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Comparative communication research needs to catch up to other disciplines. In this special issue and the associated International Communication Association preconference, we focus on comparative work related to digital political communication. This introduction argues that comparative digital political communication needs to consider comparisons across various dimensions, including countries, platforms, and time, whereas existing comparative communication research focuses on country or territorial comparison. We highlight the six submissions' approaches to comparative work. Each submission provides at least one of these three dimensions of contrast. We conclude with a discussion of enduring gaps in this field of research, such as the lack of studies using time as a dimension of comparison. Time is crucial for understanding ever-changing digital media platforms. We also conclude by discussing some ongoing challenges in political communication research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on evidence from literature in branding, marketing, digital media, and communications, this article finds that museums' branding strategies are framed within marketing disciplines and therefore create simplistic dichotomies between "internal" and "external" actors, as well as between "physical" and "digital" spaces. This marketing frame inevitably led museums to create their identities by placing higher value on their physical attributes (collection and building) as well as to the stakeholders (curators and visitors) who either managed or engaged with these physical attributes. Therefore, when museums began using social media, their approach was to instrumentalise these platforms as communication tools and to reflect the identity they had built "offline" through marketing or broadcasting-style online posts. This approach to social media is limiting because it does not acknowledge the role of the platform and that of the user within these online spaces. Based on a systematic review of literature, this article argues the need for a different approach to museums' digital identities by proposing an approach based on Actor-Network theory and a new media frame. In doing so, it addresses the need for an integrated approach that connects mission and social practices to create value for online audiences and that is open to the active participation of networked users. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This work presents the key ideas of the 13 works that make up the special issue, "The Role of News Media in Promoting Hate Speech," exploring the mechanisms by which hate speech spreads in media-related environments. The objective of this collection of studies is. The authors of these works, hailing from Spain, the United States, India, Portugal, and Norway, have contributed to establishing an approach to the central issue from diverse perspectives, including a legal perspective and addressing elements associated with journalistic practice and the dissemination of hate speech in current digital communication scenarios and help to exacerbate the polarization and prejudice in the public opinion of our current societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When governments mandated lockdowns to limit the spread of the coronavirus, the resulting reduction of face-to-face communication threatened many people's psychological well-being by fostering feelings of loneliness. Given social media's eponymous social nature, we study the relationship between people's social media usage and their loneliness during these times of physical social restrictions. We contrast literature highlighting the social value of social media with a competing logic based on the "internet paradox," according to which increased social media usage may paradoxically be associated with increasing, not decreasing, levels of loneliness. As the extant literature provides opposing correlational insights into the general relationship of social media usage and loneliness, we offer competing hypotheses and offer novel longitudinal insights into the phenomenon of interest. In the empirical context of Germany's initial lockdown, our research uses survey panel data from February 2020 (before the lockdown) and April 2020 (during the lockdown) to contribute longitudinal evidence to the matter. We find that more usage of social media in the studied lockdown setting is indeed associated with more, not less loneliness. Thus, our results suggest a "social media paradox" when physical social restrictions are mandated and caution social media users and policy makers to not consider social media as a valuable alternative for social interaction. A post-hoc analysis suggests that more communication via richer digital media which are available during physical lockdowns (e.g., video chats) softens the "social media paradox". Conclusively, this research provides deeper insights into the social value of social interactions via digital media during lockdowns and contributes novel insights into the relationship between social media and loneliness during such times when physical social interaction is heavily restricted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the modern everyday life environment, where the Internet, social media platforms, and electronic communication have grown pervasive, cyberbullying, a new and disturbing type of bullying, has emerged. Cyberbullying is using internet communication and digital media to harass and victimize others. This review divides cyberbullying detection techniques into two major categories: text-based and multimodal approaches. Within these categories, we examine various suggested approaches, their benefits, and drawbacks. This study provides a complete summary of the current concerns and challenges in cyberbullying detection methods and possible remedies. In addition, we explore the future opportunities for expanding and refining these models to suit the developing cyberbullying situation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the significance of communication science and research methodology, focusing on the advancements made by the journal Communication Methods and Measures (CMM). It acknowledges the existing challenges in the field, such as the lack of standardization and outdated data analysis techniques. The article emphasizes the need for clear standards and expectations in research methodology, particularly in areas like scale development, validation, and computational methods. It also discusses the importance of computational methods in studying the impact of algorithms on social media platforms, while addressing the issues of fragmentation and lack of transparency in computational research. The authors express their commitment to maintaining high-quality research and extending its impact beyond communication science. [Extracted from the article]

