Journalism and Media doi: 10.3390/journalmedia7040204

Authors: Yasamin Molana Mehrdad Ahmadi Antonio López

The climate crisis and environmental degradation have intensified ecological, social, and economic challenges in Iran, increasing the need for environmental communication that supports public engagement, policy development, and long-term environmental governance. However, environmental reporting remains largely episodic and constrained by political, legal, organizational, and professional limitations. This study develops an empirically grounded conceptual model of sustainable media using a grounded theory approach based on interviews with Iranian journalists, media managers, documentary filmmakers, communication scholars, and environmental experts. The findings conceptualize sustainable media as a model comprising causal, contextual, intervening, strategic, and consequential components. The model proposes that sustainable media can be maintained through the interaction of institutional capacities, including legal protection, economic independence, organizational resilience, scientific expertise, and professional development, with communicative capacities such as agenda-setting, audience orientation, transparency, editorial independence, and collaboration among journalists, scientists, and environmental stakeholders. These capacities support continuous, context-sensitive, and solution-oriented environmental journalism. The study contributes to environmental communication scholarship by integrating perspectives on environmental communication, mediatization, and hybrid media systems into a unified framework in a West Asian context and offers practical insights for strengthening environmental journalism and long-term environmental governance in an ecologically vulnerable and politically constrained environment.

Journalism and Media doi: 10.3390/journalmedia7040203

Authors: Safran Safar Almakaty

Agenda-setting theory has anchored communication research for five decades, yet algorithmic curation, audience fragmentation, and a wave of autocratization have unsettled its founding assumptions. This critical integrative review connects three research traditions that have developed in parallel: the three levels of agenda-setting (object salience, attribute salience, and Network Agenda-Setting, NAS), the Need for Orientation (NfO) as the theory’s psychological mechanism, and comparative scholarship on media systems and regime types. Drawing on 108 sources assembled through structured searches and citation tracing, it traces the migration of agenda-setting from a linear, institutionally governed transfer of salience toward a recursive, algorithmically mediated process, and reassesses the evidence on echo chambers and algorithmic amplification against recent platform experiments. It then examines networked agenda-building in three polarized cases of democratic erosion—Türkiye, Hungary, and India—where state-aligned media bundle national identity with support for incumbents in their coverage, and where direct evidence that these associative networks are adopted by audiences is confined to the Turkish case, in which transfer occurred only among pro-government respondents. The synthesis yields an integrative multilevel model, specified as six testable propositions, in which micro-level orientation, meso-level networks, and macro-level institutions jointly shape salience and in which the media system is expected to condition whether NAS effects are convergent or divergent. It closes with a research agenda centered on networked measurement, algorithmic auditing, NfO–NAS integration, and comparison beyond Western democracies.

Journalism and Media doi: 10.3390/journalmedia7040202

Authors: Georgia Gioltzidou

This study examines journalists’ use of Twitter/X during three periods of political and social crisis in Greece between 2012 and 2023. Using a comparative longitudinal design, it analyses three crisis-related discussions associated with the hashtags #7ngr (2012 Greek elections), #ThisIsACoup (2015 bailout crisis), and #tempi (2023 Tempi train disaster), with the aim of exploring differences in journalistic presence and communication practices across distinct stages in the development of the platform. For each case, an analytical sample of 1000 posts was examined over a defined event-related period, and posts originating from identifiable journalistic accounts were retained for further analysis. Quantitative content analysis was used to classify both the types of journalistic accounts represented and their communication practices. The findings reveal distinct configurations across the three cases rather than a uniform or linear pattern of change. Information dissemination was the dominant journalistic practice in the 2012 sample, while opinion and commentary were more prominent in 2015. In the 2023 Tempi case, information dissemination remained important, but civic engagement accounted for a notable share of journalistic posts, indicating that journalists participated in the broader public discussion surrounding the event beyond a strictly informational role. The composition of journalistic accounts also varied across the three cases, demonstrating the coexistence of traditional media journalists, digital journalists, individual professional accounts, and news organizations within the platform environment. Overall, the study shows that journalists’ use of Twitter/X during crises is characterized by a changing balance among informational, interpretive, opinion-based, and participatory practices, which varies across different event contexts and stages of the platform’s development.

Journalism and Media doi: 10.3390/journalmedia7040201

Authors: Andrés Barrios-Rubio

This article develops a middle-range theory of audience appropriation of journalistic messages in multi-screen, platform-mediated environments through a theory-building systematic review of the literature. This study draws upon a corpus of peer-reviewed research in mass communication, journalism studies, platform studies, and digital media (2000–2025) in order to apply an abductive analytical strategy. This strategy is intended to identify recurring empirical regularities and integrate them into a coherent explanatory framework. The review systematically examines how audiences engage with media across platforms, focusing on processes of content selection, interpretation, and circulation under algorithmically structured conditions. Through iterative comparison and conceptual synthesis, the article identifies three fundamental mechanisms that structure audience appropriation: algorithmic selection, interactive modulation, and social circulation. Rather than conceptualising audience activity as isolated practices, the proposed framework explains appropriation as a socio-technical process shaped by platform architectures, cultural contexts, and levels of media literacy. The study proposes a series of theoretical propositions that are intended to provide a framework for future empirical research. The integration of fragmented empirical findings into a mechanism-based framework is a significant contribution to cumulative theory-building in mass communication, thereby advancing the understanding of audience–platform dynamics in contemporary journalism ecosystems.

Journalism and Media doi: 10.3390/journalmedia7040200

Authors: Marcel Iordache Claudiu Coman Costel Marian Dalban Vlad Bătrânu-Pințea Raluca Maria Șerbănescu Igor Cojocaru

The paper examines the impact of fake news on how individuals perceive information and make decisions. The research is based on an online questionnaire administered to a sample of respondents (N = 275) from the Republic of Moldova (Transnistria), comprising young people and adults active on social networks (77.5% females, 21.1% males and 1.5% not declaring gender). The period of data collection was from 18 February to 2 April 2026. The results highlight that frequent exposure to platforms such as Instagram, TikTok, YouTube and Telegram is associated with more frequent exposure to fake news, especially in areas such as politics, the war in Ukraine and social issues. The model used explains 36.5% of the variance in the perceived impact on individual decisions, 35.3% of the variance in the level of information verification and protection, and 15.3% of the variance in the level of emotional impact. On an emotional level, fake news mainly generates confusion, anger and stress, especially in crisis contexts. These reactions affect the capacity for critical analysis and can lead to uncertainty, information avoidance or lack of verification of sources. On a broader level, disinformation contributes to a decrease in trust in authorities and the media, accentuating social divisions and influencing group decisions through fear, panic and information manipulation. The study highlights the need to develop media literacy, critical thinking and effective fact-checking mechanisms, as well as the important role of online platforms in limiting the spread of fake news. The study provides exploratory empirical evidence on the perceived effects of fake news in the Transnistrian region, an under-researched context characterized by multiple informational influences and specific geopolitical vulnerabilities. The findings provide a contextualized perspective on the relationships between exposure to disinformation, emotional reactions, verification behaviors, and individual decision-making.

Journalism and Media doi: 10.3390/journalmedia7040199

Authors: Ufuk Küçükcan

Media control under contemporary autocratization extends beyond overt censorship, operating through legal regulation, economic dependence, and digital infrastructures. Yet, critical political economy, media-systems research, media-capture scholarship, and work on digital repression have largely theorized these forms within separate analytical domains. This article develops a structured conceptual synthesis rather than a primary-data comparative study, taking the mechanism, not the country, as its unit of analysis: twenty-three country-period illustrations across fourteen contexts show how mechanisms operate, not how often they occur. The mapping compares legal, economic, and digital mechanisms across three positions on the autocratization spectrum—democratic backsliding, competitive authoritarianism, and hegemonic electoral authoritarianism—in terms of instruments, targets, proximate effects, and institutional form. The ordering is ideal-typical and directional, not a historical sequence: legal control from deterrent uncertainty to institutionalized exclusion; economic control from discretionary dependence to closed resource architectures; and digital control from visibility manipulation to pre-emptive governance. Because the three families operate through shared dependencies linking the executive, state apparatus, capital fractions, and media ownership, they are relationally connected rather than independent. The mapping offers journalism and media scholarship a comparative framework for analyzing how media actors’ resources, autonomy, and visibility are reorganized within formally plural media markets.

Journalism and Media doi: 10.3390/journalmedia7040197

Authors: Álvaro Acevedo-Merlano

This essay draws on a delimited corpus of publicly circulating materials associated with Abelardo de la Espriella’s digital campaign in the 2026 Colombian presidential election to examine a form of algorithmic–affective campaigning. Through a qualitative, discursive, and multimodal approach, it examines a core analytical corpus comprising the complete stream with Westcol and six digital posts, supplemented by materials from a broader documentary mapping and journalistic coverage used to contextualize provenance, circulation, and controversies. The central argument holds that the campaign used streaming and generative AI as technological mediations to organize and intensify patriotic and religious language of threat, protection, certainty, belonging, and authenticity. Through the streamed interview with Westcol, a Colombian creator known for gaming content and a large online presence, the campaign staged performative authenticity and proximity through digital codes associated with youth cultures; its use of generative AI contributed to the construction of visual narratives of threat, order, and national salvation. The article develops the notion of the algorithmic homeland and defines it as an imaginary of the nation represented as a threatened, morally ordered community in need of protection, configured through platform infrastructures, media formats, and affective languages. This concept makes it possible to interpret a form of electoral legitimacy construction in which technological mediation and affective languages jointly participate in the production of visibility, proximity, and authority within platform democracy.

Journalism and Media doi: 10.3390/journalmedia7040198

Authors: Mónika Andok

The essay develops a theoretical framework that conceptualizes affective online media rituals as repetitive, platform-mediated communication practices through which collective emotional synchronization, community formation, and social meaning-making occur. The paper employs theoretical triangulation, drawing on three complementary theoretical traditions—ritual communication theory (Carey; Dayan and Katz; Couldry), affect theory and affective publics (Papacharissi), and platformization and deep mediatization theories (Gillespie; Hepp; van Dijck)—to provide a conceptual definition of affective online media rituals and develop a theoretically informed typology of their main forms and functions. The article further argues that contemporary media rituals are different from past broadcast rituals in that they are embedded in algorithmically curated platform environments. To explain this transformation, it introduces the concept of the algorithmic feedback loop, describing how emotional expressions are continuously transformed into data, amplified by recommendation algorithms, and recirculated as increasingly visible ritual performances. This mechanism transforms the production of collective emotional experiences in platform societies. The study also argues that the mechanisms presented are platform-specific; algorithmic amplification is a non-deterministic component of the system and does not necessarily result in enduring engagement or heightened political efficacy in a universal sense. The article contributes to media and communication theory in three ways: first, by introducing the concept of affective online media rituals; second, by proposing a theoretical model of algorithmically amplified ritual communication; and third, by developing a typology that provides an analytical framework for future empirical research on digital publics, platform communication, online participation, and emotionally driven collective action.

Journalism and Media doi: 10.3390/journalmedia7040196

Authors: Chelsea Reynolds Jesús Ayala

News reporters are trained to run toward danger [...]

Journalism and Media doi: 10.3390/journalmedia7040195

Authors: Antonio Alonso Rodríguez

Contemporary media are engineered for speed, and the industries that shape them treat audience attention as a resource to be captured, held, and resold. This article asks what a different tempo communicates. It argues that the rhythm of an audiovisual narrative is itself a communicative act and that the slow, contemplative structures of certain contemporary films can be read as a form of sustainable communication within an accelerated media ecology. The argument extends McLuhan’s thesis that the medium is the message from the medium to the structure of the work, proposing, as an analogy that motivates a research programme, that pace, duration, and the release of narrative attention address the viewer’s relation to time as directly as any content. The study applies a qualitative, interpretive structural analysis, using an operationalized grid of five dimensions (temporal duration and pacing, information release and plot propulsion, attention and engagement strategy, experience and memory quality, and temporal relation and subjectivity) to a purposive corpus of three films, read against the sociology of acceleration and the critique of the attention economy, the slow media and slow journalism movements, and slow cinema scholarship. Through a comparative reading of Wim Wenders’s Perfect Days (2023) and Chloé Zhao’s Nomadland (2020), set against the accelerated model of Whiplash (2014), the article specifies what makes a communicative rhythm sustainable rather than extractive. Sustainability is understood not ecologically but as an ecology of attention, an address that cultivates a shared resource rather than depleting it. The analysis is offered as an illustrative triangulation across three paradigmatic cases rather than as a generalisation about contemporary cinema; its contribution is to place narrative rhythm on the agenda of communication and media research as a variable with consequences for the attention it engages.

Journalism and Media doi: 10.3390/journalmedia7030194

Authors: Bojan Vranić Aleksandar Vranješ

The paper examines student protests in Serbia in 2024/25 through the lenses of student banners and the messages used to communicate with civic allies who do not participate in university blockades. The research question is how a relatively small and hermetic student blockade, a reaction to the tragedy in Novi Sad and violence against students of the Faculty of Dramatic Arts, grew into the most significant protest movement in Serbia after 2015. The authors start from the theoretical perspective that students in blockades exhibit Generation Z communication patterns and that a communication gap exists between digital natives and digital immigrants (over 30 years of age). The empirical part of the paper draws on an archive of photographs of student banners. The research aims to identify the ideological content communicated by the banners across generations, making the 2025 protests one of the most successful examples of mass mobilization in Serbia against state capture and corruption in a hybrid-regime political context.

Journalism and Media doi: 10.3390/journalmedia7030193

Authors: Hüseyin Köse Bahar Balcı Aydoğan

Immersive journalism—a practice that situates audiences within news events through VR, AR, and 360-degree video—has developed steadily since the mid-2000s. Yet how metaverse discourse has reshaped the field’s research agenda remains unclear, as existing bibliometric studies remain descriptive, tracking publication counts without examining whether the metaverse label reflects a conceptual shift or merely a trend. This study addresses that gap using bibliometric and NLP analysis of 143 Scopus-indexed publications (2005–2026). First, the Metaverse Proximity Score, introduced here, shows metaverse-proximate terminology increased nearly fivefold in mean score between 2022 and 2025 (0.48 to 2.29). Second, although empathy-focused studies attract the highest mean citation count (37.4), their share peaked in 2023 (42.1%) before falling sharply to 21.4% by 2025; this “empathy paradox” shows that citation impact and thematic visibility diverge. Third, discussions of trust and disinformation rose markedly over the sample period, reaching their highest share by 2025, though this estimate rests on a small subsample (n = 14) and should be read as directional rather than precise. Projections to 2030 suggest a plausible scenario in which publication volume stabilizes while metaverse-related themes continue to gain influence, suggesting the field may be moving beyond its technology-driven origins toward an agenda shaped by ethical and normative concerns.

