Generative artificial intelligence (AI) has intensified tensions between algorithmic efficiency and human creative labor in affect-driven fan communities. Focusing on Chinese Danmei fandom on Weibo, this study examines how fans move from collective resistance to ongoing negotiation over AI-generated content. Drawing on interviews with 15 fans and content analysis of 302 Weibo posts, it shows that creative labor is understood as a practice of “love,” with time and effort as affective currency. Instant algorithmic production severs the link between labor and affect, so fans judge AI works as lacking affect, aesthetic vitality, and an answerable author. However, fans do not reject AI outright. Tolerance is reserved for low-influence personal accounts and noncommercial use, where little community attention is converted into cultural or commercial capital. The study shows how fans revalorize embodied affective labor to sustain a moral economy of creative value and redraw the ethical boundaries of AI use in artistic production.
This study examines how journalists describe the role of a civil society actor, Indonesia Corruption Watch (ICW), in a collaborative investigative journalism project by the Klub Jurnalis Investigasi (KJI). Using a qualitative case study, it draws on semi-structured interviews with journalists and editors alongside document analysis to examine how peripheral actors participated across reporting workflows. Guided by the hierarchy of influences (HOI) model and journalistic role performance (JRP) theory, the study shows that ICW contributes beyond technical support. According to participants’ accounts and documentary evidence, ICW adds to investigations through agenda setting, data analysis, source facilitation, interpretation and post-publication advocacy. The findings indicate that peripheral actors can shape routines, epistemic authority and public outcomes. Situated in Indonesia's constrained media context, the study highlights how collaboration may create opportunities for non-journalistic actors to become integrated into news production and contribute to public-interest reporting.
Mediatised representations of beauty in contemporary Western societies are premised on the concepts of youth and fitness, especially in cultural industries promoting action sports, including surfing. Female surfers feel pressure from unrealistic beauty standards mediated through the sexualised image of a ‘Surfer Girl’, as White, bikini-clad, thin and young. To investigate the perceptions of female surfers’ media representations, we analyse 30 audio-recorded interviews with female surfers aged from 51 to 71 years. The participants lament unreasonable demands placed on female surfers to look young and beautiful, amplified by surfing industries and sponsors, that coerce them into wearing revealing swimwear like bikinis. They also note that older women surfers are erased from any media coverage, which renders them ‘invisible’ and non-relevant. However, echoing the ideas of ecofeminism, silver female surfers refuse to accept demeaning stereotypes imposed through industry exploitation, masculine domination, as well as colonial oppression, symbolised by a bikini swimsuit. By rejecting media constructions of women as sexual objects and demanding equal representations based on dignity and respect, older female surfers redefine the meaning of surfing and demonstrate the desire to dismantle the ideology of hyper-masculinity in surfing cultures.
Australia's aging population is increasingly culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD), yet aged care systems continue to face persistent challenges in meeting culturally safe care standards. Media coverage plays a critical role in shaping public understanding of responsibility, vulnerability and resource allocation within aged care. However, limited research has examined how institutional media and public social discourse represent challenges affecting CALD residents and workforce members. Guided by symbolic annihilation theory and media framing analysis, this study investigates portrayals of CALD aged care across institutional news media (Factiva) and public discourse platforms (Twitter/X and Reddit). A stratified 20% sample ( N = 310) was drawn from a larger corpus ( N = 1494), integrating quantitative issue coding with qualitative thematic analysis within an interpretivist epistemology. Six themes were identified: workforce strain, cultural competence gaps, communication barriers, isolation and emotional harm, representational imbalances and safety and neglect concerns. Read as media representations rather than direct measures of lived experience, these themes suggest that institutional media tend to privilege governance, crisis management and policy legitimacy, while social platforms more often foreground emotional labour, family distress and the dignity of CALD residents. The findings indicate a representational imbalance that may reproduce symbolic annihilation through omission, selective visibility and the trivialisation of CALD identities. The study argues that representational equity is one condition for culturally safe workforce policy and media accountability. Enhancing the visibility of CALD experiences in public discourse may support workforce development strategies and reforms aligned with human rights and dignity in Australia's aged care system.
TikTok's rising popularity, especially among younger voters, has drawn Australian political parties into new and unfamiliar terrain. Conceptualising political authenticity as a mediated performance, we examine how the Australian Labor Party, the Liberal Party, the Australian Greens, and Pauline Hanson's One Nation shaped political messaging on TikTok during the 2025 federal election campaign period. Through a thematic multimodal analysis of 517 TikTok posts, we analysed how parties adapted their communication to fit the platform's youth-driven vernacular. Findings suggest that parties pursued authenticity by adopting recognisable, but varied, TikTok styles and genres. Our study highlights the connection between political authenticity and the cultural logic of social media platforms. We argue that political authenticity on TikTok is platform-contingent, built around the appearance of cultural fluency that is shaped by the vernacular expectations of the communicative environment of the platform.