This study examines how social media platforms can facilitate greater visibility of Tunisian women in political communication activism to survive male politicians' domination and the conventional media's boycott. The authors chose to focus on the case of Tunisian activist Abir Moussi to investigate how she uses Facebook for political mobilization and self-branding purposes. A monographic approach to the content of the Facebook page was carried out, along with a semiotic analysis of the speech given by Moussi on the decisions announced by President Kais Said on 25 July 2021. The results revealed a Facebook-Live-based communication strategy to address audiences as well as a large number of photos and videos. Besides, The Tunisian political activist used several linguistic elements in her discourse to make her political discourse effective, such as contrast, intertextuality, metaphor, etc. Unlike President Said, who uses Standard Arabic, the Tunisian political activist speaks the Tunisian dialect; Abir's tone ranges from humorous, enthusiastic, provocative, menacing and promising; she provides her propaganda speech with legal texts and arguments to convince her audience, claiming to enlighten minds by simplifying ordinances and complex political terms. Moreover, she revealed several political and economic 'hot issues' that led to the Tunisian crisis. The authors conclude that social media does not create new ways of activism but rather amplifies traditional ones; they suggest enhancing the political efficacy of social media to boost political activism and emphasizing the concept of 'online political efficacy' in future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political campaigns on social media constitute a fundamental component of contemporary democracy. However, there is limited evidence regarding the evolution of the usability of these platforms in Latin American contexts. This article presents the results of a longitudinal investigation comparing the use of social media, specifically Twitter, by candidates in the 2019 sectional elections and the 2021 national elections in Ecuador. The methodology combines content analysis and discourse analysis of available resources (hashtags, photos, and videos) and the main themes. The objective is to comprehend the effects of communication dynamics on Twitter during electoral campaigns in Ecuador, focusing on the structure of relationships generated by messages and their relationship with social events. The results demonstrate a high usability of the resources offered by the platform for discourse projection. Thematic elements refer to campaign activities, partisan content, campaign-related slogans, or self-promotional phrases. In conclusion, the identified patterns during the elections and the evolution of these findings contribute to understanding the role of social media in campaigns, especially in developing countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Visual communication is considered one of the most effective way to express institutional contents and therefore a strategic field for public sector communication. In order to explore how visual languages - such as infographics, icons, maps, tables, pictograms, etc. - are adopted by Italian Public Administrations in their digital spaces, the contribute aims at investigating the infographic contents in the instituional timelines. Which are the opportunites and the risks to test these visual languages? Are there significant differences in the use of infographics among the Italian Regions and the Ministry of Health? Which contents are more often expressed by visuals?. This study is a second step research: in the first phase we have paid attention to the large use of infographics during the pandemic, when they were urged to the emergency; the second step examines the current use of visual communication, after the pandemic, in the daily routines to inform citizens on a wider range of public issues and services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article shares the preliminary results of a larger research study that explores the main forms of appearence of so-called reaction videos and the motives for their viewing. Based on a thematic analysis of the narratives of experience shared by the participant subjected to the viewing of selected reaction videos within 6 focus groups, we examine how participants define reaction videos, their consumption dynamics, and motives. The research participants' narratives centre around the identification with the reaction of the reactor, according to two main declinations: reaction as a commentary/critique on a specific media content and reaction as an emotional manifestation. The current popularity of reaction videos thus invites us to reconsider the idea of an aesthetic specificity of digital media characterized by agency, i.e. the interactivity of the digital user. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social networks have become essential means of communication and have modified the concept of political communication. Social media have nowadays an increasingly important impact on election campaigns worldwide, and, therefore, the latest election processes within the Latin-American context are ideal environments for this analysis, due to both the volatility and the richness of the political-electoral competition, and their capacity to influence the exchange of political information through the different emotions of the audiences. This paper presents a systematized study of the communication that took place in social media during the first round of the 2022 Costa Rican electoral process (February 6th). The information has been collected from the data available at the Digital Media Communication Observatory of the Universidad Latina de Costa Rica, using the social listening tools Minerva Data, Kantar IBOPE Media's Adspend and Mention, with the objective of revealing the digital conversation trends in this campaign, an unprecedented electoral process with 25 presidential candidates. The reports from the Digital Communication Observatory show the evolution of the electorate's behavior in terms of interaction, sentiment, topics and voting intention, during the first round of the 2022 electoral process, as well as the general dynamics perceived in the social media and public web environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present summary describes the book "Digital Writing Registers: Contexts, Forms, and Metapragmatic Reflections" by Florian Busch. The book deals with the use of language in digital media, particularly in social media and messenger services. The author examines various register concepts and analyzes the use of writing and graphic elements in digital communication. The book offers a synthesis of different theoretical approaches and examines the socio-situational contexts, graphic-segmental forms, and metapragmatic ideologies in digital writing registers. Florian Busch examines the pragmatic-literal behavior of young people and their writing registers. The high usage of smartphones, especially the messenger service WhatsApp, plays a crucial role in this. Busch develops a three-stage data collection and analysis procedure to examine the writing registers. The significance of WhatsApp conversations is emphasized due to their specific conversational patterns. Various forms of digital writing are analyzed, including phonostylistic and graphostylistic variations, as well as misspellings and typos. The young people also reflect on the socio-cultural and socio-communicative reasons for certain writing structures. The book offers a comprehensive analysis and is recommended for those interested in linguistics. [Extracted from the article]