Journalism and Media doi: 10.3390/journalmedia7030192

Authors: Tigere Paidamoyo Muringa

This systematic review draws on the concepts of continuous learning and unlearning to examine the emerging competencies journalists need in the AI-driven news environment, focusing on the need to both learn new AI-related skills and unlearn outdated practices. The study reviewed 90 peer-reviewed studies and 10 industry reports published between 2000 and 2025 on AI literacy, data-driven reporting, algorithmic understanding, and AI ethics. The findings reveal a significant gap between the traditional competencies emphasised in journalism training and the evolving demands of AI-enabled newsrooms. The study suggests that journalists must not only learn new skills such as algorithmic reasoning and data analysis but also unlearn legacy practices, including linear workflows and traditional gatekeeping roles. The study identifies continuous learning and unlearning as essential for journalists to maintain editorial autonomy, critical engagement, and ethical responsibility in AI-mediated environments. The study underscores the importance of integrating both learning and unlearning into ongoing professional development to ensure sustainable, effective journalism in the age of AI.

Journalism and Media doi: 10.3390/journalmedia7030191

Authors: Man Luo Louisa Ha

This exploratory mixed-methods research study examined 27 Western YouTubers who are pro-China with over 644 million views and 4.7 million subscribers in 2024. We analyzed their top 10 videos N = 270) with human coding using both qualitative and quantitative content analysis and most-liked comments on these videos using human–machine collaboration with generative AI and audience metrics, showing how influencer marketing techniques can be used to engage audiences and the potential public diplomacy benefits for China on global social media. This study identified the influencer appeals and content attributes in the videos that YouTubers used to promote China’s image and refute the criticisms of China to their Western peers. We found that most videos use Chinese in addition to English, and almost all videos related to China feature at least one China accomplishment icon. Their audiences are mostly a mix of Chinese and Western audiences. These YouTubers’ most common appeals are authenticity and homophily. They present a very friendly character and share their daily experiences in China. Content comparing China with the West or refutation of Western criticism was not found more effective in engaging audiences than videos not using these approaches. By speaking up for China, these YouTubers and their followers form a pro-China community on YouTube, offering perspectives different from what they received from Western mainstream media to global audiences.

Journalism and Media doi: 10.3390/journalmedia7030190

Authors: Simona Bisiani Bahareh Heravi

During a recent review of the article (Bisiani & Heravi, 2023), the authors noticed that some of the values in Table 2 are misaligned in the published version [...]

Journalism and Media doi: 10.3390/journalmedia7030189

Authors: Hyeyun Jung

As content creators increasingly assume roles once associated with journalism, marketing, and entrepreneurship, generative AI is reshaping the conditions under which professional value is produced and recognized. Drawing on ten semi-structured interviews with South Korean content creators and influencer-marketing professionals (185–210 min each, conducted between October 2025 and February 2026), this study examines how creators reconstruct professional value across news production, metric-driven brand partnerships, and AI-assisted content work. Reflexive thematic analysis identifies four themes: market-mediated journalistic norms, metric recalibration from reach to conversion, algorithmic expertise as craft knowledge, and generative AI as a labor environment with a negotiated delegation boundary. Participants delegated routine tasks, including drafting and thumbnail selection, to AI while preserving editorial judgment, planning ability, experiential knowledge, and authentic persona as distinctly human forms of expertise. The study introduces Professional Value Recalibration (PVR) as a conceptual framework for understanding how professional worth is redistributed under algorithmic and AI-mediated conditions. It further shows that these negotiations vary by creators’ scale and market position. The findings contribute to scholarship on platform labor, entrepreneurial journalism, and human–machine communication by showing that AI adoption is not only technological adaptation but also a process through which creator professionalism is renegotiated and, in some respects, reinforced.

Journalism and Media doi: 10.3390/journalmedia7030188

Authors: Muriel Cathérine Wenzel

To understand the current state of affairs in European Union (EU) politics, it is important to consider the role of the media. Local newspapers play a distinctive role in this regard, as they demonstrate both the tangible local relevance and the impact of EU politics. However, critics argue that the EU suffers not only from a democratic deficit but also from deficiencies in legitimacy, communication, and the public sphere. This article presents a theoretical model that shows how local newspapers may influence the top-down and bottom-up dynamics of Europeanization and politicization and thereby help mitigate these deficits. It also reports findings from a qualitative analysis of 34 interviews with journalists, EU correspondents, Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) as well as their staff, representatives of civil society and Europe Direct Information Centers (EDICs) from Germany, Austria, France, as well as interviewees based in Brussels. The analysis shows that the availability of EU information that is perceived as overwhelming, combined with a perceived low level of reader interest in EU affairs, hinders the positive effects of the dynamics of Europeanization and politicization.

Journalism and Media doi: 10.3390/journalmedia7030187

Authors: Marco Centorrino Cristiana Ferrigno

This article examines the “Boomers vs. Millennials” generational conflict as it is constructed within digital meme cultures on Instagram. Drawing on generational theory, media-generation research, and platform studies, it treats generational identities as socially and culturally produced rather than as purely demographic categories. The study adopts a qualitative and exploratory design based on a multilingual corpus of 60 static Instagram memes collected between May and June 2026 through purposive sampling. Memes are analysed as visual–textual artefacts through a four-stage interpretive procedure addressing visual composition and templates, thematic coding, framing strategies, and discursive registers. Five first-order thematic categories are organised into four higher-order analytical dimensions: digital literacy gaps; economic precarity and material inequality; intergenerational responsibility for structural crises; and identity, recognition, and generational boundary-work. The findings show that memes condense structural inequalities into simplified oppositional narratives and use irony, satire, and expectation reversal to redistribute responsibility between generations. Rather than empirically measuring recommendation systems or algorithmic amplification, the article interprets these patterns within the broader platform environments in which memetic communication circulates. The study concludes that memes contribute to generational othering by reinforcing symbolic boundaries while simultaneously providing a space in which dominant narratives of merit, responsibility, and intergenerational justice can be contested.

Journalism and Media doi: 10.3390/journalmedia7030186

Authors: MD Shiyan Sadik Abdul Wohab Sarah Afsari Aurpa Badrul Huda Priam Sakif Al Ehsan Khan Riyasad Iqbal

Climate diplomacy in Bangladesh may reflect a structural gap between two tiers of media coverage. This qualitative study draws on four focus group discussions with 24 district journalists in Cox’s Bazar, Ukhia, Shatkhira, and Shunamganj from four of the country’s most climate-vulnerable districts and semi-structured interviews with 10 Dhaka-based national journalists (N = 34), conducted between August and December 2024 and analyzed through inductive thematic analysis supplemented by concordance-based coding. National participants engage with international diplomatic forums but report limited operational knowledge of ground-level climate impacts, while district-based participants hold granular, project-level knowledge of climate impacts, financial flows, and displacement yet describe themselves as structurally excluded from diplomatic representation. District participants also raised institutional barriers such as NGO and INGO opacity, restricted access to government information, and mismanagement of disaster relief that were largely absent from the Dhaka data and characterized climate financing as politically routed along lines of power rather than community need. These findings suggest that weak diplomatic representation may reflect an information-pathway failure rather than, or in addition to, a capacity deficit, with implications for media-inclusion research in climate governance.

Journalism and Media doi: 10.3390/journalmedia7030185

Authors: Edwin Arango Espinal Paula Andrea López Herrera Carlos Fernando Osorio-Andrade

This study examines the determinants of digital engagement during geopolitical crises, using the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro by U.S. forces on 3 January 2026 as a case study. The aim is to identify which message attributes drive audience interaction and how their effects vary across platforms with distinct communicative architectures. A corpus of 1000 posts collected during the seven days following the event was assembled, evenly distributed between Instagram and X and between Spanish and English, and coded through quantitative content analysis. The effects of news frames, responsibility attribution, message type, format, and source type on likes and comments on both platforms—as well as reposts on X—were estimated using negative binomial regression. Findings reveal that both platforms operate as distinct ecosystems: on X, conflict and legality frames, shock-driven messages, and video amplify interaction, whereas on Instagram, humor emerges as the only robust positive driver. Citizen and influencer accounts substantially outperform institutional sources, explicit responsibility attribution significantly reduces participation—challenging the applicability of Situational Crisis Communication Theory—and Spanish-language posts concentrate higher levels of engagement.

Journalism and Media doi: 10.3390/journalmedia7030184

Authors: Branimir Felger

Artificial intelligence (AI), particularly generative artificial intelligence (GenAI), is influencing journalism and education by transforming professional practices, information production, and media literacy requirements. While generative AI improves efficiency in content creation and educational preparation, it also raises concerns regarding accuracy, credibility, verification, and ethical responsibility. This study examines how generative AI is experienced by journalists and teachers in primary schools in Croatia within the contemporary information ecosystem. Empirical data were collected through semi-structured interviews with ten participants, including five professional journalists and five teachers, and analysed using reflexive thematic analysis. The analysis identified a shared efficiency–verification paradox across both professional groups. Although generative AI reduces the time required for routine cognitive tasks, it simultaneously increases the need for verification, critical evaluation, and ethical judgement. Participants also emphasised the growing importance of AI literacy, critical thinking, and ethical competencies for navigating AI-generated content in professional and educational contexts. The findings suggest that generative AI does not necessarily replace professional expertise but instead redistributes professional responsibilities towards activities requiring human judgement and accountability. This study contributes to a broader understanding of how AI influences interconnected information professions and highlights the need to strengthen competencies required for responsible engagement with AI-generated information.

Journalism and Media doi: 10.3390/journalmedia7030183

Authors: Fabiana Battisti Lorenzo Dalvit Bimbo L. Fafowora

In South Africa, traditional healing and indigenous knowledge systems are formally recognised. However, persistent epistemological domination by the West is reflected in ambivalent attitudes towards culturally specific beliefs and practices. In South African Nguni languages such as isiZulu and isiXhosa, the word ukuthwasa refers to a call to do ancestral work or become a traditional healer. Such a call often manifests itself with symptoms that, from a Western perspective, could be interpreted as suggesting neurodivergence. In recent years, mental health attracted increasing public and media attention in South Africa, where up to one in three people is estimated to suffer from mental health issues. The people concerned are understood and represented in terms of either deficit (medical model) or deviation from the norm (social model). More recent and progressive understandings of disability foreground voice and experience as part of an affirmative model. We analyse purposively selected online texts (X, Instagram, and Facebook posts) concerning ukuthwasa. These provide evidence of social media (self) representations sourced from the accounts of traditional healers, hashtags related to specific incidents, and searches using keywords in English or isiXhosa. Through a qualitative content analysis, presented thematically, the present paper contributes with a critical and decolonial exploration of the representation of ukuthwasa as a culture-bound condition in digital media.

Journalism and Media doi: 10.3390/journalmedia7030182

Authors: Edu William

Journalism and media studies increasingly describe a communication environment in which news, explanation and public orientation are accessed through search engines, social feeds, notifications, short-form video, platform summaries, podcasts and conversational artificial intelligence. Existing accounts identify attention scarcity, information overload, platform power, news avoidance and AI disruption, yet they do not fully explain why some communicative practices become less sustainable while faster forms of orientation expand under the same conditions. This conceptual paper develops an integrative theoretical synthesis across media practice theory, deep mediatization, platform studies, digital journalism, digital reading research, cognitive load theory, acceleration studies and AI-mediated communication. It proposes latency mismatch as a middle-range mechanism of temporal selection. Latency mismatch occurs when the time a practice requires to generate stable understanding exceeds the continuity intervals that a media environment makes available, rewards or treats as reasonable, especially when lower-latency alternatives provide sufficient orientation. The concept clarifies how platformized journalism and media environments govern not only visibility and attention but also the durations through which information becomes meaningful, trustworthy and actionable. It reframes long-form news reading, investigative engagement and other high-latency practices as structurally vulnerable but socially necessary conditions of public knowledge.

Journalism and Media doi: 10.3390/journalmedia7030181

Authors: A.J. Cordeiro

Democratic accountability in journalism has depended on a recoverable attribution chain: a named journalist who gathered information from identified sources and whose editorial choices can be traced, challenged, and corrected. This article reframes that chain as a communicative ritual rather than a mere transmission mechanism. Drawing on the ritual model of communication, Durkheimian ritual theory, and the literature on media rituals and mediatization, it argues that source-crediting practices—bylines, citations, disclosures—are ceremonial forms through which an epistemic community renews its shared commitment to accountable authorship. Specifying the problem of many hands for journalism’s attribution chain, it theorizes attribution diffusion: the progressive indetermination of authorship and responsibility as AI tools, platform intermediaries, and distributed workflows disaggregate the once-unified author role. Four dissolution mechanisms (AI generation opacity, platform republication chains, editorial chain fragmentation, and algorithmic rewriting) are advanced as hypothesized modes of ritual rupture that degrade the attribution order of online media, and are illustrated with documented cases. Existing responses (disclosure norms, content provenance standards, and legal frameworks—assessed here across both US and EU instruments) are found to preserve the form of the attribution ritual while dissolving its accountability substance. The article proposes a three-study empirical agenda, sketches a provisional structural intervention—an editorial-ratification production trail—derived from the ritual account, and specifies what restoring the attribution ritual in platformized, AI-mediated journalism would require.

