We checked 11 communication studies journals on Friday, July 11, 2025 using the Crossref API. For the period July 04 to July 10, we retrieved 23 new paper(s) in 8 journal(s).

Communication Research

In Diversity We Trust? Examining the Effect of Political Newsroom Diversity on Media Trust, Use, and Avoidance
Eliana DuBosar, Jay D. Hmielowski, Muhammad Ehab Rasul
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In an era of declining American media trust, it is crucial to examine methods for increasing trust and encouraging holistic information seeking. Accordingly, we extend scholarship assessing outcomes of journalistic transparency by examining the effects of providing consumers with a breakdown of the political diversity of journalists working for a news outlet. We conducted three experiments varying the ideological (Study 1) and partisan (Studies 2 and 3) identification of journalists working for an outlet, assessing impacts on outlet trust, use, and avoidance intentions, and whether trust mediated relationships for the latter two outcomes. Participants reported higher trust, greater use, and lower avoidance intentions for balanced (i.e., equally represented political viewpoints) and unaffiliated (i.e., no political information) outlets compared to two partisan majority outlets. Results showed no differences in trust or use/avoidance intentions between the unaffiliated and balanced outlets. Additionally, an out-group bias was prevalent for partisans across all three experiments.

Digital Journalism

AI Hype Through an African Lens: A Critical Analysis of Language as Symbolic Action in Online News Publications
Sisanda Nkoala, Trust Matsilele, Musawenkosi Ndlovu, Tanja Bosch
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Public Knowledge and Expertise Under Authoritarian Siege: A Defense of Academic Freedom from Digital Journalism Studies
Oscar Westlund, Matt Carlson, Basyouni Hamada, Natali Helberger, Sophie Lecheler, Seth C. Lewis, Thorsten Quandt, Stephen D. Reese, Ramón Salaverría, Magdalena Saldaña, T. J. Thomson, Karin Wahl-Jorgensen, Shangyuan Wu
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Information, Communication & Society

Twitter dreams of AI: understanding AI futurity through sentence embeddings
Stephanie Zhang
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Economy of suffering and ethical visibility in the mpox crisis
Marco Scalvini, Sara Fletcher
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The dual impact of virtual reality: examining the addictive potential and therapeutic applications of immersive media in the metaverse
LjubiĆĄa Bojić, Jörg Matthes, Agariadne Dwinggo Samala, Milan Čabarkapa
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Operationalizing AI governance: data annotation, La Qi and manual alignment in China
Pengfei Fu, Zhi Lin, Wilfred Yang Wang
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Journal of Communication

The labor of love: romance authors and platform solidarity
Christine Larson
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In recent years, emerging technologies and neoliberal policies have transformed the way people work. This article explores the impact of sociotechnical change on platformized cultural production, where creators depend on digital platforms to make a living. By examining the case of American romance writers, the paper reveals how unique solidaristic practices, including gender-focused community building, an emphasis on pan-hierarchical connections, and communicative norms of open information-sharing, empowered romance authors throughout the platformization of publishing. Through 57 in-depth interviews and 40 years of archival research, the study demonstrates how these practices facilitated the diffusion of digital self-publishing, reducing romance writers’ precarity. By introducing a novel, multi-level communicative framework, this paper integrates meso-level theories of innovation with macro- and micro-level understandings of platform power. This framework provides a new model for understanding collective agency within platformized industries The paper contributes to broader discussions of “good work,” suggesting that communicative strategies can reshape power imbalances even under platformized conditions.
Far-right challenges to liberal democratic press norms: “indexing by proxy” in a German immigration debate
Curd B KnĂŒpfer, W Lance Bennett, Ulrike Klinger
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This study examines the mechanisms by which illiberal politics make the news by disrupting democratic systems. During the late 20th century, a liberal journalistic consensus in most democracies developed guidelines for gatekeeping political voices and views in the news. In recent years, illiberal politics and changing media systems have challenged those press norms. Politically marginalized parties can make the news by disrupting party systems, elections, and policy processes. The presented case of German news coverage of the United Nations Global Compact for Migration shows that disproportionate media attention to the far-right Alternative fĂŒr Deutschland party was not related to its size or policy impact, but to the strategic disruption of the political process itself. Making news via democratic disruption constitutes what we term “indexing by proxy” that undermines a core democratic journalism norm by amplifying coverage of illiberal actors that challenge the legitimacy of various public institutions, including legacy journalism.

