Conflict and disagreement are integral to healthy democracies, but the extreme polarization observed on many social media platforms poses a serious risk to the core functions of public communication. This theoretical article draws on the concept of connective democracy, further theorizing it to bridge the gap between empirical online deliberation and polarization research. It introduces and refines

Mindful of the spread of negative sentiments toward journalism, scholars have been paying increased attention to audience perceptions of the news media and expectations from journalists (driving an “audience turn” in journalism studies). Adding to this body of knowledge, this study examines audience beliefs on journalistic autonomy, exploring which factors are perceived as influencing journalists.

Facebook groups hold civic potential as fora for connective democracy. Exploring this claim, we offer a contribution to ongoing debates concerning the democratic value of digital communication. Through a mixed-methods approach, including quantitative mapping of approximately 9,000 Danish Facebook groups, netnographic field studies of select groups, and interviews with group moderators, we investigate

In the era of digital communication, social media have often been considered a bastion of freedom of speech, both at national and global levels. However, in Myanmar, the military government has imposed strict control over social media since its coup in 2021, while using them to disseminate authoritarian propaganda. Civilians who have voiced opposition against the regime have been arrested, and foreign

TikTok and the associated technologies for recording and editing short-form video constitute a large and growing portion of online communication. Previous modalities of social media, including static images and especially text, engendered significant attention to the facticity of the communication: was a statement true or false? Did an event actually take place? For a certain genre of stylized, highly

This paper examines how aspirational content creators (ACCs) on the r/NewTubers subreddit forum understand and discuss YouTube’s algorithm. This study employs thematic analysis of 144 r/NewTubers posts that explicitly mentioned algorithms. The analysis reveals four main themes: mythologizing and anthropomorphism, demystification of the algorithm, platform gossip, and community backlash. NewTubers often

Chatbots have become a mundane experience for Internet users. Public sector institutions have recently been introducing more advanced chatbots. In this article, we consider two cases of public sector chatbots, one in Estonia and one in Sweden, seeking to challenge the seemingly coherent understanding of artificial intelligence (AI) in the public sector. The aim is to both question the “thingness” of

This article asks how our capacities to conduct critical research on digital power are influenced by depending, empirically and methodologically, on powerful market actors controlling the underlying research infrastructure. Building on discussions at the intersection between digital methods, political economy and infrastructure studies, we zoom in on three cases of widely used commercial data tools

This article critically examines the social implications of data infrastructures designed to moderate contested content categories such as disinformation. It does so in the context of new online safety regulation (e.g. the EU Digital Services Act) that pushes digital platforms to improve how they tackle both illegal and ‘legal but harmful’ content. In particular, we investigate and conceptualise X’s

This article introduces a special issue exploring emerging empirical approaches to studying infrastructures for datafication and their social, political, and economic implications. The merits of empirical research on infrastructures for datafication are drawn out across seven articles offering diverse methodological entry points to develop our understanding of how datafication processes operate across

We outline the concept of ‘architectures of assetization’ as a way to get at the political-economic configuration of datafication in higher education through the layering of educational technology (‘edtech’) onto existing, legacy infrastructures. Edtech provides a useful empirical object of study because of the increasing deployment of new digital technologies in educational organizations; our focus

This article presents a novel methodology to examine the tracking infrastructures that extend datafication across a sample of 14 menopause-related applications. The Software Development Kit (SDK) Data Audit is a mixed methodology that explores how personal data are accessed in apps using ChatGPT4o to account for how digital surveillance transpires via SDKs. Our research highlights that not all apps

This article calls for systematic analysis of the accumulation and exercise of institutional platform power in the digital economy. We examine how the relatively open mobile advertising ecosystem is nevertheless dominated by a handful of platform conglomerates, most prominently Google, Facebook, and Apple. Although extant scholarship acknowledges the concentration of corporate power in digital advertising

Psychological reactance theory is an important theoretical framework that explains resistance to persuasive messages. However, research has shown inconsistencies regarding the effects of reactance on persuasion, the operational treatment of reactance, and the manipulation of threatening language. This meta-analysis (k = 35, combined N = 10,658) consolidates findings from research on psychological reactance