Journalism and Media doi: 10.3390/journalmedia7030180

Authors: Mauro Marino-Jiménez Alice Colombi

This paper analyzes the systemic threat of election-related Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference (FIMI) and Generative Artificial Intelligence (GAI) across recent Latin American electoral cycles in Guatemala (2023), Ecuador (2025), and Honduras (2025). Integrating the FIMI behavioral taxonomy with the DISARM framework and systems dynamics, we compare the transition from traditional digital propaganda to industrialized “algorithmic campaigns” driven by deepfakes, voice cloning, and media impersonation. Methodologically, we audit a database of documented media impersonations alongside international electoral observation reports. Our comparative analysis suggests that even if synthetic content cannot be shown to directly alter individual votes, it appears to reshape the emotional and symbolic climate of elections, which appears to exacerbate affective polarization and institutional distrust. We contextualize these dynamics within the slop economy—a structural digital divide in information quality between digital elites and digital commoners. Arguing that top-down regulations are insufficient against these decentralized threats, we propose a decentralized democratic defense model based on Jean Cloutier’s émirec concept, introducing cognitive friction into digital consumption to foster bottom-up epistemic resilience.

Journalism and Media doi: 10.3390/journalmedia7030179

Authors: Ricardo Morais

If, ten years ago, someone had told me it would be possible to access news through digital influencers, I might have had some difficulty believing it and could even have thought I was facing some sort of dystopia in the media landscape [...]

Journalism and Media doi: 10.3390/journalmedia7030178

Authors: Brian Creech

Post-industrial Pennsylvania faces a wave of AI data center development, arriving in communities whose capacity for local news has sharply diminished. This article examines how a reconfigured news ecology renders data center development, and its attachment to AI, sensible as a political concern. Through critical analysis of news coverage produced by local legacy outlets and statewide nonprofit and public media newsrooms, it shows how reporting constitutes data center development differently depending on venue, scale, and genre. Municipal meeting coverage renders data centers a matter of zoning procedure, while state-level reporting constitutes them as a matter of legislative and electoral contest, tracking resistance as a political variable. Long-form features situate economic promise and environmental cost within the life of a community, giving voice to residents’ lived experience and resistance to development. Across coverage, reporting makes legible the procedural, legislative, cultural, and economic constraints within which resistance to AI data centers operates. The article concludes that, within this corpus, journalism’s representational authority—the capacity to set the scale of a controversy, legitimate actors and grievances, name the political options available, and delimit plausible outcomes—has narrowed in range, but still retains capacity to render data center development legible as a matter of politics and procedure.

Journalism and Media doi: 10.3390/journalmedia7030177

Authors: Catherine Son

Mainstream journalism has encountered multiple crises in recent decades, such as declining trust, the collapse of revenue models, and competition for audiences across a fractured digital media ecosystem. Concurrently, social media has emerged as a platform for audience-driven news agendas that are now shaped outside of the mainstream news media ecosystem. This study proposes a five-factor framework of inter-audience agenda setting to better understand the digital audience influence dynamics at play when news audiences share and critique journalism on social media. Using thematic analysis, this research analysed commonalities in 75 studies from the adjacent literature on social media agenda setting, digital marketing, digital publics research, intermedia agenda setting and two-step flow theories. From this, the five factors identified and proposed to underpin the inter-audience agenda-setting process are: replication of object/agenda, affirmation of judgement, validation of perspectives, need to align with the majority, and trust in one’s peers. Greater understanding of inter-audience agenda-setting processes on social media is proposed as another potential mechanism for journalism to stem declining audience trust and increase audience engagement in a fractured digital media sphere.

Journalism and Media doi: 10.3390/journalmedia7030176

Authors: Ana Balda Álvaro Pérez Álvarez

This article presents and analyses an interview with Cristóbal Balenciaga published in ¡Hola! in 1954, previously absent from the academic corpus on the Spanish couturier. The interview constitutes a significant discovery that substantially expands the documentation available on the designer, who has traditionally been described as reluctant to engage with the media. The study situates the interview within a dual context: first, the business and geopolitical environment of postwar haute couture, shaped by tensions between Paris, Spain, and the American market; and second, the editorial context of ¡Hola! during the 1950s, marked by its rapid expansion and transnational circulation. Through a qualitative analysis combining historically grounded approaches based on primary sources, studies on the journalistic interview genre, and close textual reading, the article examines the narrative strategies employed by journalist José A. Irurozqui, the strategic choice of publication, and the content of Balenciaga’s statements. The findings demonstrate that the prominence given to the designer’s first-person voice, the journalist’s narrative framing, and ¡Hola!’s editorial positioning all contributed to consolidating a public image of the couturier and of his brands in Paris and Spain.

Journalism and Media doi: 10.3390/journalmedia7030175

Authors: Muhammad Usman Saeed

The news media in Gulf countries are among the most important institutions shaping the public’s understanding of climate action. This study aims to explore the longitudinal developments, thematic framing, and sentiment tones of Omani English-language newspapers’ sustainability discourse during the period 2015–2025. The study applied a multi-stage computational method to analyze a deduplicated corpus of 709 news articles from two English-language dailies of Oman: Times of Oman and Oman Daily Observer for a time period from 2015 to 2025. Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) topic modeling was used to group topics into five types of macro frames. Results show that the focus of the Omani media is very localized, and the dominant frames are “Corporate ESG, Business & Green Investment” and “Clean Energy Policy, Research & Institutional Governance”. Furthermore, a sentiment analysis of headlines using VADER showed clearly defined sentiment polarity; domestic economic transition headlines were characterized by high positive polarity, while global climate crisis headlines had a higher negative polarity. The study concludes that the press in Oman is in a strategic process of “nationalizing” the climate change issue, moving from the conventional disaster discourse to making sustainability a local opportunity for economic diversification, technological modernization, and national resilience.

Journalism and Media doi: 10.3390/journalmedia7030174

Authors: Sibel Karaduman Nusret Demir Murad Karaduman Çiler Çilingiroğlu

After major disasters, news media selectively construct the public record of what has been lost. This study examines that pattern by comparing an independently derived satellite-based inventory of damaged cultural heritage in Hatay, Türkiye, with a corpus of 79 Turkish-language online news reports published between February 2023 and February 2024. Under the primary retrieval protocol, only 16 of the 86 ARIA-export assets appeared directly in the coverage; with six further off-export or proximity-based cases, 22 reported assets entered the news in total. A targeted asset-name search then located 15 further reports, containing 17 additional direct references to damaged assets. Even on the most inclusive reading, in which every one of these references is treated as a previously uncounted and non-overlapping asset, at least 53 of the 86 assets (61.6%) remained outside the news record. The analysis also covers attribute salience, temporal patterns, and outlet concentration in the coverage. Drawing on first- and second-level agenda-setting theory, and treating gatekeeping and media-system conditions as contextual mechanisms, it defines visibility deficit as the measurable gap between independently documented damage and the damage that enters a defined news corpus. This gap need not imply deliberate suppression. It may follow from editorial priorities, limited access to sites, the availability of visual material, or the limited capacity of newsrooms to work with geospatial data. By attending to what stays outside the news agenda rather than only to differences in salience among covered items, the study identifies a structural boundary of agenda setting and extends agenda-setting research into measurable non-coverage after disaster.

Journalism and Media doi: 10.3390/journalmedia7030173

Authors: Jessy de Cooker

To better understand how journalists represent sources, it is necessary to systematically study the use of reported speech in news coverage. This paper presents a method for LLM-assisted content analysis to identify and classify reported speech in Dutch newspapers automatically. The study evaluates a three-step procedure utilising role-based instructions to prompt the model as a professional journalist. First, a codebook for identifying citation structures and source types was developed with LLM support and then manually verified. Second, inter-coder reliability between human coders and the LLM was assessed on a representative sample of Dutch news articles using a human-in-the-loop validation approach. Third, the prompt-engineered LLM was used to code a large corpus spanning seven decades (1950–2024). Manual verification of 16,689 citations shows a weighted F1-score of 0.75, which aligns with recent benchmarks for high-capacity models performing complex journalistic coding. While human oversight remains the benchmark for reliability, due to issues such as repeated citations that were given as examples in the used prompts and representational bias, LLM-based systems perform sufficiently well for large-scale analyses of journalistic source use. The paper concludes that hybrid human–AI workflows provide a practical bridge between traditional rule-based approaches and new generative models, offering scalable and cost-effective methods for studying source representation in journalism.

Journalism and Media doi: 10.3390/journalmedia7030172

Authors: Amaia Perez-de-Arriluzea-Madariaga Jordi Morales-i-Gras

Recent journalism and media research increasingly uses embeddings, transformer-based models, and large language models, yet the methodological functions remain unevenly conceptualized. This article examines how vector-based and semantically oriented methods are incorporated into journalism and media studies and proposes a theory-informed framework of four recurrent methodological functions: semantic mapping, interpretive assistance, cross-scale articulation, and reflexive auditing. We conducted a structured review of English-language journal articles and review articles indexed in Scopus and Web of Science between 2022 and April 2026. The review combined database retrieval, conservative LLM-assisted metadata screening, full-text analytical extraction, expert manual validation, descriptive analysis, exploratory association tests, and an embedding-based map built from article-level analytical profiles. The final corpus comprised 43 articles. Empirical studies of news texts predominated, and semantic mapping was the most frequent primary methodological function. The profile-based map identified four moderately differentiated and overlapping communities centered on reception and circulation, semantic mapping of news content, affective and evaluative discourse analysis, and methodological infrastructure-building. Community membership aligned more strongly with media domain than with study type or primary methodological function, although these patterns are interpreted heuristically given the small corpus and low expected cell counts. The findings show that these methods are best understood as components of hybrid research designs combining semantic formalization, interpretation, validation, and scale-sensitive analysis.

Journalism and Media doi: 10.3390/journalmedia7030171

Authors: Samuel Ajala

This article examines how Nigerian newspapers frame Shell’s sustainability claims and asks whether that framing enables or challenges greenwashing by proxy: a pattern in which a corporation’s environmental claims gain the credibility of independent journalism through a news outlet’s editorial choices rather than paid advertising. Using critical discourse analysis, I analyze 96 news reports, investigations, and opinion columns published between 2020 and 2024 in five Nigerian dailies, Premium Times, The Guardian Nigeria, ThisDay, Vanguard, and Punch, selected for addressing Shell’s environmental or sustainability claims. I identify three recurring mechanisms: uncritical reproduction of corporate press releases, reliance on corporate and government sources with little independent verification, and framing that foregrounds favorable claims while omitting the contrary environmental record. These mechanisms are more pronounced in ThisDay, Vanguard, and Punch, while Premium Times and The Guardian Nigeria more often contextualize or contest Shell’s claims.

Journalism and Media doi: 10.3390/journalmedia7030170

Authors: María Ruiz Carreras

Non-human animals are systematically excluded from public narratives, rarely recognized as sentient subjects, and instead framed within anthropocentric narratives of production and consumption; efforts to challenge this pattern and make the more-than-human world visible often encounter editorial resistance and structural constraints. This study examines how anti-speciesist journalists in Spanish written media navigate such resistance to make non-human animals legitimate subjects of news. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with nine self-identified anti-speciesist journalists, analysed through reflexive thematic analysis, the study identifies strategies organized across four non-mutually exclusive categories, namely, discursive, relational, framing, and structural, ranging from self-censorship and strategic language use to coalition-building and the creation of independent platforms. Findings reveal a key distinction between visibility strategies, which succeed in securing publication, and root-level strategies, which challenge the carnist and anthropocentric assumptions structuring newsworthiness itself. These practices reveal the pragmatism, creativity, and resilience of journalists working under structural, ideological, and normative constraints, while also highlighting the limits of anti-speciesist reporting within mainstream media. The study contributes to Critical Animal Media Studies, environmental communication, and journalism research by illuminating the intersection of ethical advocacy, professional strategy, and counter-hegemonic practice and offers recommendations for expanding coverage of the more-than-human world across ideological, editorial, and structural divides.

Journalism and Media doi: 10.3390/journalmedia7030169

Authors: Casey R. Schmitt

This essay applies close textual analysis to news reports covering the 20 November 2025 fire at the United Nations COP30 meeting in Belém, Brazil, to demonstrate how allegory can manifest in journalistic reporting of real-world events. It argues that allegory can, intentionally or unintentionally, occur in reports given specific circumstances, existing themes in the journalistic record, and other contexts. Analysis identifies and demonstrates the recurrence of two prominent allegorical themes across reports of the COP30 fire: one attending to victims, harm, and panic and another attending to disruption and failure. Discussion highlights how such incidental allegory—different from deliberately crafted or fully accidental allegory—guides audiences to conceptualize literal events within a web of literary and conceptual contexts and, thus, holds the capacity to frame understandings and future discourse related to climate action.

Journalism and Media doi: 10.3390/journalmedia7030168

Authors: Miao Guo Carolyn A. Lin Brett Andrew Williams

Recent concerns about disinformation have increasingly centered on AI-generated synthetic media like deepfakes. This study uses online experiments to examine how individuals process and evaluate political deepfake news, which characteristics predict their susceptibility, and the potential cognitive, attitudinal, and behavioral effects after exposure. The findings reveal that embedding political deepfake videos in social media newsfeeds can easily deceive or cause uncertainty among news audiences. Political orientation, confirmation bias, and news literacy significantly affect audiences’ skepticism toward social media information, their perceived credibility of deepfake news, and their intention to engage with it. Moreover, familiarity with news issues fully mediates the relationship between news literacy and engagement with deepfake news. The theoretical and practical implications are discussed to highlight the critical issues posed by AI-generated disinformation, which has increasingly affected the creation, distribution, and consumption of media content.

Journalism and Media doi: 10.3390/journalmedia7030167

Authors: Carmen Beatriz Fernández Jenifer Campos

Across Latin America, digital technologies helped cushion some of the pandemic’s worst effects, creating new opportunities that were not equally distributed between men and women. This study analyzed three waves of Latinobarometer data across 17 countries before, during, and after the pandemic to examine gender differences in labor perceptions and digital skills. The findings indicate that women consistently reported higher levels of perceived poverty and greater concern about unemployment than men. To assess the digital labor divide, the study developed a Digital Dexterity Index (DDI) based on social media use and educational attainment. Results indicate that the pandemic accelerated digital skill development for both genders, with statistically significant changes over time. Although women generally scored slightly higher than men on the DDI, patterns varied across countries. The study highlights a paradox: higher digital dexterity among women did not translate into greater confidence or security in the future of work. Despite their stronger digital skills, women expressed greater anxiety about their future labor-market prospects than men.

Journalism and Media doi: 10.3390/journalmedia7030166

Authors: Vera Katzenberger Jonas Schützeneder Michael Grassl

Taking a closer look at the development of podcasts and their current role in global media use invites an analogy with a well-known concept from economics: the hidden champion [...]