Media, Culture & Society

Discostan and Hamnawa: Between erasure and preservation in South Asian digital diasporic archives
Hassan Asif
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This essay examines how South Asian archivists in the North American diaspora engage with endangered and lost media, constructing informal, vernacular archives that embody narratives of belonging, change, and displacement. Focusing on the preservation of endangered musical media, it reveals how these archivists challenge dominant Western frameworks of categorization and representation. Through case studies of Discostan and Hamnawa, the essay demonstrates how diaspora-led efforts fill the gaps left by insufficient preservation practices in India and Pakistan. Using Critical Technocultural Discourse Analysis (CTDA) and semi-structured interviews, the research explores how digital tools influence social memory. It also examines the “double helix” model of digital cultural memory, where one strand emphasizes remixing and transformation, while the other focuses on preservation. These initiatives blur the lines between creation and preservation, highlighting the evolving relationship between digital culture, memory, and media in diasporic contexts.
Regulatory barriers in the attention economy: Lack of support, trust, and measures
Gunn Enli
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The challenges posed by the attention economy have sparked calls for political regulation, as users’ struggles with self-regulation have become well-documented. However, there is a lack of research on the feasibility of political intervention as a solution. This article examines to what extent political regulation can effectively address the issues created by the attention economy, and seeks to identify potential regulatory barriers. Using a mixed-method approach, the study includes a survey of users’ opinions on regulating the attention economy, qualitative interviews with key stakeholder groups to provide context for the survey data, and a document analysis that covers both national and supranational levels. Theoretically, the analysis builds on disconnection studies, media policy research, and studies of the attention economy. The findings highlight that the main regulatory barriers include insufficient public support, low trust, and inadequate regulatory measures. Since political processes do not occur in isolation and require backing from the public and collaboration with key stakeholders, these barriers hold significant weight. The key theoretical implication of this study is that research on regulation of the attention economy should recalibrate its expectations regarding regulatory possibilities within liberal democracies. Future studies should further explore the underlying mechanisms that impede effective regulation.
Editorial introduction: Queer Asia as Method
Liang Ge, J Daniel Luther, Eva Cheuk-Yin Li
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This introduction outlines the theoretical and methodological interventions proposed by the Crosscurrent special section, Queer Asia as Method , which interrogates the dynamic intersections of queer studies, Asian studies and critical media scholarship to challenge Eurocentric epistemologies and colonial frameworks. Emerging from scholarly dialogues initiated in 2021, this framework challenges the Euro-American dominance often found within queer studies by centring the intricate, fluid intersections of ‘queernesses’ and ‘Asias’. We argue for examining how media technologies and transnational cultural flows across diverse Asian contexts shape, circulate and contest queernesses and Asian-nesses, offering rich ground for epistemological and methodological innovation. Building upon the discourse of ‘Asia as Method’, this approach positions Asia not merely as a source of data but as a critical vantage point for decolonising knowledge production and interrogating established epistemes. The introduction highlights the significance of inter-Asian referencing, the role of media as both terrains of struggle and tools for generating transformative momentum. The collection also highlights the precarious labour of marginalised scholars navigating institutional erasure and geopolitical violence, framing ‘Queer Asia as Method’ as both an insurgent academic project and a call for interdisciplinary, anti-colonial solidarity. We frame the subsequent essays in the themed section, which critique the coloniality embedded in dominant queer studies from their situated queernesses in Asias, advocating instead for methods that foreground situational, transcolonial and embodied experiences, ranging from techno-Orientalism, and queer entrepreneurship in China to hybrid languages in Indian film, and pedagogical affects in Indonesia, demonstrating the polyvocality and critical potential of Queer Asia as Method.
Queer techno-orientalism as method: Mr. Robot, Uterus Man , and other Chinese techno futures
Ian Liujia Tian
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This article inter-references Asian North American theorizing of techno-orientalism and queer Asia as method. Specifically, it develops queer techno-orientalism as method to think beyond Chinese queer and trans bodies’ hyper visibility as “technologized threats” in techno-orientalist representations and their invisibility in China’s cisheteronormative, nationalist hi-tech future. It argues that Chinese queer and trans bodies can reclaim a reparative techno future beyond these two dominant frames. To do this, I practice queer techno-orientalism as method by juxtaposing the cyberpunk TV series Mr. Robot (2016–2019) and the animated short Uterus Man (2013). I read against the grain of techno-orientalist tropes to explore other possible relationships between Chinese queer/trans bodies and technology more specifically, and between East Asian queer/trans futures and technology more broadly.
Queer Indonesia: What’s queer about queer studies in Indonesia?
Hendri Yulius Wijaya
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This reflective essay explores the production and circulation of queer knowledge in Indonesia. From the viewpoint of a non-academic with scholarly training and drawing on my pedagogical experience in queer studies, I introduce three additional elements to Queer Asia as Method. First, the notion “internationalist localism” emphasizes a strategic utilization of diverse queer knowledge from various locations, including US queer studies, without imposing a totalizing perspective. This move challenges the simplistic binary of “Western/colonializer” and “local/colonized.” Second, the Indonesia case demonstrates the potential to challenge the conventional notion of “Asia(ness),” questioning the idea that Asia and Indonesia are a fixed entity. Third, while the rising anti-LGBT sentiment generates creative pedagogical approaches that transcend traditional academic institutions, these practices are intertwined with the precarity of the actors involved. Unequal access to knowledge resources and publishing platforms, alongside the predominance of English as the language of academic legitimacy, compels us to center precariousness within the broader conceptualization of Queer Asia.
In search of a queer language in contemporary India: Languages ‘upside down’ as resistance to Euro-American universalisms
Kaustav Bakshi
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Emptying language of heterologocentrism has been a concern for queers for a long time. In this article, I look at two very old local languages from India – one a lavender language and the other a lingua literaria – which show possibilities of queering language, while simultaneously, liberating the language of sexuality from the shackles of neo-liberal universalisms which have colonized the global language of sexuality identity politics. The first is used by an underprivileged class of sexually non-conforming individuals – by the hijra/kothi/dhurrani communities since the 19th century, and other was fashioned by a radical poetic community in the 14th century – each informed by an erotic excess that contest colonial, bourgeois sexual puritanism which was liable in marginalizing, oppressing and eliminating queer lives. The article while critically discussing these two languages as a possibility of decolonizing queer languages in India, it also looks at the pitfalls of doing so in the era of unprecedented rise of the right-wing and their every trick to co-opt the queer. It argues that vapid decolonization may lead to homonationalist ideas to take precedence which is precarious for the LGBTIQ+ community.
No success no queer: Burnout queerness for queer female entrepreneurs in post-socialist urban China
Ling Tang
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Based on 3 years of ethnographic research with urban elite businesswomen in China, this paper introduces the concept of “burnout queerness” to deepen the understanding of homonormativity under post-socialism. Burnout queerness highlights how homonormativity is highly contingent, shaped by an imagined standard of neoliberal success and monogamy. This framework positions certain T (masculine-presenting women) as preferable intimate partners over their male counterparts, who are often associated with infidelity due to the pressures of “entrepreneur masculinity”. Examining a form of fluid desire among individuals who move away from the politics of coming out, this homonormativity is both precarious and pragmatic. When neoliberal conditions are no longer met, or pragmatism breaks down, same-sex intimacy becomes unstable, with both partners potentially reverting to different-sex relationships.
Queering Asia, querying method
Song Hwee Lim
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This position paper responds to the topic of “Queer Asia as Method” by addressing each keyword individually and incrementally as phrases. It begins with the term “Asia” and argues that oppression still suffered by gendered and queer subjects in many parts of Asia should caution us against celebratory discourses in the name of Asia. It moves on to consider the notion of “Asia as method” and suggests that a hostility to theory in the name of method betrays a spectrum of affective-cognitive reflexes that smack of (at best) unconscious bias to (at worst) toxic masculinity. Lastly, it proposes that “queering Asia as method” demands that we reflect upon what we do and why we do it, rather than who we are and how we do things. In the final analysis, there are cultural and political battles yet to be fought – and won – in queering Asia and querying method.
Extractive journalism: Conceptualizing extractivismo in climate and environmental journalism
Cristina MislĂĄn, Damilola Oduolowu, Isabella Zielinski
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This manuscript draws from the Latin American concept extractivismo, literature on journalism and geography, and scholarship on environmental and climate journalism to examine how local reporters and residents of a specific region vulnerable to disasters complicate the national and local boundaries of news production. We analyzed unstructured life story interviews with 9 reporters who live in proximity to the geographical spaces they cover, and 18 Black residents and activists who live in nearby communities. Using these interviews, we employ their critiques of reporting practices to conceptualize extractive journalism and challenge conventional arguments that portray local newsrooms as less extractive than national media organizations. We intervene in scholarship that fails to critically examine how local reporting practices extract from vulnerable communities of color and thus reproduce racial and class injustices.