Political influencers use YouTube to share political media, a practice that has proven integral in the curation of alternative influence networks among the political right. This study examines how Black conservative influencers express Black conservative thought within the broader conservative ecosystem, examining their topics of discussion and comparing these narratives to those of other conservatives

Hate speech is widespread in digital media, and such incidents can harm individuals and fuel hostile discourses. Therefore, understanding the factors that shape bystander intervention is crucial. Despite frequent calls for more research, there is a need for greater understanding of how perceived political and digital media literacy are related to the frequency of various forms of online bystander intervention

Using African Technocultural Feminist Theory (ATFT), this study explored how Nigerian Igbo women fashion designers use Instagram to perform digital identities. While there is extensive literature on self-presentation on social media, there is limited research on African women’s self-presentation from a feminist perspective. The Critical Technocultural Discourse Analysis (CTDA) of Instagram posts and

In October 2019, widespread protests began in Chile after the government announced an increase in transport fare, which gave way to several social demands. A month later, politicians from different sectors reached an understanding that would open the possibility of writing a new Constitution. Two clear sides emerged: those in favor (Approve) and those against (Reject) the new constitutional project

The use of social media by terrorists for live broadcasts can orchestrate a disruptive media event. The conceptualization of viewing as a ritual reveals its social functions. This study examines the emotional reception of the Jewish majority and Arab-Palestinian minority in Israel to the documented Hamas attack on October 7, 2023. Data were collected via a questionnaire distributed to 432 participants

This article uses the dashboard camera (commonly, dashcam) to consider platformed logics of injury. Installed in cars, dashcams are often purposed to arbitrate accidents. In Singapore, however, dashcams have fostered huge communities on social media, who regularly post and comment on dashcam footage. Furthermore, due to the nature of their work, food delivery riders also constitute common subjects

Platformization’s elsewheres refers to other locations and places where platformization as a process takes place. This article focuses on the franchised Japanese convenience store as a particularly salient site from which to understand platformization in Japan. It is also crucial for thinking the platform economy historically and regionally within Asia where Japanese-style convenience stores abound

This article examines how digital platforms construct imperialism in the Asian cultural markets. It discusses the increasing role of global digital platforms in cultural production, referring to the production and circulation of cultural content in Asia. It articulates how global digital platforms in the audio-visual sector, including broadcasting, film, and popular music, have expanded their market

In an era of increasing attention to media trust, some have argued that differentiating between media cynicism and media skepticism (as both attitudinal and behavioral concepts) can advance a more nuanced understanding of media trust and its implications. While previous efforts conceptualized cynicism and skepticism as separate discrete phenomena, this allows the seemingly illogical possibility that

This special issue explores connective democracy, a new theoretical approach to fighting and understanding political polarization and divisiveness online. Connective democracy asks scholars to think about solutions that bridge societal and political divides, particularly on social media. Our collection of six articles theorizes connective democracy and applies the theoretical concept to global situations

The Twitter Moderation Research Consortium is a database of network propaganda and influence operations that includes 115,474 unique Twitter accounts, millions of tweets, and over one terabyte of media removed from the platform between 2017 and 2022. We probe this database using Google’s Vision API and Keras with TensorFlow to test whether foreign influence operations can be identified based on the

Health information behaviors are situational and dynamic in nature. Being confronted with illness-related uncertainty in a specific situation, certain individuals might consistently or temporarily seek, scan, or avoid information and combine these strategies. Relying on an Experience Sampling Method Design study repeatedly querying N = 383 acutely or chronically ill individuals, the study provides

Whether perceived message effectiveness (PME) can be diagnostic for the differences of actual message effect (AME) in campaign message pretesting and how the diagnosticity of PME should be tested have been controversial. To address these issues, we conducted a survey involving 19 campaign messages (N = 760) and statistically analyzed the multilevel relationships among the between-message, within-message

The global spread of political misinformation poses serious challenges to democracies, eroding trust and distorting public discourse. However, research has largely focused on WEIRD countries—Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic—limiting our understanding of how misinformation operates across diverse political, cultural, and technological contexts. This special issue addresses these

Using three U.S. public opinion survey datasets, this study examines whether use of specific social media platforms affects the gaps in factual and perceived knowledge of three wicked science issues among Americans with different racial and socioeconomic makeup. Less-educated Americans are less likely to gain factual knowledge but more likely to gain perceived knowledge from increased social media