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to analyze how the personal protective equipment (PPE) industry managed supply chain and business relationships disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic, and the adoption of digital and social media during the period of crisis management. Design/methodology/approach: The methodology used is qualitative based on 14 interviews with 11 PPE firms operating in Italy, the first Western country that implemented a national lockdown during the COVID-19 outbreak in 2020. Findings: Findings suggest that although most PPE companies in Italy have been slow in implementing digital transformation, digital technologies and communication enhanced existing assets and capabilities creating new customer value during the COVID-19 outbreak. The pandemic has increased the relevance of social media as an effective tool in the business-to-business (B2B) context to provide updated information and training, as well as to reinforce and personalize business relationships, weakened by the lack of physical contacts during the lockdown. Moreover, highly interdependent buyer–supplier relations can increase supply chain resilience to disruptions in mutually dependent relationships/partnerships. Research limitations/implications: By analyzing the main issues encountered during the pandemic and the digital strategies adopted by PPE companies, this study seeks to extend B2B literature on supply chain disruption management and digitalization. The limitations refer to the study's generalizability as a limited number of firms are analyzed. Practical implications: Implications for B2B companies and policymakers are provided with the extent of managing supply chain disruptions during emergency situations such as COVID-19 pandemic, when collaboration between different actors involved become essential. Originality/value: No previous studies have analyzed how PPE firms used digital and social media in managing disruption in supply chain and business relationships. Therefore, the present study contributes to extend the B2B literature by analyzing the related effects during the COVID-19 pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Podcasts are an increasingly popular form of sound media that generate active listeners and fandom around them. These programmes present an opportunity for scholars to analyse not only new forms of consumption around convergent and on-demand media, but also the particular phenomenon of fandom related to audio productions in the current digital context. Scholars have mainly focused on studying how fandoms use podcasts to create content rather than on podcast fandoms. This paper analyses podcast fandoms in Europe, what distinguishes them from other active audiences, and how they engage with this digital media through online tools. To explore this, a method of triangulation is used, relying on content and netnography analysis, and both top-down and bottom-up strategies are considered across the biggest European markets. Results show that around a third of the podcasts in the sample have an active fandom that engages with these programmes through social media, primarily on Instagram, through the creation of content. This content usually highlights the brand identity of the podcasts through the creation of fan art and fan accounts, and that there are more consistencies across European fandoms than exist across European audiences. This suggests that social media sites, and particularly Instagram, are used by fandoms across Europe in an equivalent way to extend their textual productivity and that this is still what distinguishes audiences from fans. These findings have important implications for scholars and producers alike, both to build upon the knowledge of reception and fan studies and to understand how to encourage fandom engagement on social media sites. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Theoretical and empirical work on digital media use and social connectedness has often considered face-to-face communication to be an available option. But how do various digital media uses relate to social connectedness when face-to-face communication is not, or much less, possible? Drawing on survey data from 2925 US adults during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, we find that different digital communication methods display different relationships with social connectedness under stay-at-home circumstances with limited in-person interactions outside the home. Overall, digital communication relates to lower social connectedness. In line with notions from social presence theory, especially digital media lower in social presence (e.g. email, social media, and online games, and to some extent text messaging) relate negatively to social connectedness, while this is not the case for higher social presence media (e.g. voice and video calls). Our study has implications for theorizing about digital media use and social connectedness in times when face-to-face communication is less available. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the COVID-19 pandemic, virologists gained a prominent role in traditional and social media in Germany; several participated in regular podcasts. Using a two-wave survey (n = 696/361 at Time 1/2), we explore which impact the strong media presence of virologists had on media users and what role parasocial phenomena (asymmetric interactions and relationships with virologists) played. People who favored a specific virologist scored higher on various cognitive, affective, and behavioral outcomes. Exposure to the virologist was related to these outcomes and parasocial phenomena turned out as an intervening variable between exposure and subjective and objective knowledge (time 1), solace, and behavioral engagement (both times). We did not, however, find effects over time when controlling for the time 1 values, which rather speak against more long-term media effects. A higher need for leadership also predicted the formation of parasocial phenomena. We discuss the theoretical implications for the role of parasocial phenomena in science communication via digital media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Peruvian companies, through digital tools, share their products with consumers. The research pursued the objective of identify how the digital communication of companies influences the purchasing behavior of Peruvian consumers. A virtual survey was applied to a sample of 240 consumers. Significant results: 80% use a social network; 75% look for information on digital platforms and 68% maintain communication through digital media. Conclusions: the digital communication of companies directly influences the purchasing behavior of Peruvian consumers and consumers consider