use the internet efficiently, including evaluating online information, verifying the accuracy of news, trusting reliable news sources, and using digital tools responsibly and ethically. This study aims to analyze the coverage of digital literacy news in the online media of Nepal and see how much importance they accord to this emerging issue. This study will employ content analysis of two popular Nepali online media, i.e., Online Khabar and myRepublica, to see their coverage of the digital literacy news. Thematic analysis is also employed to examine how digital literacy is discussed in the articles, applying Ng’s digital literacy framework, which encompasses cognitive, technical, and social-emotional literacy. The findings will provide insight to the people into how much the media gives emphasis to the informative stories that benefit the people and society.
This study explores the online behavior of Generation Z and Millennials in Indonesia, focusing on e-commerce practices and social media interactions as sites of value uncertainty. Drawing on qualitative interviews and a multidisciplinary theoretical framework (including Goffman’s self-presentation, Bauman’s fluid modernity, Parekh’s value pluralism, Castells’ network society, and Ibn Khaldun’s social life cycle), the study identifies a shift from inherited local values to fluid, algorithmic digital values. The findings reveal that digital behavior is not only individual or cultural but also structurally shaped by generational dynamics and algorithmic mediation. This value shift not only shapes individual identity characteristics across generations but also alters patterns of inter-community relations within a broader global structure (the digital society). This article introduces digital value pluralism as a new analytical category to understand this transition, arguing that it marks an epistemic mutation—a shift from deliberative pluralism to competitive pluralism, in which values collide in a fast-paced, visibility-driven digital ecosystem. This concept challenges the classical model of pluralism and opens up space for theorizing about pluralism in the post-paper-generation era.
This study investigates how users cognitively interpret online identity, emotion, and generational communication styles within a theory-based dashboard designed to classify identity from textual data. The dashboard, operationalized as the Social Media Language (SL) Tool, is grounded in the Generational Virtual Textual Identity (GVTI) framework, which integrates emoji use, sentiment, personality traits, thematic classification, and generational communication patterns. To evaluate how users engage with these outputs, a mixed-methods behavioral usability study was conducted with nineteen participants, combining Likert-scale ratings, open-ended feedback analyzed through thematic analysis, and eye-tracking measures (heatmaps). This triangulated approach examined perceived interpretability and cognitive processing rather than predictive accuracy. Findings indicate that users focused primarily on identity labels and emojis as interpretive anchors, with gaze patterns converging with qualitative feedback. All Likert-scale items exceeded the predefined usability threshold, indicating high perceived clarity and trust in the framework outputs. However, participants also identified the need for domain-specific refinement of classification labels and additional interpretive aids, such as tooltips and contextual summaries. Rather than constituting theoretical validation, the results provide initial empirical support for the interpretive coherence of the GVTI framework and demonstrate the value of behavioral usability methods in evaluating identity-based media tools. By integrating qualitative, quantitative, and behavioral evidence, this study contributes to ongoing debates in media studies and human–computer interaction (HCI) regarding interpretability, transparency, and user-centered design in online dashboard environments.
Social media has been widely used for political advertising campaigns over the past decade. Its growing significance has also drawn scholarly interest, yielding extensive yet dispersed research efforts. There is a noticeable lack of effort in reviewing this evolving area of research, which leads to a failure to identify avenues for future research. Guided by the PRISMA protocol and the Theories–Contexts–Methods (TCM) framework, this systematic review maps the research landscape and integrates the existing literature by exploring the theories, contexts, and methods covered by ninety-nine studies on political advertising campaigns on social media over the last fifteen years (2011–2025). As its primary scientific contribution, this study moves beyond a descriptive summary to serve as an integrative and agenda-setting review, providing a comprehensive research map and a cross-theoretical synthesis of the fragmented literature. This review reveals the dominance of single-theory approaches, identifying twelve distinct theories. Furthermore, the current review emphasizes the contexts of elections, sexism, and social movements in various countries. The review also reveals the prevalent adoption of qualitative approaches and the lack of mixed and conceptual methodologies. It provides an overview of the research field, establishes evidence-based future research avenues within the TCM framework, and offers operational insights for practitioners.
As digital platforms become embedded in the everyday lives of internal migrants, they increasingly shape not only social interactions but also processes of cultural belonging. This study examines how dependency on WeChat contributes to community attachment among internal migrants in Xi’an, China, by conceptualizing the platform as a symbolic cultural space. Drawing on Media System Dependency (MSD) theory, the study explores three functional dimensions of WeChat use—Understanding, Orientation, and Play—and investigates how participatory communication moderates their effects on urban belonging. Using data from 355 migrant respondents and structural equation modeling (SEM), the study finds that all three dependency dimensions are positively associated with community attachment, with Orientation showing the strongest effect. Participatory communication significantly amplifies these relationships, suggesting that co-constructive engagement on WeChat enhances migrants’ symbolic and emotional integration. These findings position WeChat not only as a sociotechnical tool but as a cultural interface mediating identity, adaptation, and collective meaning-making. This research extends the MSD framework by integrating participatory and cultural dimensions, offering a more contextualized understanding of digital inclusion in non-Western urban contexts. Rather than viewing platform dependency as a sign of vulnerability, the study reframes it as a potential source of cultural resilience and belonging. Implications for digital citizenship and inclusive urban communication are discussed.