Political Communication

Propaganda during Economic Crises: Reference Point Adjustment in Economic News
Fatih Serkant Adiguzel
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Outsiders in the Media: How a Sense of “Foreignness” Shapes Support for Censorship in China
Ziyi Wu
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Social Media + Society

Beyond the Goddess and Demoness: Rural Tibetan Women’s Understanding of Domestic Violence Amid #LamuAct
Dongjing Kang, Chinaiwengmu
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Lamu, a 30-year-old Tibetan woman, tragically died when her ex-husband set her on fire during a livestream on Douyin in Sichuan province in 2021. Following her death, the #LamuAct sparked an anti-domestic violence (DV) movement on major Chinese platforms. Informed by a decolonial feminist perspective, we conceptualize the “Good Woman of Tibet” focusing on two cultural imaginaries, lhamo (the Goddess) and srinamo (the Demoness), to explore the landscape of #LamuAct and how Tibetan women from rural regions of Southwest China understand DV. Through the thematic analysis of social media discourses and 21 in-depth interviews, the results show how social media discourse and local narratives intersect and diverge in shaping contemporary Tibetan women’s understanding of DV. The significant divergence between online and offline narrative surrounding the srinamo imaginary reveals a complex ambivalence toward powerful women—who symbolize resistance against traditional Tibetan patriarchy and embody the agency to voice experiences of DV. The convergence calls for a responsive legal approach: “un-domesticize” the violence to reframe DV. This study contributes to decolonial feminist scholarship and expands social media activism on DV by incorporating rural women’s perspectives beyond the digital sphere.

Telecommunications Policy

IT investment and labor displacement: Evidence from Korea
Joonbae Lee
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Lawfulness of mass processing personal data to train large language models in China
Lu Zhang
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