This article draws on - and extends - a paper from the 2025 Cultural Studies Association of Australasia (CSAA) conference. I explore how a process-based approach can support creative and/or academic writers to write with/in heat, engaging with atmospheric effects that elude direct representation. In my creative practice research on literary ambiance, I have moved my focus from content (what texts describe) towards process (what texts do). As a result, my in-situ creative writing research projects make space for what arises between/around/outside words, working from encounters with subtle atmospheric effects. This approach is influenced by Astrida Neimanis and Jennifer Mae Hamilton on weathering and Sofia Samatar and Kate Zambreno on literary tone, among other writing that attends to what is often treated as 'background'. This paper contextualizes this ambient writing ethos, before presenting original creative texts that demonstrate three emergent techniques for writing with heat. These texts engage with heat through conduction (tactility), convection (fluidity), and radiation (emanation). I conclude by considering how such creative techniques could apply to academic writing, especially when words seem to fail.
Since the publication of Serial in the United States, the true crime podcast market in Australia has expanded. The number of Australian true crime podcasts has increased, and there is a large podcast listenership across the country. As crime media can shape the public understanding of offences, victims and perpetrators through the selective emphasis on crime types and crime sources, the proliferation of true crime podcasts raises questions about which crime stories they circulate. While patterns of emphasis are well understood in relation to news, film and television, little is known about the topics and sources covered in contemporary true crime podcasts. To address this gap, this article presents findings from a qualitative content analysis of 360 episode summaries from short-form Australian true crime podcasts. It focuses on identifying the crime topics and sources covered in these texts in addition to the different episode styles. I argue that the subject matter and sources included reproduce dominant mainstream crime media patterns by focusing on fatal violence, particularly with regards to violence against women, while providing a contemporary site for police to maintain their symbolic authority.
This special section offers a new perspective on global communication history by shifting focus from Western media practices to those in post-colonial, semi-colonial and peripheral settings. Four articles examine the cultural and political implications of transnational media and communication practices in Afghanistan, China, Kenya and Romania from the late 19th century through the 1980s. These articles are based on research presented at the Going Global before Satellite and Internet Preconference of the 2024 International Communication Association Conference. This collection fills a gap in the historical study of global media by providing diverse case studies that explore how publics and institutions encountered global media through transnational networks, infrastructures, and organizational and ideological frameworks. This Introduction provides brief overviews of these studies and situates them within the broader global media history scholarship.