Newspapers in most West European countries have historically had strong ties to specific political parties. While formal bonds have vanished, parallelism in news content might still remain; for instance, in a tendency to report more often and more favorably on parties that align with the political leaning of a newspaper. In this article, we ask whether political parallelism exists in newspapers today

This study examines how journalists are grappling with platform migration following Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitterin October 2022. Using a mixed-method approach that combines computational analysis of the activities of 861 journalists on Twitter and Mastodon with qualitative interviews of 11 active journalists, this study aims to (1) examine the extent to which journalists have exhibited different

As part of a broader look at the impact of generative AI, this study investigated the emotional responses of journalists to the release of ChatGPT at the time of its launch. By analyzing nearly 1 million Tweets from journalists at major US news outlets, we tracked changes in emotion, tone, and sentiment before and after the introduction of ChatGPT in November 2022. Using various computational and natural

Extant research on the gendered dynamics on digital labor platforms and care work is divided in terms of focus: (migrant) men involved in supposedly “masculine” work such as driving and delivery, and home-based repair work, and the feminized invisible work performed by women in home-based care-work such as domestic work and beauty work. While such scholarship has merit, it completely dismisses the

In recent years, the scholarly critique of tech power as a form of digital colonialism has gained prominence. Scholars from various disciplines—including communication, law, computer science, anthropology, and sociology—have turned to this idea (or related ones such as tech colonialism, data colonialism, and algorithmic colonization) to conceptualize the harmful impact of digital technologies globally

This article examines the construction of the ideal influencer across two sites of articulation within the influencer ecology: influencer coaches and platforms. It seeks to make visible the normative model that underpins and regulates influencer identities, practices and monetization, which is tied to the interests and values of different actors. Drawing on a sample of 70 TikTok videos and Instagram

In this article, we extend the concept of “postdigital intimacies” by developing its more-than-human and more-than-digital capacities. We argue that while we have witnessed a gradual flattening out of the digital and non-digital, our institutions, regulations, laws, ethics, and policies still make distinctions between digital experiences and “real life.” This demands a refinement of critical understandings

The ability of informal social media networks to facilitate civic participation is a major topic of political and scholarly debate. Some studies find that social media networks support little, low-cost, periodic, and demographically biased civic participation, while others find the opposite. We argue that many studies do not have an adequate point of comparison to determine the contribution of social

After the Canadian oil corporation Enbridge proposed replacing its Line 3 pipeline in 2014, activists began protesting against its environmental risks and violations of Indigenous rights, among other concerns. As the pipeline’s construction progressed and resistance intensified, a parallel discourse emerged online under the hashtag #StopLine3. This study explores the temporal evolution of that discourse

Social media are becoming a growing presence in our cities, filtering our experience of urban place and enabling locations to “go viral.” This article examines the downstream consequences of this new reality, examining how the urban actors who shape the city consider social media in their work. Drawing on ethnographic research and interviews with elite investors in São Paulo’s gentrifying Centro neighborhood

Public communication change (PCC) is often studied in communication research with a somewhat narrow conceptual focus, for instance, either on the contingency or on the determination of communication development. I argue that instead of considering the various extant theoretical approaches as competing and irreconcilable, the field should strive for a holistic understanding that helps integrate them

This article considers how children’s memeability is entangled with commercial sharenting narratives through two case studies of (mothers) influencers and their daughters in Brazil and Portugal. The Brazilian mother privileges cute aesthetics by enchantment in an inspirational sharenting and does not promote the child’s memeability. In contrast, the Portuguese influencer privileges cringe aesthetics

This article examines children’s digital experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic as a specific aspect of digital divide. Utilizing a survey of 2004 English parents aged 20–55 years, the study explores how various factors – including household living conditions, parents’ sociodemographic status and sociotechnical variables such as children’s usage frequency and intensity, expenditure on technology

During the 2023 Nigerian presidential campaign, a variety of political, ethnic, and religious tensions contributed to a significant spike in false and misleading information. To navigate this complex information ecosystem, campaigns set up media units to, in varying degrees, produce disinformation about other candidates, reinforce disinformation being spread on social media, and respond to disinformation

