Abstract This article develops Structural Media Capture (SMC) as a theoretical framework for rethinking media power in postcolonial settings. Challenging the universalization of liberal-democratic normative models of the press, it advances a de-Westernizing approach that situates media development within historically specific institutional trajectories rather than universal ideals. The article theorizes from Morocco, with comparative reference to the Arab media context, and identifies three overlapping configurations of capture: post-independence state consolidation, market-driven economic dependency, and platform-based infrastructural control. Its central claim is that these configurations interact and accumulate, producing a layered architecture of media constraint. SMC does more than aggregate accounts of political, economic, or platform domination. It reconceptualizes media capture as a path-dependent and multi-level formation through which older regimes of control persist within newer institutional arrangements. In doing so, the article offers a historically grounded grammar for comparative media theory and proposes a framework for analysis across Global South contexts.
This article advances a cultural perspective that reconceptualizes online self-disclosure as a communicative process. Rather than viewing it as merely individual psychological acts, the framework situates disclosure practices as deeply embedded in broader social and cultural frameworks. Extending Markus and Kitayama's (1991, 2010) theory, this article presents a mutually constitutive dynamic in which cultural orientations configure disclosure motivations and content, adaptation processes enable situated negotiation of norm variations, and individual practices continuously reproduce and reshape collective norms in digitally mediated spaces. Unlike traditional cross-cultural approaches that treat cultural orientations as static national predictors, the model integrates hybridity, multi-level cultural influences, as well as platform architectures as active cultural systems. This perspective reveals how online self-disclosure both reflects and actively reshapes culturally differentiated selves over time and fosters more inclusive theories of online self-disclosure across diverse mediated contexts.
Strategic communication has long treated trust as both a prerequisite for success and a goal in itself. This article challenges that assumption by introducing Trustless Strategic Communication: a framework for achieving reliance when strategic trust is low or contested. Drawing on blockchain-inspired design and philosophical distinctions between trust and reliance, the article specifies core constructs, theoretical propositions, and a mechanism logic. Trust is treated as graded, and "trustlessness" as an ideal type. The framework explains how communicators can reduce trust-dependence through three routes: epistemic, structural, and procedural. A theory-guided qualitative demonstration (seven semi-structured interviews) shows how these mechanisms appear in practice, often in combination, and highlights boundary conditions and ethical risks. Rather than rejecting trust altogether, the "trustless" approach reframes strategic trust as one tool among others. This framework expands the theoretical boundaries of strategic communication and offers guidance for a variety of communication activities in environments shaped by skepticism.
This article presents the concept of hyper-mediatization of politics as a domain-specific refinement of mediatization theory within platformization studies. It argues that digital platforms no longer merely intensify media influence but reorder how political communication and information are produced, distributed, and consumed. Defined as a layered, second-order process, hyper-mediatization unfolds across infrastructural, procedural, and symbolic levels, embedding digital logics-algorithmic curation, data extraction, emotional resonance, modularity, and monetization-into political communication. Hyper-mediatization narrows the analytical lens to politics, clarifying how platform capitalism reconfigures political visibility, autonomy, and participation. Revisiting Str & ouml;mb & auml;ck and Esser's four dimensions of mediatization of politics, this article shows their transformation under platform dependence and hyper-mediatization. It proposes the concept as a testable hypothesis, open to comparison across media systems, political regimes, and regulatory contexts. By bridging institutionalist and constructivist approaches, it refines mediatization theory, providing a precise, context-sensitive model for analyzing conditions of political communication under platformization.