This study explores how the domestication of media for people living in diaspora embeds the double consciousness of a “home away from home.” The domestication process reveals certain patterns of media practices in which the complex relationship between people in a diasporic situation and media technologies emerge as part of a transnational lifestyle. Interrogating this lifestyle opens a study of media that focuses on socio-cultural transformations where the interplay of media dependency or agency serves as a site of discourse as diasporic people re-appropriate discrete features of media into their everyday lives. Drawing from interviews with and participant observation of Filipino Americans coming from different professional backgrounds and experiences of migration, this study argues that active relationship with The Filipino Channel or TFC, a transnational media company, articulates a “mediatized” behavior that imbricates the dialectical tension between dependency and agency. It is a behavior where everyday struggles and aspirations of Filipino Americans are now performed with and in media as they navigate the double consciousness of a “home away from home” in the context of their de-territoriality.
The differences in laugh track insertion points (LIP) between American and Chinese sitcoms were analyzed using the American show The Big Bang Theory and the Chinese show Home With Kids. The results showed that American sitcoms frequently employ interactional patterns such as “roundabout rephrasing,” which are commonly utilized in English-language sitcom production. It is also suggested that the “gap between true feelings and public appearances” functions as a source of entertainment by encouraging viewers to interpret implicit meanings within scripted dialogue. These patterns can be interpreted as reflecting differences in how verbal interaction is utilized within sitcom production contexts, rather than indicating any inherent linguistic superiority. In Chinese sitcoms, there was a tendency to turn a single thing into an LIP by exaggerating it, such as “exaggeration,” and to add gestures and movements to make it more entertaining, such as “strange movements.”
College-bound students with disabilities (SWD) want to know what to expect from campus disability centers (DSC), and the DSC’s website may be the first contact point for those students. Yet DSCs seldom analyze their websites from a data-centric approach. Because of the potential impact of those websites, this study used a data-based content analysis of the DSC websites of a statewide community college system to identify information and interface patterns. Analysis criteria included campus and disability center demographics, services, content quality and quantity, website features, and accessibility. Findings revealed patterns and variations among the DSC websites such as center terminology and organizational structure, amount of information and guidance for stakeholders, uniqueness of website appearance, and lack of accessibility. In addition, the state’s other degree-granting systems’ DSC’s websites were compared with the study’s system’s websites. Several recommendations emerged, including the following: standardized website design and resource template, improved ADA accessibility, user input, and systematic data-driven website assessment. The study contributes to the field by providing benchmark assessment instruments and recommendation for disability-related policy.
This study examines the inconsistency of refugees’ representations in the UK national mainstream newspapers and the continuing orientalist bias. The study is a comparative analysis of Ukrainian refugees in 2022 to 2023 and Syrian refugees’ portraiture in the UK print media in 2015 to 2016. There was a constant flow of refugees into Europe during both these periods of time; however, the media portrayal was polar opposite in mood and tale. This study asserts that temporal, political, and cultural factors shaped these representations, particularly the experience of covering the Syrian crisis, which subsequently influenced the reporting on the Ukrainian displacement. Using news framing theory and Said’s “Orientalism,” the study elucidates how UK media narratives constructed a hierarchy of victims, privileging European, white, and Christian migrants while depicting Middle Eastern refugees as culturally alien or threatening. The findings demonstrate that orientalist rhetoric continues to shape media portrayals, promoting the normalization of selective empathy and sustaining negative perceptions of Syrian refugees within British public discourse.
This article examines how visual semiotics remains a vital analytical framework for interpreting media imagery, even in the age of generative AI and computational photography. Through a case study of images and texts published by Italian online media during the COVID-19 outbreak, the study explores how visual communication employed symbolic systems, archetypes, and culturally embedded codes to frame the pandemic. Drawing on the work of Barthes, Hall, Rose, and Berger, the methodology combines semiotic analysis with iconological interpretation to decode both denotative and connotative meanings. The findings show that, despite technological advancements in image production and distribution, the visual rhetoric of the pandemic relied heavily on long-standing archetypal narratives—war metaphors, heroic figures, and moral dichotomies—which shaped public perception and emotional response. Examples range from press photographs of deserted urban spaces and militarized public sites to religious imagery and meme culture, including Paolo Miranda’s frontline photography. The analysis demonstrates that such archetypal and symbolic strategies retain their persuasive power in digital culture. In an era defined by algorithmic curation and the proliferation of synthetic media, visual literacy emerges as an essential civic skill—necessary to critically navigate, question, and interpret the images that define contemporary collective experience.
This article explores different discursive representations of Bangladesh’s 2024 anti-quota movement, which played the most critical role in the fall of the Awami League—the then ruling party with a sixteen-year tenure. It discusses, in particular, the disputed connotation of the jargon, “razakar,” which is commonly understood as a historically derogative label for traitors during the 1971 Liberation War of Bangladesh. This article marks how this derogative tag was tactically implemented by Sheikh Hasina and her government to defame the protesters, and consequently, the protesters re-appropriated the term as an emblem of resistance to disparity and an autocratic regime. Incorporating critical discourse analysis, this study dissects the linguistic mechanisms though which the protesters’ voices subverted the government’s framing of conspiracy against them. Through a critical study of Sheikh Hasina’s select statements, select journalists’ statements and comments, media representation of the movement, and public speech from educationist and civil society figures, this article demonstrates the role of language both as an instrument of hegemonic control and as a site of counter-hegemonic struggle. It eventually contends that discursive contestation was central to regulating political mobilization, interceding narratives, and shaping domestic and international perceptions, thereby underscoring the constitutive role of discourse in contemporary socio-political conflict.