Online platforms have enacted various policies to maintain a safe and trustworthy advertising environment. However, the extent to which these policies are adhered to and enforced remains a subject of interest and concern. In this work, we present a large-scale audit of adult advertising on Twitter (now X), specifically focusing on compliance with its adult (sexual) content advertising policy. Twitter

Drawing from interviews with 39 online extremism and terrorism researchers, this article provides an empirical analysis of these researchers’ experiences with institutional ethics processes. Discussed are the harms that these researchers face in the course of their work, including trolling, doxing, and mental and emotional trauma arising from exposure to terrorist content, which highlight the need

Research on communication in crises across individual, organizational, and societal levels has expanded significantly, with attribution theory frequently used to explain how people interpret these crises. However, research in the three levels of crises has developed independently, limiting theoretical advancement. This study systematically reviews 133 attribution theory based communication articles

Generative chatbots based on artificial intelligence technology have become an essential channel for people to obtain health information. They provide not only comprehensive health information but also real-time virtual companionship. However, the health information provided by AI may not be completely accurate. Employing a 3 × 2 × 2 experimental design, the research examines the effects of interaction

Public and vocal calls by Algerian feminist groups to revise restrictive laws about women during the 2019 Hirak (“protest” in Arabic) were met with physical and online violence from both pro-government and reformist groups. Theories considering the role of public spaces in advancing democratic efforts differ on strategy and method for inclusion of marginalized voices. Through structured open-ended

Journalism quality has been examined primarily through a normative lens and investigated through descriptive methods that overlook news consumers’ actual responses to it. Taking a more empirical, media-effects approach, we explore how a particular index of journalism quality—the quantity of news sources—relates to audience engagement. The concept of multiple news sources inherently involves normative

This scoping review contributes an overview of recent research on effective media literacy interventions and recommendations relevant to cultivating critical mis/disinformation literacies for adults. The review examines articles published between 1 January 2016–22 November 2021 that report on or provide recommendations for media literacy interventions for adults suited to the emerging challenges of

This article delves into the process of technological adaptation to local environments by presenting the case of food delivery platforms in Mexico City. Primarily, it focuses on the tension between design and local economic practices. Given the primacy of cash as an object of economic exchange, platforms facilitate cash payments. Platforms then delegate the task of cash administration to couriers.

Research on the beauty influencer economy highlights the role that racism plays in platform labor, as race is a prominent determinant in the hierarchy of influencers. While the literature on beauty influencers reveals the multi-faceted labor necessary for success in the genre, less attention is given to the ways that skin tone discrimination—or colorism—defines one’s subject position as a beauty influencer

Transborder data flows offer opportunities, such as health data sharing, but they also bring risk. Research has explored the tensions between transnational and regional linkages, striving to understand when transborder flows of data bring benefits or drawbacks. By viewing global data flows as a social change process, this commentary strives to complement existing perspectives. It advocates embedding

Digital media allow users the ability to engage in and be exposed to trolling. Although many people may enjoy the occasional opportunity to witness others being trolled, a relative minority directly troll others, those whom we can label overt trolls. Nevertheless, features afforded on social media and online communities (e.g., likes, upvotes) make it accessible for people to positively react to and

This study integrates the perspectives of issue niche theory and issue ownership theory to examine how variations in issue salience affect the resources available to political organizations affiliated with different parties. Analyzing a database with millions of donors’ political donation records, our time series analysis reveals a nuanced interplay: When some issues associated with Democrats assume

Democratic backsliding has been on the rise globally, including in the established and transitional democracies of the Global North, with populist leaders adopting similar practices of undermining the epistemology of journalism or attempting to capture news media outright. A representative survey with 391 Bulgarian journalists conducted as part of the Worlds of Journalism Study in 2021–2024 shows that

Media effects research has observed significant diversity in the effects of social media on adolescent well-being, with outcomes ranging from positive to negative and, in some cases, neutral effects. In an effort to comprehend and elucidate this diversity, we have formulated The Swiss Cheese Model of Social Cues, a theoretical framework that systematically categorizes potential sources contributing

The #StopAsianHate hashtag movement emerged as a challenge to the rising tide of racism in the United States during the coronavirus pandemic and contributed to the legislation of the Covid-19 Hate Crimes Act. Our research brings together concepts from social movement studies as well as network science and celebrity-fandom studies to examine a corpus of tweets about the movement. We employ a mixed-methods