Based on our experiences and archives, we examine how creating giant puppet shows fosters community, creativity, and social justice. We analyze how backstage processes (e.g. building puppets and scripting stories) facilitate community building and collective identity. We also reflect on how the scripts and music project politicized counternarratives that facilitate emotional experiences and consciousness raising. Situating our paper in scholarship on puppetry, we support a holistic approach that considers sociality, narrative, materials, culture, politics, and emotion. We conclude by exploring the limitations and benefits of our own productions and the potential of political puppetry in the contemporary world.

Media education is undergoing rapid changes, brought about by technological innovations that are challenging universities and teachers to acquire new skills. When it comes to teaching immersive media technologies, new affordances like XR technologies have emerged that present opportunities and new challenges. Through a series of pilot workshops and a media education course conducted during 2023 and 2024 between universities in Finland, Norway, and the United States, this article investigates the potential of immersive metaverses to assist universities in international collaboration by creating virtual classroom experiences for students. Moreover, the article compares traditional two-dimensional video collaboration with three-dimensional Virtual Reality (VR) collaboration, highlighting key components for successful international collaboration, including curriculum design, communication skills, cross-cultural understanding, and metaverse platform selection. Despite challenges like platform accessibility and varying VR proficiency, the study shows that VR fosters deeper engagement and cultural exchange. The findings provide a framework for integrating VR into media education, offering recommendations for educators and universities to enhance their teaching practices.

This article traces the history of commercial attempts to merge olfactory mediated scents with visual media and the ensuing turn toward domestic olfactory mediation. From the earliest attempts at scented cinema to the emergence of consumer-grade odor mediating products as Little Trees and Glade, we conceptualize smell as a neglected site ripe for critical media analysis. We argue that the commercial rise of domestic odor mediating technology, such as air fresheners, facilitate a unique form of nature-based simulation where audiences desire the fake over the real and confuse familiar natural odors.

It is an arduous task to communicate the gravity and complexity of climate change in an engaging and fact-based manner. One might even call this a wicked problem; a problem that is difficult to define and does not have one specific solution. Climate communication is a complex societal challenge that needs processes of dialogue and argumentation between a variety of stakeholders to be tackled. In this paper we present a pedagogical approach where thirty-one undergraduate Media and Interaction Design students collaborated with media companies to explore innovative ways to communicate climate change, and make it more engaging for citizens. The students conducted multi-method evaluations of existing journalistic work with citizens from a variety of demographics, and then conceptualized and developed innovative prototypes for communicating climate change causes, impacts, and future potentials. This project demonstrates the potential of innovation pedagogy to establish transdisciplinary collaboration between students and industry partners when dealing with the wicked problems of climate change communication. We explain how the pedagogical method works, describe the results of the collaboration, and discuss the outcome. While the approach has potential to improve climate change communication, it also leads to tension among students due to its normative, problem-oriented approach.

Many U.S. states require divorcing parents to take education classes about the impact of divorce on parents and children. As educators, psychiatrists, social workers, and others create these classes, it is important to evaluate what elements of the curriculum are effective in achieving targeted outcomes. Successful Coparenting After Divorce (https://coparenting.fsu.edu) is a free online divorce education course that focuses on issues such as the emotional impact of divorce, conflict reduction, and skills for parental cooperation. The course also includes videos covering topics including examples of negative and positive parental behavior, and testimonials from children. Pilot testing of the videos and the overall course impact with divorcing parents (n = 218) suggested that the videos’ utility were significantly related to the positive change in parents’ perceptions of their relationship with their former spouse, and their child-focused attitudes. Implications for practitioners who design or provide divorce education to parents are discussed.

The nature and quality of parents’ post-divorce relationships are linked with children’s emotional and behavioral wellbeing. As such, many states require that divorcing parents participate in coparenting education designed to decrease parental conflict and increase cooperation; yet, few of these courses are rigorously evaluated. A new program entitled Successful Co - parenting After Divorce ( coparenting.fsu.edu ) was created to be a freely accessible, online divorce education program for parents of minor children. The program was launched in Florida, but is available nationally for parents, as well as social workers, mental health professionals, and lawyers who assist parents during the divorce process. Description of the training, including innovations in the use of video and technology is provided. An evaluation plan, which includes assessment of co-parenting attitudes and behaviors, mental health symptomology, and childhood trauma is detailed. Future directions for the implementation of the program are discussed. In addition, description of a new measure to assess post-divorce co-parenting behaviors is provided.

This paper explores the emergence of the media reform movement in the state of Florida in 2008. Focusing on the development of a statewide coalition, the paper details the tensions between local and national policy agendas, the barriers faced by local activists as they attempt to build support for the concept of media reform in their communities, and the diversity of interests represented under the banner of media reform. This case study also reveals an ideological bias toward the left among the movement activists currently working in Florida, signaling a need to harness the broad-based dissatisfaction that exists across the political spectrum.