Journalism and Media doi: 10.3390/journalmedia7030165

Authors: Abdullateef Mohammed Chisom Achinivu Adeola Abdulateef Elega

Over the last few years, TikTok has become one of the most notable social networking apps, allowing users to upload videos with the possibility of gaining popularity. This has given rise to the emergence of influencers native to the platform. While Global North–focused TikTok studies have empirically examined the media economics of this platform in various capacities, emerging markets have experienced a research dearth in this regard. To understand the strategies they employ to monetize, as well as the challenges they face in generating revenue, this study interviewed 23 Nigerian TikTok influencers between the ages of 19 and 26. We find that Nigerian TikTok influencers rely on a mixture of brand partnerships, sponsored promotions, referral systems, cross-platform visibility, collaborative growth strategies, and account-region bypass to generate income within a platform environment that offers limited direct monetization opportunities to creators. The findings further show that influencer labour in the Nigerian context is shaped by unstable payment systems, algorithmic dependence, brand distrust, and the constant pressure to remain visible and relevant. Beyond economic concerns, the study reveals that creators experience emotional strain arising from online harassment, body shaming, and the psychological demands of continuous self-presentation.

Journalism and Media doi: 10.3390/journalmedia7030164

Authors: Gui Jun Nasrullah Dharejo Mumtaz Aini Alivi

This systematic review investigates the application of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) in journalism and media practice from 2020 to 2026. Following PRISMA guidelines, we analysed 121 peer-reviewed articles from Scopus and Web of Science using a multi-method approach that combined qualitative thematic analysis, structural topic modelling (STM), and bibliometric network analysis. Four primary research domains emerged: news production and automation (38.0%), audience perception and content analysis (24.8%), ethical and legal considerations (19.8%), and meta-research and implementation studies (17.4%). Publication output accelerated sharply from 2023 onward, driven by the emergence of large language models and generative AI. The STM analysis confirmed the four-domain structure and revealed that legal-regulatory vocabulary pervades the literature across all categories, indicating a field-wide preoccupation with the institutional implications of AI. Key findings demonstrate that successful AI adoption depends on workflow redesign and human–machine collaboration rather than full automation; that audience evaluations of AI-generated content vary significantly across cultural contexts, with the machine heuristic—originating from Sundar’s MAIN model—playing a central mediating role; and that copyright frameworks for AI-generated news remain contested across jurisdictions. This study develops an integrated theoretical framework that maps directional relationships among the four research domains, identifies cultural context and disclosure practices as key moderators, and generates testable propositions for future investigation.

Journalism and Media doi: 10.3390/journalmedia7030163

Authors: Alwazna Falah Hessa Khalid Abdulrahman Sh Mohd Noor Almuhairi Humaid Khalifa Sultan Jaber AlMutaiwei Vladimir Tomašević Jelena Raut Duško Tomić Nikola Živković

The rapid proliferation of social media has transformed political communication, public diplomacy, and citizens’ digital attitudes across the MENA region—a context marked by hybrid political systems, intensive disinformation, and accelerating digital transformation. This study examines how social media use and media literacy are associated with five key constructs—institutional trust, trust in media and digital sources, attitudes toward political narratives, attitudes toward digital diplomacy, and security and disinformation perceptions—among 250 citizens of Egypt, Jordan, Tunisia, and Kuwait, alongside generational and educational differences across all constructs. Using a quantitative cross-sectional design, data were collected via an online questionnaire between January and March 2025 and analyzed through simple linear regression (H1–H10) and Kruskal–Wallis tests (H11–H24). Twenty-one of twenty-four hypotheses were confirmed. Social media use was a strong negative predictor of institutional trust (β = −0.750, R2 = 0.562) and a strong positive predictor of political narrative awareness, digital diplomacy attitudes, and security perceptions; media literacy showed a parallel pattern. Educational level was the strongest differentiating factor in media literacy competencies (χ2 = 175.874), far exceeding generational effects. Notably, trust in media and digital sources showed no significant association with either predictor or demographic variable across four independent tests, suggesting that—unlike the other constructs examined—media trust in the MENA region is shaped less by individual competencies or behaviors and more by structural and political factors. These findings support extending formal, curriculum-based media literacy education and point to the need for media trust research grounded in non-Western political contexts.

Journalism and Media doi: 10.3390/journalmedia7030162

Authors: Rahima Aissani Haneen Mohammad Shabaneh Haneen Bahij Kanaan Ibrahim Ibrahim Elshenawy

This study aims to analyze digital transformation in institutions as a structural shift that reshapes the logic of communication, patterns of power, and mechanisms of trust building within organizations. This study is grounded in the assumption that digitalization is no longer limited to the adoption of technical tools but has evolved into an organizational and governance framework driven by algorithms and recommendation platforms, with direct implications for communication practices, levels of transparency, and organizational culture. This study adopts a descriptive–analytical approach based on a critical review of peer-reviewed academic research published from 2019 until the beginning of 2026. To ensure methodological rigor and transparency, the review process follows the PRISMA guidelines. Relevant studies were identified through comprehensive searches of major academic databases (Scopus, Web of Science, and Google Scholar), and the final sample contained all scholarly publications that address digital transformation in institutional communication within the specified timeframe. The number of studies that met the conditions amounted to 92 studies and reports. The sample draws on several theoretical frameworks, including technological determinism, communication visibility, diffusion of innovations, and uses and gratifications, thereby enabling a comprehensive examination of the relationship between digital transformation and institutional communication from a closed hierarchical model into an interactive networked system increasingly shaped by algorithmic logics and governance mechanisms that redistribute visibility and influence within institutions. The results suggest that the success of digital transformation is more closely associated with organizational culture and transformational digital leadership than with technical infrastructure alone. Moreover, audiences have become active co-producers of meaning and trust through interaction and user-generated content. In conclusion, digital transparency and organizational communication visibility constitute key foundations of institutional trust, highlighting the need for clear frameworks of digital transformation, particularly in the Arab context.

Journalism and Media doi: 10.3390/journalmedia7030161

Authors: Aly Hill Avery E. Holton Valérie Bélair-Gagnon

As violence and professional precarity intensify for journalists, resilience has become a central framework for understanding how journalists continue working under sustained risk. However, journalism studies research has largely conceptualized resilience through hierarchical models that distribute responsibility across bounded levels of authority. This conceptual article offers a critical synthesis of journalism studies research, resilience scholarship, ecological approaches, and public health prevention frameworks to examine how existing models align with contemporary threats toward journalists. We first map prevailing orientations to resilience (e.g., individual, organizational, and institutional) and show how these models can privilege episodic or reactive responses to journalistic harms and obscure gaps in coordinated interventions to mitigate violence. We then advance an ecological reorientation of journalistic resilience grounded in networked ecologies. We propose a three-part framework (individual-in-relation, collective, and networked) that conceptualizes resilience as a relational and cross-institutional capacity. Finally, we introduce public health prevention models as a translational lens for operationalizing ecological resilience as coordinated infrastructure spanning prevention, intervention, and recovery. This framework offers a conceptual foundation for studying and strengthening resilience across contemporary media environments.

Journalism and Media doi: 10.3390/journalmedia7030160

Authors: Foteini Gioltzidou Georgia Gioltzidou Theodoros Chrysafis

The ontological status of journalism in Greece has long been marked by a profound tension between the perception of the field as an innate craft and its institutionalization as an academic discipline. This paper investigates the perceived utility of university-level journalism education and its impact on professional identity within the Greek media landscape. Utilizing a quantitative methodological approach, the study involved the distribution of structured questionnaires to professional journalists in Greece to capture their attitudes toward academic training, press freedom, and contemporary journalistic practices. The findings suggest differentiated perceptions within the professional community, reflecting an ongoing negotiation between practical experience and academic approaches to journalism. Notably, despite the fact that only a small fraction of the surveyed journalists hold academic degrees in journalism, a large proportion of respondents acknowledges the utility of specialized higher education for aspiring professionals entering the field. Furthermore, the study explores how these perceptions correlate with views on press autonomy and ethical challenges, emphasizing consensus on the positive contribution of university education to journalistic practices related to press freedom and editorial independence. However, a persistent “theory-practice gap” remains evident, as respondents identified deficiencies in journalism curricula regarding preparation for practical demands and real-time reporting. Ultimately, the findings reveal strong criticism of the current state of press freedom in Greece, highlighting the need to re-evaluate the role of higher education in strengthening the professional legitimacy and democratic mandate of Greek journalism.

Journalism and Media doi: 10.3390/journalmedia7030159

Authors: Murad Karaduman Mehmet Arif Arık Sibel Karaduman

Digital capitalism is often described either as a clean break with the past or as a continuation of older markets. This article takes a third position: digital capitalism is a reorganisation of capitalist accumulation around platforms, data, attention and digital labour, not a departure from capitalism’s basic logic. The study uses a critical narrative review approach, drawing on Marxian value theory and recent work on platforms, datafication and surveillance. It is anchored by a curated set of publicly reported indicators from institutional and market sources, used as context rather than as a causal test. These show a platform environment that reaches most of humanity, highly concentrated advertising and cloud markets, platform labour as a global phenomenon, and a supposedly weightless economy resting on dense physical infrastructure. The article traces four contradictions: the commodification of unpaid user activity, the material basis of immaterial production, the concentration of market power, and the gap between participation and algorithmic control. The contribution is conceptual. It shows that media business models usually treated as separate, including advertising, subscriptions, creator monetisation, in-game spending and platform commissions, share one logic: user activity is captured as attention, measured as data and converted into revenue. New media therefore function as economic infrastructures for value extraction.

Journalism and Media doi: 10.3390/journalmedia7030158

Authors: Dag Øivind Madsen

This article uses Clavicular, a controversial livestreamer who became a prominent public face of looksmaxxing in early 2026, as a trace-supported case study of fringe diffusion under platform conditions. Using public media traces, platform snapshots, and public visibility indicators, it examines how a niche masculine self-optimization culture becomes broadly legible. The article introduces diagnostic masculinity—a platformed style of masculine authority built on naming, ranking, and promising correction of bodily lack—as a working concept to explain why looksmaxxing resonates with boys and men beyond platform affordances alone. Drawing on scholarship on digital masculinity, platformization, and meme circulation, it argues that Clavicular’s rise depended on the alignment of coded vernacular, high-volume livestreaming, clipping infrastructure, controversy, monetization, and mainstream media translation. The article proposes a five-stage model of containment failure—vernacular incubation, infrastructural assembly, controversy acceleration, mainstream translation, and parodic consolidation—through which fringe masculine self-optimization becomes culturally portable without becoming fully normalized. The case shows how platform systems do not merely amplify fringe masculinities but package them into forms that can circulate across media environments that would otherwise remain separate.

Journalism and Media doi: 10.3390/journalmedia7030157

Authors: Victoria Fielding Stewart Sutherland Susilo Wibisono Emily A. Haines Janquel D. Acevedo Winnifred Louis

This study of media consumption in relation to voting decisions during the Australian 2023 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice to Parliament referendum contributes to a complex field of research interested in how media shapes and influences voting behaviour. Through a two-wave panel survey of 1525 voters a month before and directly after the referendum, this study found clear differences between voters who were stable—those who had made up their mind a month before they voted, and voters who were unstable—those who had uncertain views. Stable voters were found to selectively expose themselves to media that aligned with their voting intentions and to consume more types of media overall. Conversely, unstable voters did not selectively expose themselves to media and consumed fewer types of media than stable voters. These findings demonstrate that the relationship between media consumption and democratic processes is complex. Media can have a positive influence on engagement and can present a range of views to help voters make informed decisions. But media can also contribute to disengagement from democratic processes, which has concerning implications for the health of democracy.

Journalism and Media doi: 10.3390/journalmedia7030156

Authors: Mikail Batu Esra Büdün Aydın Ali Yarar Esra Çokdilli

TikTok is a short-form video-sharing platform launched in 2016 by the China-based ByteDance under the name Douyin. Following its merger with Musical.ly in 2018, it rapidly gained global popularity. The platform has influenced individuals’ digital communication habits through its short video format and user-centric content creation capabilities. TikTok’s rapid access to its young user base presents significant opportunities for organizations and brands, but also brings risks such as data privacy and content security. TikTok’s dynamic algorithm prioritizes content based on users’ interests, enabling rapid access to a wide audience. A qualitative phenomenological research design was employed. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 15 influencers collaborating with brands on TikTok. The content was analyzed using MAXQDA Analytics Pro 24 (Release 24.1.1). TikTok provides significant advantages such as visibility, viral content, and engagement with young audiences. However, challenges include content moderation, algorithmic uncertainty, and payment and trust issues. TikTok should be considered a priority channel, especially for campaigns targeting young audiences. Influencer collaborations have a positive impact on brand awareness, consumer trust, and engagement. The platform’s user-friendly tools, trending structure, and short video format allow brands to run creative campaigns on a low budget. However, some structural challenges, such as content control and trust issues, necessitate a professional and transparent collaboration model.

Journalism and Media doi: 10.3390/journalmedia7030155

Authors: LJ. Filotrani

This article examines how journalism is practised beyond institutional frameworks in the United Kingdom, using esports journalism as a case through which to explore professional identity, labour conditions, and journalistic authority. Drawing on a mixed-methods design, the study combines content analysis of UK mainstream media coverage, surveys of journalists, and eight semi-structured interviews with esports journalists. The findings reveal a substantial divergence between journalistic practice and professional recognition: participants routinely performed core journalistic functions while often rejecting the identity of ‘journalist’ and entering the field through informal pathways. Labour conditions were characterised by precarity, freelance work, and the blurring of editorial and commercial roles, while access to information was frequently mediated by industry stakeholders. Mainstream media engagement with esports remained limited, indicating the existence of a specialist journalism ecosystem operating largely outside established institutional structures. Esports journalism therefore provides a useful analytical case through which to understand processes of de-professionalisation, in which institutional boundaries weaken while journalistic work extends beyond established professional frameworks. The study argues that the growing separation between journalistic practice and professional recognition invites a reconsideration of how journalism is defined, organised, and legitimised within platform-based media environments.