the digital presence of companies to be important [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political philosophy is applied to analyze the democratic potential of tourism social media. This study shows that while these media have deliberative potential, they also reflect the postpolitical and postdemocratic condition in tourism digital communication. This analysis is illustrated through the discussion of three metaphors: the menu, the stranger, and the tourist-light. The menu represents the increased invasion of lifeworlds by the commercialization and corporate regulation of the tourism social Web. The stranger symbolizes the weak accountability of online communities. The tourist-light embodies the relevance of hedonism in virtual worlds. Social media contributes to digital narcissism and supports consumer centricity. Digital communication produces a sanitized version of tourism and entails a subtle constraint of political citizenship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the potentials of blockchain technology to alleviate and/or intensify some of the problems of the information and communication sector. Divided into four sections, the article first explores the democratic deficit within the context of an informed citizenry. This section includes a study of the current public sphere, post-truth politics and populism. Secondly, the article addresses the current information and communication system by investigating today's social media and an ever-changing digital news media landscape. Thirdly, it explores four prevalent approaches toward reforming the information and communication system: fact-checking and debunking, media literacy, regulation and policy reform, and self-regulation. And fourthly, it addresses the central question of the study, which concerns blockchain technology. This disruptive database technology has potential to offer solutions to regaining trust in the information ecosystem, yet like other approaches, when placed within existing socio-economic structures, it falls short in reversing the democratic deficit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This paper adopts the approach of the Internet fusion digital media to conduct in-depth research and analysis on the interaction and communication of traditional culture. This structural information can be used to express and describe the Internet requirements. With the increasing demand for the Internet applications, the number of objects in the network and the complexity of the structure are also growing, so we can design suitable clustering algorithms to obtain more reasonable network structure information by using different semantic information in the heterogeneous information network. Firstly, the caching scheme is transformed into a backpack problem, and the storage scheme is obtained recursively by using dynamic programming, after which the computational task is optimized based on this storage scheme by using the whale algorithm to make it the least costly. The exact balance between the connotation essence of traditional culture and the emotional resonance in modern life has not yet been found, and the visual language belonging to cultural aesthetics under the combination of traditional and modern aesthetics needs to be explored for a long time. From an objective point of view, the digital art communication of cultural elements still suffers from five problems: lack of communication cultivation and stratification of target audiences, low quality of transcription of digital artworks, unbalanced economic and cultural values, uneven development of digital art communication forms, and low degree of Internet adaptation. A ranking algorithm based on fusing multiple meta-paths is proposed to better reflect the ranking values of different object distributions of the Internet data in heterogeneous information networks, which can obtain better clustering, while better clustering can be calculated to obtain more reasonable rankings, and finally, the types of the Internet-oriented applications are divided into multiple reasonable clusters. The effects of selecting different meta-paths on the clustering algorithm and the effects of fused meta-paths versus single meta-paths on the clustering results are given in the experimental results section. Also compared with other clustering algorithms, the I-RankClus algorithm can better achieve the data clustering classification for the Internet application scenarios. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within journalism, social media has become a vehicle of communication that keeps the audience up to date regarding the content they publish. To manage this relationship, the figure of the community manager, a professional directly linked to studies of Information Sciences, is indispensable, especially in Journalism and Advertising. A qualitative methodology is used on the basis of Grounded Theory in 13 telephone interviews with Spanish media community managers. The data were later treated and coded with the analysis tool Atlas.ti version 8.4.3. Journalistic community managers have quite varied functions and are in constant evolution. The perception that the quality of content published on social media has more weight than results (in the form of clicks and interactions) prevails in an environment where information is consumed at high speed, and where competence is more difficult to discern. Journalism does not have to turn to social media only as simple intermediaries for official websites; it must build up a community of users interested in the media and the current topics being disseminated. Despite communicative noise, digital platforms are perceived as positive and as an effective tool for the medium, keeping the audience informed through the community manager's daily management as the voice of the medium. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social media creates digital communication channels to interact with customers and needed attention to the broadening understanding of marketing. This study aims to examine the social media marketing of ride-hailing during the covid-19 pandemic. This study analyzes all accessible articles from well-known publishers. The results are 13 dimensions that influence reuse intention namely loyalty, information quality, source credibility, reviews, trust, product usefulness, satisfaction, consumer behavior, subjective norm, service quality, cost, sentiment emotion, and organizational response. This study provides to electronic word of mouth development in ride-hailing marketing, the challenges being faced, the methods used, and the mapping model of dimensions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Peruvian companies, through digital tools, share their products with consumers. The research pursued the objective of identify how the digital communication of companies influences the purchasing behavior of Peruvian consumers. A virtual survey was applied to a sample of 240 consumers. Significant results: 80% use a social network; 75% look for information on digital platforms and 68% maintain communication through digital media. Conclusions: the digital communication of companies directly influences the purchasing behavior of Peruvian consumers and consumers consider the digital presence of companies to be important. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Training teachers means confronting them with challenges that enable them to develop social and technological skills for their future career. This article seeks to understand which social problems teachers draw attention to on Twitter and the educational arguments they put forward to address them in class. The digital sources used were also examined. The sample comprised 574 students of the bachelor's degree in primary education at the University of Seville, and our research was conducted in three phases with two types of coding, open and axial, based on grounded theory. The analysis yielded 19 social problems, 4 levels of complexity of educational arguments, and 12 most frequent sources of information. The findings show a need to develop skills to improve the critical filtering of information obtained from digital media and the communication of social problems that can potentially be used in education. Our conclusions highlight the viability of these activities in promoting social media as tools to further knowledge for teaching. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This ethnographic case study focuses on newly resettled refugee women from Syria to the greater Houston, Texas area and how they used smartphone technology and various social media platforms to navigate the resettlement process between 2015 and 2018. They arrived at a critical time in the United States, just having acquired refugee status and resettling in Houston at the end of the Obama era. Trump era immigration policies (known as The Muslim Ban) denied immigration and asylum from majority Muslim nations. This participatory ethnographic study examines how, under the harshest circumstances, newly arriving refugees relied on smartphones, social media platforms and digital networks to create and perform a new collective community while remaining close to displaced family members. Technological engagement and polymediated experiences are examined through the lens of co-presence, gender performativity and visual media studies and how mobile technology helped engender a new vernacular space outside of and in opposition to nativist discourse. Their transnational caregiving and emotional labour and its digital footprints are the very architecture of emerging social networks, space building, and community cohesion. Mobile technology creates new forms of connectedness, constant contact and co-presence, a state wherein people attempt to overcome physical separation anxiety by performing, reproducing and inventing new forms of ambient polymedia environments, or, forms of digital communications that blur conventional notions of presence and distance. The question here is how the rupture of displacement might drive technology usage to continually expand the ways humans connect, and more importantly, how they find new ways to feel more connected. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The past decade saw a sharp increase in the use of smartphones and digital communication platforms. This manuscript reviews advancements in the study of digital communication and adolescent development over the last decade. We highlight theoretical models that seek to explain the power of digital media in adolescents' lives. We then examine research conducted over the last decade on five aspects of digital media: (1) potential to contribute to adolescent development, (2) associations with mental health, (3) differential impact of active versus passive social media use, (4) cyberbullying, and (5) sexting. We conclude with a discussion of potential opportunities and challenges for studying the role of digital communication in adolescents' development during the coming decade. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Connecting the affordance framework in computer-mediated communication to public relations theories, this essay proposes an affordance perspective on dialogic communication and digital public relations in general. We argue that 1) the enactment of organization-public dialogue on digital platforms requires certain combinations of media affordances; 2) the lens of affordances facilitates a non-dichotomous examination of the "dialogic communication vs. digital media" debate; 3) the fifth dialogic principle "ease of interface" should be conceptually expanded to "favorable affordances," which asserts that public relations practice should evaluate digital media platforms' various action possibilities and consider their inherent potentials for organization-public relationship building; and 4) research on digital public relations should incorporate affordance theory to achieve cross-platform theorization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article introduces the concept of the polymedia repertoire to explore how social meaning is indexed through the interplay of communicative resources at different levels of expression (from choice of media to individual signs) in digitally mediated interactions. The multi-layered polymedia repertoire highlights how people move fluidly between media platforms, semiotic modes and linguistic resources in the course of their everyday interactions, and enables us to locate digital communications within individuals' wider practices. The potential of our theoretical contribution is illustrated through analysis of mobile phone messaging between participants in a large multi-sited ethnography of the communicative practices of multilingual migrants working in linguistically diverse UK city neighbourhoods. Our analysis of mobile messaging exchanges in a day-in-the-life of these networked individuals reveals the importance of device attention in shaping interpersonal interactions, as well as the complex ways in which choices at different levels of a polymedia repertoire are structured by social relationships, communicative purpose and (dis)identification processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we investigate the use of social media in contemporary family interaction from a linguistic ethnographic perspective. Inspired by Auer's (1998) work on code-switching in conversation, we study how family members choose and sometimes alternate between digitally mediated and face-to-face modes of communication in various family settings. Based on ethnographic observations, the participants' metapragmatic reflections, and their interactional orientations to mode choices, we show how such choices serve social and metapragmatic functions in the interaction between family members who are present in the same house or even in the same room. Accordingly, we argue in favor of situating peoples' polymedia repertoires in a broader framework of communicative repertoires. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study contributes to existing research on polymedia by probing into what we call academic polymedia, investigating the constant availability of interpersonal, professional, and social media for constructing scholarly personas. Drawing on the technobiographical narratives of a group of Hong Kong bilingual academics, we analyze academics' perceptions of their media choices as situated in their professional polymedia environments. In particular, we examine how choices between public and private media shape academic persona development, and the way polymedia engagement impacts the participants' language choice for academic purposes. This study sheds light on existing research on workplace discourse and identity in sociolinguistics by offering a polymedia dimension that draws on people's media ideology in developing their professional identities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Insurance is basically a service not a product that is provided to clients for a lifetime experience, but it has to be wonderful experience not a terrible one. Different customers experience different experiences in the services provided by insurance, the difference lies in how the service is advertised and traded to customers Vis a Vis, how it is distributed and implemented when the claims rise. If we look at the advertising strategies there is a range of resources that are easily available for marketing (advertising) like TV set, bill-boards, radio, magazines, prints, publication by industries, leaflets and corporate cards of managers, or any other online platforms like social media. No matter how many resources and strategies are implemented, the necessity of the public to get their house, transport, health and various other assets protected against any risk is unavoidable. The generation of today also referred as Gen-Y, they prefer to get themselves involved with their insurance companies digital platforms or medium like cell phones, e-mail, apps that use internet, or through social media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Disinformation is a communicative phenomenon that frequently feeds on political or electoral topics, as well as other aspects of our reality. This research takes as a case study the coverage given by the Spanish digital media to a hoax broadcast during the Filomena storm in 2021 that insisted that the snow was plastic. The purpose of this work is to analyze the instrumentalization of fake information as an expression of the information media crisis in the current context of disinformation. We set out four specific objectives: (SO1) to study the spread of the hoax through the media, (SO2) to analyze the construction of headlines in the news pieces, (SO3) to investigate the treatment of the hoax in the content of the pieces, and (SO4) to analyze the sources used in the pieces. To reflect on this phenomenon, we propose a three-dimensional model (structural, economic, and pragmatic) aimed at clarifying the relationship between the logic of the spread of hoaxes on the Internet and the role played by traditional media in their diffusion. The methodology used combines workflow techniques of digital methods with quantitative and content analyses. The results reveal the appropriation of certain communication strategies by digital newspapers aimed at obtaining visits. We conclude that the Spanish media, by adapting to the dynamics of disinformation irresponsibly encouraged by the attention economy, subscribe to and reinforce the crisis of credibility faced by the media ecosystem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Online digital media has become a lifeline for humankind. But it has also become a major source of disruptions just like climate change. During the global pandemic, COVID-19, while the whole world is trying their best to blunt the spread of coronavirus, there is a vile trend of circulation of disinformation, fake news and sharing false data related to the virus on social media platforms creating panic among people. The review paper found that the present online information ecosystem matrix is driven by exploiters with the objective to demean democratic bodies, inflame societal divides, manipulate public opinion and influence citizens' voting choice to distort the democracy. Examination of the current trend led to disturbing reality as the content, discourse, tone and intent of social media interactions have undergone an evolution that threatens not only free speech, privacy, data protection, national security but democracy as a whole. The study also highlighted about the rise of new-age technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), Algorithm, Robotics, and Machine Learning (ML) have exacerbated the problem to new heights as these technologies play a disproportionately impactful role in disseminating disinformation by amplifying it to distort democracy and free speech. The research work resonated with the growing clamour for greater legal regulation to control the menace of social media misuse among democracies around the globe. It addressed the concerns of internet companies and rights activists who fear tight measures would imperil free speech. The paper tried to examine the challenge how to regulate that doesn't stifle the freedom of expression and speech vis-à-vis keeping online content safe and protected. The fact-finding review paper is based on existing laws, regulations, policies, research papers, media reports, articles on instances of disinformation and fake news to find solutions and future developments keeping India in focus. The subject of study assumes significance in a democracy like India which has recently notified a new regulatory regime - 'The Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021,' to strengthen the regulatory architecture to tackle misuse of social media to deal with the fast- growing new communication challenges. The study critically examines these new guidelines and also highlights the patchy policy syndrome of internet content governance in India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With widespread use of digital media, public figures and ordinary people easily become involved in scandals. Social media leaks and mobs illustrate how digital media figure into scandals in the context of everyday politics. The occurrence of scandals on digital media prompts questions on emerging dynamics and potentials of digital communication. Using case studies from the Philippines, this study identifies and examines digital media affordances and how they enable mediated scandals. Findings indicate that digital media facilitate the process and intensify the impact of scandals, particularly the effects of public condemnation. However, under certain conditions, digital media enable parties to counter allegations and mobilise support. The article reflects on the possibilities and potency of digital media in everyday politics of reputation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The digital sphere and social media platforms have prompted new logics regarding information access and influence flows among media, politicians, and citizens. In this exploratory study, via a machine learning software and with data visualization methods, we analyzed social media data in order to find patterns that can contribute to comprehend the new