Journalism and Media doi: 10.3390/journalmedia7030154

Authors: Alper Çolak Yağmur Çolak Asiye Ata

Eye-tracking technology, which offers the potential to objectively measure user behavior in digital news environments, has drawn growing interest in journalism studies. This study aims to systematically review studies examining news consumption through the eye-tracking method and evaluate the thematic orientations, methodological characteristics, and findings from a holistic perspective. As a result of a search conducted in the Web of Science database and the subsequent multi-stage screening process, 69 studies were included in the analysis. The findings reveal that, since 2008, the field has undergone a thematic evolution extending from news interface design to platform comparisons, and from there to disinformation and media literacy. Most studies rely on experimental quantitative methods; overcoming the limitations of self-report measures through objective behavioral metrics constitutes the primary methodological contribution of this body of research. Nevertheless, homogeneous student samples, the artificiality of laboratory settings, and dependence on momentary measurements stand out as the major limitations of the field. This study demonstrates that the eye-tracking method in journalism studies evolved from a tool for measuring isolated variables into an interdisciplinary perspective that holistically reveals the relationships among attention, cognitive processing, and media literacy.

Journalism and Media doi: 10.3390/journalmedia7030153

Authors: Marta Perlado Lamo de Espinosa Carlos Jiménez Narros Mercedes Herrero de la Fuente

The Spanish audiovisual industry has experienced unprecedented growth, offering new employment opportunities. In this context, the aim of the present work is to analyse the perceptions of experts on the motivations and barriers that affect the employment of disabled people in this industry. This research adopts a sequential mixed-method design, combining a focus group with a two-round Delphi technique, and involved participants working in audiovisual companies, specialised job portals, disabled people associations, and research. The results indicate that despite the prior limited experience with people with disabilities, audiovisual companies show a positive attitude towards their employment. Nevertheless, barriers persist related to a lack of confidence in their work performance and their ability to adapt to the demands of the position. Likewise, remote work, digital technologies, and artificial intelligence are perceived as facilitators of inclusion, although their effectiveness depends on provision of adequate training and accessibility. These findings suggest that from an expert’s perspective, the inclusion of disabled people in the audiovisual sector depends on organisational factors, accessibility conditions, and adequate training.

Journalism and Media doi: 10.3390/journalmedia7030152

Authors: Paulo Couraceiro Pedro Caldeira Pais

Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) is rapidly reshaping the audience’s relationship with journalism, particularly through AI-generated summaries. Building on the observed patterns of limited visibility of sources, condensed summary presentation, and reduced contextual depth, we introduce the idea of news sufficiency, in which people encounter summarised content that feels enough to satisfy their immediate informational needs, thereby reducing the incentive to access full news articles. Empirically, this study examines differences between ChatGPT, Gemini, and Google Search when queried in European Portuguese, using three prompts: (a) asking for the main news of the day, (b) the latest on a specific news event, and (c) using only a basic keyword for that event. Drawing on a content analysis, we analysed 72 queries submitted by eight independent users. The results showed that platforms differ markedly in source attribution, summary structure, and contextual awareness. ChatGPT consistently provided hyperlinks and often clickable news images, while Gemini offered summaries only in text without citations. Both chatbots generated diverse and coherent news headlines capable of satisfying curiosity yet frequently failed to infer news intent from the basic keyword prompt, providing outdated or irrelevant information. The absence of Google’s AI Overview results during the observation window produced a contrast with a classic Google Search, which preserves user agency by requiring clicks on links. These findings have significant implications for journalistic authorship, editorial gatekeeping, and the economic sustainability of media, highlighting the need for AI literacy and platform governance that safeguards information pluralism.

Journalism and Media doi: 10.3390/journalmedia7030151

Authors: Sana Saeed Alblooshi Jairo Alfonso Lugo-Ocando

Over the last century, two highly influential organizations have impacted politics and resistance in the Arab world: the Ba’ath Party and the Muslim Brotherhood. The Muslim Brotherhood advanced the political dimension of Islam in the sense of a single community (Umma) that revolves around religion. This basic distinction has caused decades of ideological disputes and even, on some occasions, military confrontation. In this study, the media’s construction of the public image of the Muslim Brotherhood is analyzed. Two large outlets, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and Al Arabiya, are contrasted. Using a qualitative approach, news stories from 2023 to 2025 are examined to determine how strategic narratives can influence the population’s perception of these groups. The study results reveal a considerable gap in reporting between the two. Al Arabiya presents the Muslim Brotherhood as a collapsed, radical terrorist group manipulating religion to gain power, while the BBC’s reporting is more neutral and subtler, demonstrating how media organizations manipulate certain terms and themes to shape narratives.

Journalism and Media doi: 10.3390/journalmedia7030150

Authors: Santiago Tejedor Laura Cervi Beatriz Villarejo-Carballido José Juan Verón

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is redefining journalism, transforming news production, distribution, and consumption. Despite the growing adoption of AI in newsrooms, academic research remains fragmented and lacks a comprehensive overview of global trends, particularly regarding its implications for media literacy and disinformation. This article addresses this gap through a systematic literature review of publications on AI in journalism between 2020 and 2024, based on Scopus and Web of Science. The analysis shows a significant increase in research output since 2023, alongside a strong geographical concentration in Europe and North America, with limited representation from the Global South. The results identify six key thematic areas: automation of news production, algorithmic personalization, newsroom integration, ethical and regulatory challenges, disinformation, and journalism education. Across these themes, the findings reveal a shift from a predominantly technocentric perspective toward a competency-based approach, with increasing attention to media literacy. While AI is associated with efficiency and innovation, the literature consistently highlights concerns related to transparency, bias, editorial accountability, and the transformation of professional roles, as well as risks linked to misinformation and declining public trust. Importantly, the review shows that media literacy—particularly AI literacy—emerges as a transversal dimension, emphasizing the need for competencies that enable journalists and audiences to critically understand, evaluate, and engage with algorithmic systems. The study also identifies key gaps, including limited longitudinal research, scarce audience-centered approaches, insufficient interdisciplinary collaboration, and persistent deficiencies in AI-related training. By foregrounding literacy as a central analytical dimension, this article advances a more holistic understanding of AI in journalism and contributes to the development of a globally inclusive and competency-oriented research agenda.

Journalism and Media doi: 10.3390/journalmedia7030149

Authors: Mathias-Felipe de-Lima-Santos Adeola Abdulateef Elega

The relationship between media and technology has never been static [...]

Journalism and Media doi: 10.3390/journalmedia7030148

Authors: Albert Chibuwe Allen Munoriyarwa Lyton Ncube Refilwe Whitney Mofokeng Antonette Kakujaha-Murangi

This article explores perceptions of educators on challenges of integrating AI in journalism education. It draws on Bourdieu’s field theory, especially the idea of external shocks, social shaping of technology theory and technological domestication theory. Data were gathered through interviews with selected lecturers from universities and colleges in Zimbabwe, Namibia, South Africa and Botswana. The findings show that educators in Zimbabwe and Botswana viewed AI as compromising the integrity of journalism education and as having a psychological toll on them. Contrastingly, educators in Namibia and South Africa, while admitting AI’s shortcomings, emphasised its potential to enhance journalism training in Africa.

Journalism and Media doi: 10.3390/journalmedia7030147

Authors: Nazra Izhar Christopher E. Etheridge Moses U. Okocha

This study investigates the dynamics between media use, online activity, media literacy, and institutional trust among Indian citizens through a survey of adults distributed in six languages. Drawing on social capital theory, this study investigates how various media behaviors relate to perceptions of institutional actors such as governments, non-profits, and corporations as those actors increasingly seek digital avenues to reach constituencies. Findings underscore the significant relationships between media use, media literacy and positive views of democratic institutions, while online activities themselves did not appear to be significant. Notably, media literacy emerges as having a key positive tie to trust in political and state institutions as well as private, media, technology, and non-profit institutions. These results shed light on the nuanced relationship between digital engagement and perceptions of institutional credibility within the Indian context.

Journalism and Media doi: 10.3390/journalmedia7030146

Authors: Murad Karaduman Dilan Acar Sibel Karaduman

Türkiye’s ratification of the Paris Agreement and the subsequent enactment of Climate Law No. 7552 mark a critical phase in the institutionalization of national climate policy. The law’s reliance on market-based mechanisms, particularly the Emissions Trading System, has generated substantial public and media debate. This study examines how three ideologically distinct news outlets, Yeni Şafak, Evrensel, and Deutsche Welle Turkish, represented the legislative process between June and July 2025. Drawing on Teun A. van Dijk’s critical discourse analysis, this study analyses 14 news texts at the microstructural level, focusing on headlines, word choice, actor representation, and legitimization strategies. The findings reveal three distinct discursive roles articulated around a shared market-based logic of climate governance: pro-government coverage legitimizes the law as an economic opportunity and a national achievement, oppositional coverage contests it as ecological exploitation and neoliberal environmental governance, and international coverage audits it against international commitments and standards of technical adequacy. The analysis shows that climate legislation becomes a site of ideological struggle in news discourse, even when debate remains largely organized around a shared market-based understanding of climate policy. Journalism may support, challenge, or scrutinize this framework in different ways.

Journalism and Media doi: 10.3390/journalmedia7030145

Authors: Robinson Bernardino Almanza Cabe Angela Aurora Mamani Calizaya Luis Dante Zubia Cortéz Jorge Erick Fernandez Corrales Alberto Limache Flores Antonio Víctor Morales Gonzales Adolfo Erick Donayre Sarolli José Luis Chavez Cuarite Miluska Odely Rodriguez Saavedra

The rise in political deepfakes threatens news credibility and media literacy in polarized higher education contexts; yet, Latin American students remain understudied. This study examined the digital media literacy of Peruvian university students (n = 5854) in assessing the credibility of political news and identifying AI-generated content. Using a quantitative, non-experimental, cross-sectional design, PROCESS Models 4 and 5 were applied to analyze the relationship between AI literacy and news credibility assessment ability. Awareness of political deepfakes and political news verification strategies were examined as parallel mediators, while the type of university was evaluated as a moderator. Previous exposure to AI, digital media consumption, and sociodemographic characteristics were included as control variables. AI literacy was positively associated with news credibility assessment ability, with awareness of political deepfakes and verification strategies contributing to this relationship. The analysis also examined institutional differences between public and private universities. These findings support the implementation of systematic AI literacy programs across disciplines and institutions to strengthen news credibility and democratic resilience in politically polarized contexts.

Journalism and Media doi: 10.3390/journalmedia7030144

Authors: Sergio A. Berumen Karen Arriaza Ibarra

This study examines whether viewers’ relative affinity toward Spain’s two leading late-night hosts—Pablo Motos (El Hormiguero) and David Broncano (La Revuelta)—varies systematically by ideology. Using an anonymous non-probability online survey fielded in Segiuptember 2024 among adults in the primary analytic frame (N = 806), we construct two parallel six-item affinity indices: IM for Motos and IB for Broncano. Our primary outcome is the respondent-level Affective Gap (BA = IB − IM), where positive values indicate greater relative affinity toward Broncano. In the adult analytic frame, IM averages 2.517 and IB 2.710 on a 1–5 scale, yielding a mean BA of 0.192 (95% CI [0.094, 0.289]). BA is clearly positive among left-leaning respondents and lower, often negative, among right-leaning respondents. In OLS models with HC3 standard errors, ideology remains a strong negative predictor of BA after adjustment for age, gender, education, and socioeconomic status, and the association is robust to bootstrap intervals and sensitivity checks. Open-ended responses are used descriptively to contextualize the quantitative gradient. The study contributes to research on selective exposure, affective sorting, and media-personality evaluation by showing that, within this non-probability analytic sample, relative evaluations of two prominent Spanish late-night hosts are strongly associated with respondents’ ideological self-placement.

Journalism and Media doi: 10.3390/journalmedia7030143

Authors: Ashok Poudel Yonghong Dai Dipak Devkota Lok Bahadur B.K.

In recent years, social media platform has been proven to be an effective medium for China to conduct its public digital diplomacy. After China’s President Xi Jinping encouraged his diplomats to tell China’s story well for promoting China’s global influence, they are increasingly using social media as a tool of public digital diplomacy. In this regard, Chinese diplomats in Nepal are no exception and are actively using social media to disseminate information and interact with local people to advance China’s interests. However, there is a research gap regarding the pattern, content, popularity, and effectiveness of their social media practices in Nepal. This study aims to fulfil this research gap by examining Chinese diplomats’ public digital diplomacy practice in Nepal through the content analysis of their posts in X from the lens of Grunig’s four models of global PR theory. Through the explanatory sequential mixed content analysis method, this study provides practical insights into the effective digital engagement of China’s public diplomacy efforts in Nepal. This study finds that China’s digital diplomacy could be strengthened by localizing content to better align with Nepal’s socioeconomic context, thereby improving audience relevance and engagement. Nepali publics engage more with Nepal-related content.

Journalism and Media doi: 10.3390/journalmedia7030142

Authors: Teodora Trifonova Joy Jenkins

The study explores the trauma experiences and gendered labor of Ukrainian women working as local fixers for international major media outlets covering the Russian war. Using semi-structured interviews (N = 15) with Ukrainian women fixers and drawing on feminist standpoint epistemology and embodied journalism, this research investigates how they perceive and perform their roles in a male-dominated professional environment. Women fixers’ work is shaped by lived, embodied experiences and an alternative knowledge of conflict. The fixers have an unofficial leadership role in international news teams, describing themselves as producers who shape editorial decisions, ensure safety, and influence coverage. From a feminist standpoint, their experiences show how lived experiences afford them authority in war reporting, even when it is not formally recognized. However, they face gender inequalities, primarily from male foreign correspondents who question their competency, as well as from Ukrainian military personnel who undermine their expertise and authority. Women fixers have also received unwanted sexual propositions from other freelancers in the media teams. Participants acknowledged that they have been traumatized by the war coverage, and they do not receive sufficient institutional support, but they invest in self-funded coping strategies.

Journalism and Media doi: 10.3390/journalmedia7030141

Authors: Ronald B. Brown

This qualitative media-archaeology study examines how digital video compression can reshape viewer perception of a legacy television image. A low-resolution online image from the 1976 The Mary Tyler Moore Show is compared with the corresponding image from a commercial DVD. In the compressed 360p online version, Moore’s upper torso appears briefly overexposed during a bubble-bath scene—an interpretation often described as a wardrobe malfunction. However, the higher-resolution DVD clearly shows that Moore maintained broadcast standards by wearing a protective undergarment that became visually erased in the compressed media. This divergence serves as a result of a natural experiment, demonstrating how low-resolution encoding of an image produces edge smoothing, tonal blending, and dissolution of material boundaries. These transformations support an inductive interpretation of materiality collapse, a compression artifact in which garments, skin, and shadows lose visual distinctiveness—creating an image of Mary Tyler Moore perceptually similar to a classical nude sculpture such as the Venus de Milo. Contextual evidence from Moore’s autobiography further clarifies production norms that shaped the bubble-bath scene and contributed to insufficient foam coverage. The findings show how compressed digital video can generate culturally consequential misperceptions, underscoring the need to scrutinize online compressed images posted as material evidence.

Journalism and Media doi: 10.3390/journalmedia7030140

Authors: Emmi Verleyen Laura Jacobs Kathleen Beckers

The current immigration debate is frequently characterized by a negative tone in news, which can fuel public disapproval. Previous research demonstrates that news framing regarding immigration can arouse, for example, negative attitudes among the public. However, these studies often take the three protagonists of this debate (asylum seekers, refugees, immigrants) together. This study aims to fill the gap by exploring the extent to which the strength of the news framing effect on anti-immigration attitudes is assisted by the explicit categorization of these actor terms. A survey experiment with fictional news stories was conducted among Flemish citizens (n = 1591). The framing (negative, victim, positive) and the type of actors (asylum seekers, refugees, immigrants) were manipulated. The results indicate that the effect of framing on anti-immigration attitudes seems conditional on the actor term used in the news article, even though the found effect was small. Anti-immigration attitudes were highest when a negative frame was combined with the term immigrant and lowest when a positive frame was combined with the term asylum seeker. Combining the actor term with victim framing does not yield a significant effect. However, overall, framing exerted significantly stronger effects than actor terminology. The findings indicate that words in terms of framing and actor type matter in the immigration debate.

Journalism and Media doi: 10.3390/journalmedia7030139

Authors: German A. Duarte

This article examines the persistence of television in a media environment increasingly defined by digital computation. It argues that television cannot be understood simply as a visual medium in continuity with cinema but must be situated within a specific video-electronic regime grounded in real-time transmission. Through a genealogical comparison of photochemical, video-electronic, and digital image regimes, the article analyzes how different technical configurations organize the relation between image, time, signal, and experience. It then considers historical and theoretical moments in which these regimes enter into tension, from early reconstructed actualities to live television, videotape, transmedia storytelling, and contemporary digital interfaces. Drawing on media archaeology and media theory, the article suggests that what persists under the name of television today is not necessarily the medium in its strict technical sense but a residual mode of engagement shaped by inherited perceptual and cultural habits. The article concludes that the apparent continuity of television in the digital mediascape should be read less as simple adaptation than as a symptom of a deeper rupture between technical regimes and lived experience.

Journalism and Media doi: 10.3390/journalmedia7030138

Authors: Brock Mays

Guided by the ideational theory of populism and Jowett and O’Donnell’s framework for propaganda analysis, this study examines Donald Trump’s usage of propagandistic language and emotional appeals. The study classifies his posts on Truth Social during the 2024 American presidential election into the seven categories of propaganda tactics outlined by the Institute of Propaganda Analysis. These techniques include name calling, glittering generalities, transfer methods, testimonials, plain folk appeals, card stacking and bandwagoning. A deductive content analysis was performed on a corpus of the text of 1319 Truth Social posts (“truths”) posted by Donald Trump during the election, excluding image- and video-based posts. This study found a vast majority contain at least one classic propaganda technique. A contribution of this study is that it determines not only which tactics he uses as a case study of a populist communicator but who he targets and with which tactics. The study found five main targets: political opponents, political allies, immigrants, institutions, and foreign leaders. Findings demonstrate Donald Trump does not use propaganda techniques monolithically but rather as dependent on his target and with distinct patterns, to produce and reinforce narratives about in- and out-group messaging.

Journalism and Media doi: 10.3390/journalmedia7030137

Authors: Ana Raquel Azevedo Fátima Gonçalves Joaquim Brigas

Contemporary information environments have transformed how information is produced, circulated, and evaluated, especially in social media and platform-mediated communication contexts. Although Information Quality (IQ) and misinformation research has provided important criteria for assessing accuracy, completeness, relevance, credibility, and timeliness, existing approaches offer limited insight into how information preserves meaning, credibility, and contextual integrity under decontextualization, emotional amplification, algorithmic visibility, and strategic manipulation. Addressing this gap, this study introduces Resilient Information Quality (RIQ) as a conceptual and analytical framework for evaluating information resilience in digital communication. An exploratory framework-development design is adopted. The framework integrates six dimensions: Manipulability Resilience, Contextual Transparency, Interpretability, Emotional Framing, Audience Resilience, and Platform Suitability. These dimensions are operationalized through a structured scoring rubric and applied to fourteen analytically constructed communication samples derived from recurring real-world information patterns. The findings classify samples into critical, vulnerable, and robust configurations. Emotionally charged and low-transparency messages show high engagement potential but weak resistance to distortion, while institutional and evidence-based communication shows stronger resilience through contextual grounding, source transparency, and structural coherence. The study concludes that IQ should be assessed not only through correctness, but also through manipulation resistance, contextual credibility, and safe platform adaptation.

Journalism and Media doi: 10.3390/journalmedia7030136

Authors: Su Yu Wonkyung Kim

Confederate monuments have long stood at the center of public memory controversies in the United States, and social media platforms increasingly shape how these controversies circulate and receive responses. This study examines Confederate monument controversies across five Reddit communities—r/politics, r/news, r/PoliticalDiscussion, r/AskAnAmerican, and r/AskHistorians—using 2379 posts and 117,556 comments. Combining BERTopic modeling, zero-shot classification, and event-based statistical analysis, it investigates temporal patterns, topic structures, post categories, and responses. Discussion rose most sharply around the Charlottesville rally and the George Floyd event window, with peaks in r/politics and r/news. Topic modeling identified nine stable topics across national political debate, local removal actions, legal disputes, legislative processes, and historical interpretation. Among non-news posts, Seeking Information/Opinion was most common (41.9%), followed by Removal/Implementation Update (20.5%), Resource Sharing/Mobilization (18.9%), and Complaint/Normative Condemnation (18.7%). Protest, removal, and legal-conflict topics generated higher comment volumes and scores, whereas historically oriented topics showed lower interaction intensity. Comment sections were dominated by Explanation or Interpretation, indicating that Reddit discussions extended monument controversies mainly through explanation, comparison, and historical analogy rather than interpersonal conflict. The findings show that Reddit reorganizes public memory controversy through platform rules, community norms, and interactional mechanisms. By connecting event peaks, topic structures, post categories, and comment pathways, the study also interprets Reddit-based monument controversy as a platformed media ritual of attention, classification, and public memory negotiation.

Journalism and Media doi: 10.3390/journalmedia7030135

Authors: Takunda Maodza Yoliswa Mgedezi

South Africa has been receiving a high number of undocumented immigrants for years. As Africa’s second largest economy and the biggest in the South African Development Community region, it has witnessed a surge in illegal migration. Some undocumented immigrants marry local women, establishing spousal and familial relations. The government has taken a legal stand against undocumented immigrants. It deports thousands annually. A grassroots movement, Operation Dudula, has initiated efforts to locate undocumented immigrants. Its modus operandi has been condemned for lacking ubuntu. A void is left when undocumented immigrants are deported, leaving their families in South Africa. Some South African women have turned to TikTok to express their views on migration and familyhood. This study attempts to answer these questions: What are the TikTok discursive practices of South African women in spousal relations with African immigrants? In what ways do the women legitimise the relationships? How does TikTok function as a subaltern counter-public formation? Data were gathered through digital archival research and subjected to a multimodal critical discourse analysis. The findings show that the women celebrate the relations as an achievement. They construct them as pathways to prosperity. The women also invoked racial discourses to legitimise the relations. Through TikTok, they recontextualised discourses on migration by deconstructing dominant narratives that project African immigrants through lenses of criminality.

Journalism and Media doi: 10.3390/journalmedia7030134

Authors: Sawsan Taha Amer Ahmad

The study explores Emirati university students’ perceptions of how media and information literacy enhance their understanding of media ethics. It specifically investigates students’ perceptions of the role of media and information literacy in shaping their understanding of professional media standards, enhancing their respect for individuals’ privacy, promoting their social responsibility, regulating their ethical digital interactions, and the challenges they face in distinguishing reliable from misleading media content. The study administered a survey to a quota sample of 300 students from Al Ain University. The results indicated that students perceive media and information literacy as playing a significant role in shaping their understanding of professional media standards, enhancing their respect for individuals’ privacy, and promoting their social responsibility. The results also showed that students perceive considerable challenges in distinguishing reliable from misleading media content. Furthermore, no statistically significant differences emerged in students’ perceptions of the role of media and information literacy in enhancing their understanding of media ethics by gender. However, statistically significant differences appeared by academic year and the college in which students study, favoring the College of Communication and Media. Finally, there is a strong positive correlation between students’ perceptions of the role of media and information literacy in shaping their understanding of professional media standards and both their perceptions of respect for individuals’ privacy and the regulation of their ethical digital interaction with others.

Journalism and Media doi: 10.3390/journalmedia7030133

Authors: Manuel João Cruz Daniela Fonseca

This article examines how Portuguese Members of Parliament have incorporated journalistic media into plenary speech as external discursive resources from 1976 to 2025. While research on the mediatization of politics has shown that political actors operate in increasingly media-shaped environments, less attention has been paid to how journalism enters political discourse itself through explicit references in institutional parliamentary settings. This gap matters because such references provide a concrete way of tracing how parliamentary speech appropriates news as a source of authority, evidence, agenda importation, and rhetorical support. Methodologically, the article analyses the full corpus of Portuguese parliamentary plenary interventions (n = 726,153) using a three-layer rule-based detection strategy that distinguishes between broad media references, named outlet references, and strict journalistic invocations, complemented by manual functional coding of strict cases. The findings show that explicit journalistic references are rare overall and have declined over time, qualifying strong readings of mediatization as simple media saturation. When journalism is invoked, however, it is mobilised selectively, drawing mainly on a small set of established legacy outlets and functioning primarily in evidentiary, agenda-introducing, and meta-media ways rather than adversarial ones. The article argues that journalism remains a residual source of discursive authority in parliament, but that its visible parliamentary relevance may be weaker and more contested than normative democratic accounts often assume.

Journalism and Media doi: 10.3390/journalmedia7030132

Authors: Gabriela Perdomo Mia Lindgren

This paper examines how conversational daily deep dive news podcasts build journalistic authority and legitimacy through what we call the “journalist-as-guest” (JAG) format. Applying a deep analytical listening methodology that honors the aurality of the medium and positions listening as a core analytical method, we analyzed eight daily deep dive news podcasts from Canada and Australia, attending to how sonic elements interact with conversational performance to produce podcasting’s characteristic intimacy and parasocial listener bonds that support authority and legitimacy claims for journalism. Our findings expand on our previous identification of the JAG format as a key element of explanatory-type daily deep dive podcasts. Here, we reveal how it operates through three key mechanisms: recurring self-referential speech that reinforces journalistic cultural belonging; intentional unpacking of the reporting process to reveal behind-the-scenes work; and the careful construction of journalists as subject-matter experts. Together, these mechanisms transform performative conversation into metajournalism, creating a space in which journalistic expertise is displayed and validated through colleague-to-colleague dialogue. We term this dynamic “intimate authority.” We argue that the JAG format capitalizes on podcasting’s affordances for intimacy, parasociality, and extended metajournalistic conversation to invite audiences into the news-making process while positioning journalists as credible experts and sense-makers. In doing so, it functions as a mechanism for establishing authority and legitimacy claims in digital media environments. As daily news podcasting becomes increasingly central to remediation efforts aimed at restoring trust in journalism, both legacy and independent news podcasters appear to be counting on the JAG format as a strategic response to concurrent crises of news avoidance and relevance.

Journalism and Media doi: 10.3390/journalmedia7030131

Authors: Susana Herrera-Damas Susana Asenjo-McCabe

Spanish journalists do not suffer from work-related anxiety because they lack resilience; they suffer from it because they work in environments structurally designed to produce it. Based on this premise, this study develops the first empirically grounded multilevel governance model to reduce work-related anxiety among journalists, drawing on 23 in-depth interviews with Spanish professionals who have experienced it through either a diagnosis or self-report, analyzed using reflective thematic analysis. The findings are organized into three interconnected levels—micro, meso, and macro—and identify, respectively, pre-existing protective factors, reactive coping strategies, and advice and recommendations aimed at structural change. Anchored in Job Anxiety Theory and evidence from equivalent complex interventions, the model demonstrates that individual resources only produce sustainable effects when the organizational and sectoral levels actively support them. The asymmetry between the density of the micro level and the precariousness of the meso and macro levels constitutes the study’s central finding. Our model redefines anxiety in journalism as an institutional design challenge and offers a scalable, modular, and contextualized architecture for the Spanish media ecosystem.

Journalism and Media doi: 10.3390/journalmedia7020130

Authors: László Balázs

This paper aims to develop a conceptual framework of digital resilience rituals in order to illuminate the ways in which media practices can be seen as adaptive responses to information stress in the context of the current digital communication environment. By incorporating the theoretical perspectives of the concept of ritual communication and the theories of resilience and salutogenesis, the current study aims to reconceptualize the use of digital media as routinized and meaning-making practices. Algorithmically curated, information-rich environments generate continuous cognitive and affective demands, experienced as information stress. In response, users engage in ritualized media practices that structure attention, regulate emotional responses, and maintain a sense of control. The model identifies three types of digital resilience rituals: orientation rituals, emotional regulation rituals, and boundary-setting rituals. Conceptually, the framework links structural characteristics of the media environment with psychological resources, positioning ritualized practices as mediating mechanisms between environmental stressors and adaptive outcomes. By doing so, the study extends ritual communication theory toward adaptive regulation in digital contexts and offers a theoretically grounded basis for future empirical research on media practices, information stress, and resilience.