dynamics of influence between the media, politicians, and citizenship in the context of social media and digital communication, specifically on Twitter. We analyzed who the top 50 Spanish generalist media with most followers started following in 2017, 2018, and 2019 on Twitter, the quintessential informational network. To do so, we melded data visualization computational and manual methods. We used an artificial intelligence big data analysis software to visualize the network of media from Spain in order to identify the sample. Afterward, we extracted the top followed accounts by the sample and categorized them in types of accounts, institution/citizenship, country, number of followers, and gender, to proceed with the data visualization to identify trends and patterns. The results show that these media accounts started following mainly accounts that belonged to male politicians from Spain. We could also spot among the years of the study an inversely proportional trend from the media that went from following mainly institutions to following a majority of citizens, and to start following more accounts with a smaller number of followers every year. The tendency to follow accounts from Spain that belong to men grew or remained a majority among the years of the study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Digital communication, especially social media interaction, has emerged as a key domain for civic debates specifically in urban areas of Tanzania. However, how policy-makers perceive these as opportunities for societal development is rarely assessed in research. This study will fill this gap through semi-structured interviews with policy-makers in Dar es Salaam and focus on assessing their perception of the role of social media in digital policy-making in society. Based on the study results, we suggest a new strategic approach for policy collaboration across African regions for building sustained policy capacity and to enable resilient public spheres as a core component of societal development in digital Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Courses: Public Relations, Business and Professional Communication, Training and Development, Digital Media Strategies, Digital Communications. Objectives: By the end of the activity, students will be able to synthesize the key attributes of the notion of personal branding and to apply them in their future professional communications on social media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social Media platforms, from being simply a mode of communication, have, recently, evolved into digital "marketplaces", which have been facilitating the exchange of commodities within the working-class. In addition to the digitalisation of the medium of exchange value creation, which gives the worker a certain amount of regulated autonomy, this has also reinvigorated the debate about owning property and its utilisation for credit and profit generation by the working-class. The term, 'Property' in the paper, is not restricted to only real estate property but encompasses everything which has the potential to generate an exchange value for its owner. The paper generalises Engels's ideas about property owned by the workers from two of his major works, "The Housing Question" and "The Condition of the Working-Class in England" and uses the same to analyse the political economy and growing popularity of social media- based commerce among the working-class. Through data collected from the university town of Dunedin in Aotearoa New Zealand, a town with an extensive and established system of social media-based commerce, the paper puts forward the relevance of the Engelsian critique of the idea of uplifting the working-class simply by giving them control over the possession of property, in the age of digital capitalism. In doing so, the present paper talks about how digital capitalism utilises social media and its associated platforms for commercial exchange to keep the cycle of accumulation in the capitalist social system intact by further exploiting the working-class. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A fascination for the authentic is pervasive in contemporary culture. This article discusses texts recommending digital detox and how these accentuate dilemmas of what it means to be authentically human in the age of constant connectivity. Digital detox can be defined as a periodic disconnection from social or online media, or strategies to reduce digital media involvement. Digital detox stands in a long tradition of media resistance and resistance to new communication technologies, and non-use of media, but advocates balance and awareness more than permanent disconnection. Drawing on the analysis of 20 texts promoting digital detox: self-help literature, memoirs and corporate websites, the article discusses how problems with digital media are defined and recommended strategies to handle them. The analysis is structured around three dominant themes emerging in the material: descriptions of temporal overload and 24/7 connectivity, experiences of spatial intrusion and loss of contact with 'real life' and descriptions of damage to body and mind. A second research topic concerns how arguments for digital detox can be understood within a wider cultural and political context. Here, we argue that digital detox texts illuminate the rise of a self-regulation society, where individuals are expected to take personal responsibility for balancing risks and pressures, as well as representing a form of commodification of authenticity and nostalgia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This article traces the formation of popular music idol industries in China and the emergence of data fandom. It charts the growth of digital platforms and historicizes the commercial and geopolitical itinerations linking cultural production in Japan, South Korea, and China. It locates data fandom as an integral part of the popular music industries reconfigured by digital social media platforms; a structural change from the production-to-consumption 'supply chain' model of the recording era towards emergent circuits of content that integrate industries and audiences. Data fans understand how their online activities are tracked, and adopt individual and collective strategies to influence metric and semantic information reported on digital platforms and social media. This article analyses how the practices of data fans impact upon charts, media and content traffic, illustrating how this activity benefits the idols they are following, and enhances a fan's sense of achievement and agency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to examine the role of digital communication in the making of cosmopolitan spaces by immigrants in the city of São Paulo. Particularly, the uses of the digital social media Facebook by these individuals are analyzed, in order to reveal the specific mediations through the diverse uses of immigrants living in São Paulo of this platform. São Paulo's migrants' communities – established and new –, face uncertainty about their identity formation, as well as about the viability of