Journalism and Media doi: 10.3390/journalmedia7020129

Authors: Tineke Prins Nadia Swijtink Liesbeth Hermans Niek Hietbrink

This study examined how exposure to constructive audiovisual news shapes people’s perception of societal issues in the Netherlands. An online experiment was conducted among 575 participants aged 18 to 90 years old. Participants were randomly assigned to watch an audiovisual news item, either constructive or nonconstructive news, about plastic waste in the ocean or the Dutch housing market. The study investigated how these different reporting styles affected participants’ perceptions of the main message, their awareness of the seriousness of the societal issue, and their evaluation of the journalistic quality of the news report. Results showed that, contrary to critics’ concerns, constructive news did not reduce perceived problem awareness: participants across conditions reported similarly high levels of awareness regarding the seriousness of the issues presented. Perceived journalistic quality also remained high in both constructive and nonconstructive conditions, indicating that incorporating constructive elements did not compromise credibility. Furthermore, constructive news appeared to encourage a broader, more solution-oriented perspective, prompting participants to consider opportunities and future prospects. Importantly, this broader perspective did not come at the expense of perceived problem awareness or journalistic quality. Overall, the findings provide empirical support for the value of constructive journalism in the Dutch media context.

Journalism and Media doi: 10.3390/journalmedia7020128

Authors: Sangeetha Unnithan

This study examines front-page environmental news coverage in two prominent national newspapers against the backdrop of India’s G20 presidency. The study integrates agenda setting and framing theories with public sphere theory, to understand the implications of front-page coverage of environmental issues for the public sphere. Following a mixed methodology, content analysis and frame analysis were conducted on a continuous six-month sample of the two newspapers, covering 180 days and 360 issues. A total of 435 front-page environmental stories were identified and analyzed. The findings reveal that front-page environmental reporting in the sampled newspapers spotlighted the severe environmental crises impacting the country, rather than the government’s sustainability-oriented and eco-centric discourse during the G20 presidency. Weather emerged as the most salient topic, followed by pollution. Foregrounding extreme weather and unusual weather patterns on the front page helped problematize weather events as a public concern. However, the disproportionate dominance of weather and pollution, along with an overreliance on routine sources, poor representation of source categories such as scientists/experts, and underutilization of data journalism reveal limitations in inclusive and rational deliberation on environmental issues. Problem-centric framing dominated the coverage, followed by adversarial narratives. Framing also overwhelmingly emphasized environment-related risks to humans while risks to nonhuman entities were marginalized, indicating anthropocentric tendencies in environmental coverage.

Journalism and Media doi: 10.3390/journalmedia7020127

Authors: Ádám Guld

Sports-based television formats combining competition, cooperation, and physical confrontation have long attracted large audiences. Since the 2000s reality television has increasingly adapted these elements, particularly through wrestling- and boxing-themed programs. This study examines the genre of celebrity boxing within the broader context of contemporary media culture, with the aim of interpreting its popularity through perspectives from communication and media theory. The analysis applies a qualitative approach drawing on concepts such as the media violence and Carey’s and Couldry’s ritual model of communication and includes an empirical case study of the Hungarian television program Sztárbox. The findings suggest that celebrity boxing operates as a pseudo-sporting spectacle that combines media violence with celebrity culture to maintain audience attention, while its dramaturgy—following Barthes’ and Jenkins’ interpretations—relies heavily on simplified moral oppositions and dramatized role-playing. These elements function as micro-rituals that structure viewer engagement and contribute to collective meaning-making beyond mere entertainment. The study concludes that the appeal of celebrity boxing lies not only in the display of physical confrontation but in its ritualized narrative framework, which reinforces social and cultural interpretations of conflict, identity, and spectacle within the logic of contemporary media environments.

Journalism and Media doi: 10.3390/journalmedia7020126

Authors: Izabela Korbiel

According to the International Association for Suicide Prevention (IASP), over one in every 100 deaths (1.3%) in 2019 was the result of suicide, yet suicide is a highly sensitive issue in the media and often a taboo. The field of communication research has very early recognized the relevance of coverage of suicide. One of the first manuals on journalistic work in 1925 elaborated on newsworthiness of suicide reporting. This paper draws on experiences of journalists who covered suicide cases during multiple crises. There is evidence that an interview is the most appropriate practice to research sensitive topics; thus, expert interviews and episodically ethnographic interviews inform this study. Additional data was collected for analysis during (participatory) observations. The presented article is an outcome of 29 interviews with journalists and mental health professionals in Greece, Spain and Bulgaria. In total, 36 h of interviews and 20 observation protocols were collected during 8 field trips and 5 weeks in total in the field. Most of the data refers to the financial crisis of 2015 and 2016—a period when suicide rates significantly increased. However, selected interviewees were interviewed again after 7–8 years during the post-pandemic time, brutal wars and the substantial cost of living crisis. Journalists who usually give a voice and platform to suicide survivors speak their own perspective and evaluate the impact it had on their mental health and well-being.

Journalism and Media doi: 10.3390/journalmedia7020125

Authors: Elira Canga

Journalism in Albania unfolds in a fragile media environment where political pressure, economic insecurity and intimidation are part of everyday professional life. This study examines how Albanian journalists experience job-related stress and how they cope with it. Using a qualitative design, the study draws on 14 semi-structured interviews and thematic analysis to identify the main stressors and response strategies described by participants. Findings show that occupational stress is not episodic, but normalized within journalistic practice. Journalists reported three major stressors: political interference, financial precarity, and direct threats linked to reporting on crime and corruption. To manage these pressures, they relied on both problem-focused strategies, such as careful verification, legal consultation, and strategic reporting practices, and emotion-focused strategies, including peer support, emotional compartmentalization, and maintaining boundaries between work and family life.

Journalism and Media doi: 10.3390/journalmedia7020124

Authors: Leslie-Jean Thornton

The experiences of 48 U.S. journalists covering Donald Trump’s inaugural year as president in 2017 provide a contemporaneous account of being “enemies of the people” in a highly charged partisan environment. Using snowball sampling, participants were asked to respond via email during a period bookended by a Phoenix, Arizona, rally in which Trump berated news reporters for their coverage of demonstrations in Charlottesville, Virginia, and then, weeks later, posted disparaging “fake news” tweets. The social media barrage followed challenging news coverage of a devastating hurricane in the eastern United States. Responses came from journalists representing 41 news organizations (including broadcast, radio, cable, online, and print) in regions throughout the country. Qualitative reflexive thematic analysis surfaced deeply intertwined personal and professional concerns, suggesting a need to heighten awareness of the influence sustained trauma has on both personal and professional relationships. Their being labeled “fake” and “enemies of the people” might affect content and routine in ways that include self-censorship, sourcing, transparency, and degrees to which one would risk harm or emotional distress to cover a story. Toughing it out in the face of sustained and wounding attacks might create hidden psychological and professional time-bombs, putting journalists, journalism, and ultimately democracy, at risk.

Journalism and Media doi: 10.3390/journalmedia7020123

Authors: Henrique Marques-Martins José Sixto-García

In ecosystems of algorithmic visibility, Instagram bios operate as high salience microdiscourses of self-presentation and signaling. We examine whether observable bio attributes are associated with visibility and interaction among Brazilian sports journalists. We analyzed 151 public Instagram profiles (≥100,000 followers) and extracted bios and profile metadata via automated collection. Bio attributes (length, emojis, @mentions, hashtags, location, informational cues, and external links) were related to followers, average likes and comments, and engagement rate (primary outcome) using Spearman rank correlations under conservative interpretation. Emojis and mentions were near universal; links were common; hashtags and locations were rare. Associations were small and exploratory: personal information correlated negatively with followers; hashtags correlated positively with likes and comments but relied on five cases; and references to other platforms correlated negatively with engagement. Overall, bios appear to function mainly as signaling infrastructures, with any performance effects likely indirect and mediated by content practices and platform exposure within this ecosystem.

Journalism and Media doi: 10.3390/journalmedia7020122

Authors: Kefa Hamidi Ramin Kamangar Abumoslem Khorasani

Research on migration and digital media has expanded, yet empirical knowledge about how digital network communication structures public interaction in post-migration contexts remains limited. In particular, little is known about the communicative arenas in which interaction becomes visible, the actors who gain interpretive authority, and the recurring issues and narratives that stabilize meaning. This article addresses these gaps by examining Afghanistan-linked digital publics in Germany. Eight semi-structured interviews with key informants and a qualitative content analysis of selected TikTok accounts revealed that short-video platforms can function as central arenas of attention, where repeatedly recognized communicators become orientation points for audiences through sustained interaction. Communication stabilizes around recurring issues and narratives such as migration procedures, institutional encounters, Afghanistan-related political developments, and community conflicts, which connect everyday experiences in the country of residence to political, social, and cultural debates about Afghanistan—thereby bridging local and transnational references within shared communication networks. These environments function simultaneously as spaces of practical guidance, social orientation, and public dispute. Building on these insights, the article proposes a multidimensional model of digital diaspora communication that links communicative arenas, actors, and issues and narratives.

Journalism and Media doi: 10.3390/journalmedia7020121

Authors: Alexei Anisin

This study investigates the function of hashtags as performative political communication on Instagram during the 2024–2025 U.S. presidential electoral cycle. Through computational web-scraping processes, a dataset of over 300,000 posts (N = 17,750) yielded hashtags that were categorized according to (1) pro-Trump terms and (2) conspiracy-theory terms. Eight hashtags include #blacksfortrump, #donaldtrump, #freemasonic, #illuminatis, #impeachbiden, #latinosfortrump, #MAGA, and #secretsocieties. They are analyzed through negative binomial regression on comment engagement. Results reveal that identity-affirming and partisan condemnation hashtags (#blacksfortrump, #MAGA, #impeachbiden) were associated with higher levels of digital interactions, whereas conspiracy hashtags were associated with lower levels of engagement. Specifically, the hashtags #freemasonic and #illuminatis show negative associations with engagement, while #secretsocieties slightly elevated engagement with pro-Trump anti-elite narratives. These results indicate that not all forms of political communication are equally effective in mobilizing interactions on Instagram. Comment engagement was driven more heavily by identity performance and moralized partisan signaling than by conspiratorial narratives. These findings add to our knowledge on political communication in contemporary digital media environments.

Journalism and Media doi: 10.3390/journalmedia7020120

Authors: Elena Becerra José Borja Arjona Juan Salvador Victoria

While digital communication is critical for business growth, there is a notable lack of research concerning the specific digital and corporate strategies of bio-health start-ups in regional ecosystems like Andalusia. This article addresses this gap by analysing the corporate and digital strategies of the leading bio-health start-ups at the Andalusian Health Technology Park. The research focuses on innovation in the health sector and builds on the broader discourse surrounding science communication as applied to Andalusian companies. Health innovation companies are implementing their digital corporate strategies to raise their profile and reach their target audience. For Andalusian bio-health start-ups, the main focus is on their websites; this is why they are analysed here from different perspectives, with the aim of evaluating the information they share and its effectiveness. To this end, a mixed approach combining quantitative and qualitative content analysis is proposed, and data analysis tools are applied to web traffic and performance factors, as well as to the analysis of corporate culture and brand identity. The results indicate that these companies are consistent with digital communication strategies typical of B2B models, that is, emerging and highly specialised companies. In the corporate sphere, there is generally a strong focus on positioning within a framework that fosters organisational culture, employee recognition and the key elements of effective brand architecture.

Journalism and Media doi: 10.3390/journalmedia7020119

Authors: Maria Rae Dylan Bird Dominic Knight

The 2024 US presidential campaign was dubbed the ‘podcast election’, with Donald Trump’s appearances on shows targeting young male audiences hailed for securing victory with this demographic. However, limited attention has been paid to how the specific affordances of audio media are leveraged to engage voters with appeals to hegemonic masculinity. Drawing on the theoretical framework of counterpublics, this study applies an innovative close analytical listening method and critical discourse analysis to five long-form podcast interviews with Trump. It finds that intimacy, authenticity, and convivial, free-wheeling conversation were key elements of Trump’s political communication—reaching mass audiences while bypassing the scrutiny of professional journalism. Furthermore, these shows celebrated men’s superiority while largely excluding women from public discourse. These findings are important for understanding the implications of an increasingly masculine, right-wing podcast scene, which we theorize as the brosphere. Ultimately, we argue that the brosphere is distinct from—but related to—the overtly misogynistic manosphere.

Journalism and Media doi: 10.3390/journalmedia7020118

Authors: Ádám Horváth Balázs Gyenge

This research examines the transformation of film and TV series consumption within the contemporary media landscape, characterized by digital plenitude and Over-the-Top (OTT) dominance. The study investigates how users navigate the transition from linear broadcasting toward on-demand, platform-centric environments. Through an exploratory qualitative approach as the initial phase of a broader study, 18 semi-structured interviews were conducted with a demographically diverse group of Hungarian participants whose primary commonality is active film and TV series consumption. The findings highlight a rejection of traditional linear television, driven by an aversion to intrusive advertising and a demand for temporal autonomy. While mobile devices, particularly smartphones, are central to this shift, consumption remains predominantly stationary; users prioritize the flexibility of cross-device access within the domestic environment over mobile viewing during transit. Furthermore, the study identifies a growing friction caused by content fragmentation between different OTT platforms and rising subscription costs, while digital piracy persists as a marginal alternative. Ultimately, the study concludes that the modern audience acts as a strategic user navigating a complex ecosystem of excess. This underscores a fundamental shift where the cultural value of content is increasingly defined by the tension between individual agency and the systemic constraints of competing services.

Journalism and Media doi: 10.3390/journalmedia7020117

Authors: Abiodun Salawu Bukola Christiana Ajala

This paper examines the unresolved case of a Nigerian singer/rapper, Ilerioluwa Oladimeji Aloba (Mohbad), aged 27, whose tragic death occurred on 12 September 2023. His death sparked public outcry and calls for justice, resulting in massive protest movements in Nigeria and the Diaspora. Alaroye, a foremost indigenous language newspaper, has consistently deployed its platform to advocate for justice for the deceased rapper. Using the Agenda-setting Theory, this study examines, through key informant interviews, the external events that caused public opinion on the clamour for justice for Mohbad to wane, which impeded the newspaper’s agenda-setting capacity. This paper explores Alaroye’s coverage of the circumstances surrounding the death of Mohbad and the need to galvanise justice for him. Through a content analysis of the Alaroye online newspaper, 62 newspaper stories were purposively sampled within the time frame of the incident (September 2023 to August 2024). Although Alaroye’s reports on the happenings surrounding Mohbad’s death created public awareness and debate, key informants explain that public opinion on the issue could not stimulate justice for the deceased due to political, economic, and other associated factors.

Journalism and Media doi: 10.3390/journalmedia7020116

Authors: Vered Elishar Yaron Ariel

Traditional agenda-setting theory, which is centered on legacy news outlets, now operates in a fragmented ecosystem shaped by platforms, algorithms, and networked intermediaries. Existing agenda-setting models only partially integrate algorithmic gatekeeping and audience agency, thus limiting their capacity to explain contemporary patterns of issue salience. This study revisits classic, second-level, and network agenda-setting research. It synthesizes recent work on big data, social media, and AI-driven curation to propose an agenda-setting ecosystem conceptual model for hybrid liberal-democratic media systems that links macro-level institutions and infrastructure, meso-level networked intermediaries, and micro-level cognitive and behavioral processes. Two analytical concepts have been advanced: flash agendas, defined as rapid and short-lived spikes in public attention, and agenda leadership, defined as the capacity of specific actors to trigger, steer, and sustain such spikes across platforms. This article outlines the methodological and ethical challenges of studying these dynamics, including data access, measurement validity, and transparency of algorithmic systems. It identifies directions for empirical research and policy, with particular attention to cross-platform diffusion and feedback loops. The framework aims to support more robust theory building and measurement in hybrid, algorithmically mediated media environments.

Journalism and Media doi: 10.3390/journalmedia7020115

Authors: Chang Sup Park Mohammad Al Masum Molla

Grounded in the MAIN model and multidimensional information-quality frameworks, this research conceptualizes news evaluation through three distinct lenses: credibility, newsworthiness, and readability. Through a 2 (authorship: AI vs. human) × 3 (news domain: finance, weather, sports) mixed experiment (N = 301), participants evaluated identical articles attributed to either an AI system or a human journalist. The results reveal a consistent “credibility penalty” for AI-labeled news across all domains, suggesting that authorship serves as a domain-general source heuristic. However, the effects on newsworthiness and readability were domain-contingent, shifting based on genre-specific expectations and the informational stakes of the topic. These findings demonstrate that audience responses to AI journalism are multidimensional and context-sensitive rather than uniform. This study offers significant implications for communication theory, transparency in disclosure practices, and the strategic adoption of AI in modern newsrooms.

Journalism and Media doi: 10.3390/journalmedia7020114

Authors: Bahareh Heravi

The contemporary information environment is marked by the increasing ease with which journalistic stories can be generated, reformatted, and adapted through generative AI systems. As a result, content becomes increasingly liquid, and the article no longer functions as the sole or stable unit of journalism. While writing remains central to journalistic practice, the primary site of value shifts toward the production and stewardship of reliable information from which multiple narratives can be formed. This paper argues that, in AI-mediated news and journalism, journalists increasingly operate not only as authors of finished stories but as producers and curators of reusable information artefacts that support both human and AI-assisted storytelling. Situated within discussions of AI-mediated news, liquid content, modular journalism, and data storytelling, the paper advances the need for a modular and compositional storytelling structure suited to dynamically generated narratives. Building on prior empirical work, it positions the Water Tower storytelling model as a structure capable of organising liquid journalistic content into coherent stories across formats and levels of detail, while remaining grounded in editorial judgement.

Journalism and Media doi: 10.3390/journalmedia7020113

Authors: Montse Mera-Fernández Victoria Moreno-Gil Montse Morata-Santos

In this paper, we describe and analyse the characteristics of news articles published in Spanish media which were written with assistance, of different types and to varying extents, from generative AI. We pursue three objectives: to identify how AI is being used, to examine the formal and textual characteristics of articles produced in this way, and to determine the degree of transparency with which the use of generative AI is communicated to readers. Using content analysis techniques, 120 articles published in different newspapers were studied, including articles written entirely by AI, written with the help of AI, and resulting from other uses of AI. Our analysis shows different results depending on the use of AI. The first group exhibits standardised writing, repetitive structures, and fewer sources. The second group shows less standardisation, more contextual information, and more journalistic errors. Despite relying on a repetitive structure, the third group does not display standardised writing. Regarding transparency, this study reveals that not all texts disclose AI use, and when they do, it appears separately from the byline or within the text. This study is pioneering due to the breadth of the analysed sample and our examination of different uses of AI in the Spanish news media.

Journalism and Media doi: 10.3390/journalmedia7020112

Authors: Nimmagadda Bhargav Jagadish Thaker

Media primarily frames climate change as a threat or disaster, which may dampen public interest and engagement. Does shifting communication strategies to emphasize people’s ability to enact change increase political engagement with climate change? This study examines whether exposure to a news story containing efficacy information is associated with changes in self-efficacy, collective efficacy, and intentions to engage in political activism. Using a quasi-experimental classroom-based design, a single exposure to a news story embedded with efficacy information was not associated with higher levels of any of the three dimensions of political self-efficacy—internal, external, and response—as well as perceived collective efficacy among undergraduate students (N = 731) in a large city in India. Exposure to efficacy information was not associated with intentions to engage in individual or political activism indirectly either. However, internal efficacy, response efficacy, and collective efficacy were positively associated with intentions to engage in individual and collective political action. In addition, perceived collective efficacy mediated the association between internal and response efficacies with collective political action intentions, highlighting the critical role of collective efficacy in collective political action. The findings suggest that while perceived self- and collective efficacies are important for increasing public engagement, they may not be readily amenable to change through single or infrequent exposure to efficacy-oriented messages.

Journalism and Media doi: 10.3390/journalmedia7020111

Authors: Alberto E. López-Carrión Germán Llorca-Abad

This study examines how ideological polarisation in Spanish society is reflected and amplified in press coverage of the competition between El Hormiguero (Antena3) and La Revuelta (TVE) in the access prime time television slot. Situated within debates on audience fragmentation, the attention economy, and the politicisation of entertainment, the research seeks to determine whether media ideology shapes journalistic narratives surrounding this television rivalry. The study adopts a mixed-methods approach, combining descriptive statistics and qualitative content analysis. A total of 385 news articles published between April 2024 and March 2025 in five leading Spanish digital newspapers with different ideological orientations (20 Minutos, ABC, El HuffPost, El Mundo and El País) were analysed. The results reveal clear ideological patterns in coverage, affecting the intensity of attention, the selection of sources, and the framing of both programmes. El Hormiguero is predominantly associated with leadership and competitive strength, while La Revuelta is framed around innovation, youth appeal, and politicisation linked to public broadcasting. Overall, the findings indicate that Spanish newspapers do not merely report on a television competition but actively contribute to its symbolic and ideological polarisation, reinforcing entertainment as a central arena of contemporary cultural conflict.

Journalism and Media doi: 10.3390/journalmedia7020110

Authors: Gonzalo López-Barranco María Amapola Povedano-Díaz María Belén Morales-Cevallos Jose A. Rodas David Alarcón Rubio María Muñiz Rivas Daniel Oleas

(1) Background: Problematic social media use has increasingly been conceptualized as a non-clinical addictive-like behavior characterized by impaired control and negative functional consequences. Despite the rapid growth of TikTok and its algorithm-driven content delivery, the contribution of individual psychological factors and users’ awareness of algorithmic processes to addictive symptoms remains insufficiently understood, particularly in Latin American contexts. This study examined the associations between personality traits, algorithmic awareness, and addictive symptoms of TikTok use among university students. (2) Methods: A quantitative, cross-sectional design was conducted with a convenience sample of 238 university students from Ecuador. Participants completed self-report measures of social media addiction, algorithmic media content awareness, and Big Five personality traits. Spearman correlations and hierarchical multiple regression analyses were performed, controlling for age and sex. (3) Results: Algorithmic awareness dimensions were not significant predictors of addictive symptoms. Demographic variables explained minimal variance, whereas personality traits accounted for the largest increase in explained variance in the final model. Neuroticism and Extraversion were positively associated with addictive symptoms, while Conscientiousness and Openness to Experience were negatively associated. (4) Conclusions: Personality traits were more informative than algorithmic awareness in explaining addictive-like TikTok use among university students, underscoring the relevance of self-regulatory and affective dispositions for prevention and intervention strategies.

Journalism and Media doi: 10.3390/journalmedia7020109

Authors: William Ko-Wai Tang Chammy Yan-Lam Lau Ao Zhang

Social media has become a primary news source for post-secondary students in Hong Kong; however, there is substantial disinformation and misinformation on these platforms. This study offers an initial qualitative window into how Hong Kong post-secondary students identify and respond to online disinformation and misinformation on social media. The qualitative interviews were conducted based on the traditional “Content–Appearance–Motivation” (CAM) framework. The findings show that students actively draw on common-sense reasoning and CAM-related cues. The study proposes a provisional Contextualized Dual-Loop Verification Model in which traditional CAM assessment is embedded within a broader loop of platform literacy, technical authenticity awareness, perceived risk and efficacy, and metacognitive regulation, highlighting the need for journalism and media education to move beyond conventional information literacy toward AI-era verification competencies. Future large-scale and cross-cultural studies are needed to test and refine this model.

Journalism and Media doi: 10.3390/journalmedia7020108

Authors: Andaleep Sadi Ades

The advent of social media has transformed brand communication to put storytelling at the center of building engagement and awareness. But the role of long-term brand value in virality is an essential challenge. This paper conducts a bibliometric and thematic analysis from the fields of marketing, psychology, and media studies published between 2015 and 2025, examining the correlation between narrative design and audience response, separating short-term popularity and long-term consumer appeal. The analysis was based on a structured literature review and qualitative methodological framework, using the literature sourced through Scopus, Web of Science, PsycINFO, and Google Scholar published between 2015 and 2025. Thematic coding searched for emotional tones, devices used in the narration, types of metrics, and contextual factors in inclusion and exclusion criteria. The findings indicate a divide in quantitative measures, such as likes and shares, and qualitative measures, such as sentiment and resonance stories. Story elements such as authenticity, the depth of the characters, and video-based content had a major effect on the two types of engagement. Storytelling effectiveness was also mediated by influencer participation, algorithmic interactions, and audience demographics. The results confirm that meaningful storytelling with hybrid metrics contributes to stronger brand–consumer relationships. Future studies ought to shift to predictive modeling and focus on the ability of AI to dictate personalized brand stories in diverse cultures.

Journalism and Media doi: 10.3390/journalmedia7020107

Authors: Ehsan Jozaghi

Periods of major technological transformation have historically coincided with the emergence of political movements. The current Artificial Intelligence (AI) revolution, alongside the expansion of platform-based media, has reshaped how political dissent is produced, circulated, and normalized. This study examines contemporary anti-monarchist discourse associated with the UK-based Republic movement, focusing on how opposition to constitutional monarchy is articulated on YouTube within an environment shaped by profit-driven goals. Using NVivo 14, this qualitative study analyzes 62 publicly available YouTube videos published over a twelve-month period from January 2025 to January 2026, employing a hybrid inductive–deductive thematic analysis supported by Large Language Models. Findings identify three interrelated discursive themes: monarchy framed as legalized theft and extraction of public wealth; monarchical authority depicted as undemocratic and constitutionally manipulative; and the reproduction of colonial, elite, and mythic power through mediated narratives of tradition and national identity. Rather than evaluating the factual accuracy of anti-monarchist claims, the analysis treats this content as a mediated cultural practice through which broader socio-economic anxieties—such as inequality, democratic distrust, and fears of technological displacement—are symbolically organized. Digital platforms, such as the Republic Campaign YouTube channel, thus enable political discourse to gain visibility and resonance.

Journalism and Media doi: 10.3390/journalmedia7020106

Authors: Muhammad Noor Al Adwan Shaimaa Ezzat Basha Asmaa Hegazy Asmaa Moustafa Ahmed Hossam Fayez

This study examines the relationship between Sudanese audiences’ exposure to digital media coverage of the civil war and their psychological immunity and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms while also investigating the mediating role of psychological immunity. Data were collected through an online survey from a sample of 774 Sudanese respondents residing both inside and outside Sudan. The findings indicate a relatively high level of exposure to digital news coverage, particularly through social media platforms such as Facebook, reflecting the growing centrality of digitally mediated news environments in conflict reporting. The results also reveal moderate levels of psychological immunity and relatively high levels of PTSD symptoms, especially in the hyperarousal dimension. Statistical analysis shows a negative association between media exposure and psychological immunity, and a positive association between exposure and PTSD symptoms, with psychological immunity partially mediating this relationship. Beyond these findings, this study highlights important implications for journalism practice and media responsibility. The intensity and emotional nature of digital war coverage raise critical concerns regarding ethical news production, the circulation of distressing content, and the potential psychological impact on audiences. These findings underscore the need for more responsible digital journalism practices, including content moderation, trauma-sensitive reporting, and the promotion of media literacy, in order to mitigate the potential harm associated with repeated exposure to crisis-related news content.

Journalism and Media doi: 10.3390/journalmedia7020105

Authors: Fangni Li Lei Zhang Sanjoy Kumar Roy

As artificial intelligence reshapes professional workflows, understanding what drives effective AI use among employees has become a critical concern for organizations. Moving beyond traditional technology acceptance frameworks, this study develops an integrative multi-level model to examine the behavioral determinants of AI use performance (AUP) among journalists. Drawing on the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) and the Expectation Confirmation Model (ECM) and incorporating individual and organizational factors, a survey was conducted among 543 journalists in China. Hypotheses are tested via a hybrid PLS-SEM and artificial neural network (ANN) approach to capture both linear and non-linear relationships. The findings reveal that expectation confirmation significantly enhances AUP by driving perceived usefulness and satisfaction. Digital literacy, personal trust in AI, and organizational support positively influence AUP, whereas communication barriers exert the strongest negative effect. Demographic variables (gender, age, education) show no significant impact. Notably, the ANN sensitivity analysis identifies communication barriers as the most influential predictor overall, a finding not apparent from linear analysis alone. This study advances theoretical understanding of employee behavioral responses in AI-integrated professional contexts and offers practical insights into how organizations can foster effective employee–AI collaboration through targeted communication strategies and supportive infrastructure.