social formation and multicultural discourses. Hence, we analyze how immigrants in São Paulo mobilize digitally to make cosmopolitan spaces in the city, from the development of local networks in support of migrants, to training into digital skills and the production of visibility within digital media. This study uses a multimethod approach, by investigating digital practices to build cosmopolitan spaces in São Paulo, and by examining the lives of individuals of different migrants' communities in the city. This discussion aims to dialogue with the perspectives of 'vernacular cosmopolitanism' and 'cosmopolitanism of liberation' (Georgiou, M. 2013. Media and the city: cosmopolitanism and difference. Cambridge, MA: Polity), of valorization of cultural identities of migrants groups, as well as of dispositions from an ethical and political perspective to openness and recognition of the migrants within the local society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The fight against extremist discourse on the Internet and on social media is paramount in countering terrorism and radical recruitment. The approach could be simple and elected representatives and authorities seem to want to legislate quickly on this subject. However, from a scientific point of view, things are not so simple. Characterising a discourse that is coherent, repetitive and identifiable might be easy, but radical, terrorist discourse is a very complex linguistic and sociolinguistic phenomenon. Moreover, modes of its dissemination and communication are complex. Within the framework of a French research project (ANR: Défense) we analysed the public productions of extreme right-wing groups in order to collect pieces of discourse and try to characterise them with an interdisciplinary approach (sociology, political science, linguistics, sociolinguistics, communication). A mathematical and algorithmic modelling will allow an automation of searches in order to set up a warning mechanism, with a sociological objective of identification and thus validation for digital content producers and access providers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: This work focus on the study of how spanish think tanks use digital media to spread their activity and transmit their ideas. Methodology: Through content analysis, we analyze what types of communication tools are used in the digital spaces that are officially implemented (web sites and social media), as well as the use of these tools as unidirectional or bidirectional channels. Results: It shows that the unidirectional focus on dissemination of these organizations identities, closely linked to educative activities. Among the bidirectional, social media become relevant, and are used to generate engagement with its stakeholders. Discussion and Conclusions: Think tanks use digital communication as a strategy to disseminate their activities. This fact enhance the prospective of advocacy and a pretension to participate in the topics of public discussion with proposals on its framings (Bürger, 2015, Misztal, 2012). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the digital age, companies in pursuit of their interests have been forced to adapt to Communication and Information Technologies, making use of digital media to guarantee their validity. In this context, this study was born, with the objective of analyzing the management of strategic communication 2.0 developed by the main companies in the Telecommunications sector in Ecuador. This research is developed in three stages: the first, applies the bibliographic review to conceptualize and contextualize the evolution of digital communication in the country and in the investigated sector; the second seeks to describe the process of digital communication, through the analysis of the social network Facebook, to achieve this, metrics and Web analytics tools are incorporated; in the third, the communication management 2.0 is analyzed qualitatively. from in-depth interviews with experts in the area. Finally, a triangulation of information is developed that allows to describe communication 2.0. and the challenges of the new digital environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Extant tourist experience literature focuses on 'live' space and time activity, while pre- and post-components are often neglected despite the opportunities offered by increasing use of digital media communication (DMC). Focusing especially on the pre-festival experience but also addressing peri- and post-phases, this study examines the role of DMC in tourists' experiences at British rock music festivals. Interviews with festivalgoers revealed three core and inter-related themes: information, emotional response and communitas. Initial engagement with DMC enabled planning, generated feelings of anticipatory excitement and created a sense of communitas. Online activity reduced peri-festival but continued to enhance the live event experience, while the virtual communitas was extended at the post-festival phase. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conceptualizing the social and political possibilities of digital mass-mediated communication in modern societies has generated a critical debate, ranging from proponents who conceive of its promising profound potential to sceptics who dismiss it as a trivial sociopolitical vacuity. For some observers in the field, social media has been mobilized to maintain hegemonic structures through a 'weaponization' of popular narratives on behalf of the dominant political elite. For others, social media discourse has signalled the end of grand narratives of political ideology, and has ultimately ushered in the age of subjective digital narcissism not unlike that of consumer culture in late capitalist societies. Beyond these two broader frameworks of inquiry, this article seeks to investigate the critical agency, popular sovereignty and transformative possibilities in socio-digital discourse in the modern Arab Gulf region. Recognizing the dominant and residual ideology within social media narratives, the article deploys Raymond Williams' critical and insightful concept of 'structures of feeling' in order to critically assess the alternative emergent collective expressions that diverge from, yet respond to, hegemonic and dominant discourse. One of the main goals of this article, therefore, is to go beyond the conventional analysis of 'utopian versus dystopian' binary instrumentalization of social media in the region, to challenge the claim that media (both as technology and as technique) determine social and political consciousness. More specifically, and in contrast to McLuhan's famed dictum that 'the medium is the message', this article contends that digital and social media virtues and contributions are not confined to the instrumental communication that serves practical purposes. Rather, and more fundamentally, digital and social media involve the practices and lived experiences of individuals, culture and society, especially those that constitute the formations of collective and emergent identities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]