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Eric Barone's successful Stardew Valley game epitomizes the genre of farming role-play gaming. This article uses utopian theory to explore how the game economically and socially presents a liberal utopia that reimagines the 1990s with progressive values of the 2010s. Within the game, expenditure is encouraged to be communal, assigning value to socialist economics. Support for recreational cannabis usage is symbolically constructed through the character of Caroline, while queer love is established as both widely accepted and societally beneficial through dialogue with a local drunkard named Shane. Similar constructs of acceptance and acknowledgment are observable in the game's presentation of interracial relationships and mental health issues. In all cases, we concluded that this liberal utopia is reminiscent of Barone's home state of Washington, as the socioeconomic values promoted through the game tend to align with left-wing developments within the state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Racial inequalities in breastfeeding have been a U.S. national concern, prompting health science research and public discourse. Social science research reveals structural causes, including racism in labor conditions, maternity care practices, and lactation support. Yet research shows that popular and health science discourses disproportionately focus on individual and community factors, blaming Black women and communities for unequal breastfeeding rates. This study examines how scientific reports are communicated to the public through a critical analysis of 104 U.S. news articles reporting research on racial disparities in breastfeeding. Findings show that articles acknowledge unequal treatment within maternity care but justify it by presenting Black patients as overburdening the maternity care systems they use due to low socioeconomic status, welfare dependency, poor family support, and poor health. Through these representations, articles co-construct racialized motherhood and maternity care systems in ways that hide manifestations of obstetric racism and combat social support for systemic change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on the representation of Jews in the Finnish general press before the Second World War. The data comprise of 313 texts gathered from newspapers and magazines that were targeted at general audiences and that appeared between the years 1821–1936. The texts were examined on three levels: First, the upfront topics pertaining to Jews were identified and grouped under 12 themes. Second, the tone of the mentions was evaluated as positive, neutral, or negative. Third, underlying assumptions, opinions and attitudes expressed aside the upfront topics were identified from the texts. Until recent decades, the idea in Finland has been that there was hardly any antisemitism in the country before or during the Second World War. As new research has emerged, this view has repeatedly been challenged. However, research on the general media's representation of Jews has remained scarce. This article aims at filling this gap. In doing so, it offers a view on how Jews were seen and discussed in the Finnish society at large. So far, the studies on pre-WWII media have concluded that antisemitism was limited to far-right or ultranationalist papers. This article ends up with the opposite conclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examined agenda-setting relationships across the media, politics, and the public, while accounting for contextual boundaries from 1978 to 2018 in the United States. Our findings indicate that (1) for the overall model, the media and the public influence the prominence of economic concerns on the political agenda, but the political agenda has no agenda-setting power; (2) under a Republican president, the prominence of economic topics in the media and political agendas influence each other, the media and the public agendas influence each other, and the public influences the political agenda; and (3) under a Democrat president, attention paid toward economic topics in the media and political agendas influence each other, as do the political and public agendas. Of particular note for agenda-setting theorists is our finding that the media significantly sets the agenda for the public under a Republican presidential condition and not under other conditions. Additionally, these relationships differ longitudinally; for example, the media responds to economic changes quicker and for more prolonged periods under a Republican than a Democrat. This study advances the agenda-setting theory by presenting novel findings about agenda-setters in action and by demonstrating the unique complexities of modeling longitudinal nonlinear relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using critical media theories of framing, propaganda and agenda-setting that intersect, the author attempts to unravel the links between counterinsurgency (COIN) and media in India-administered Kashmir against the backdrop of a post-neo-liberal framework as an example of hegemony armoured by coercion. The author will reframe COIN as a state response to a people's movement for self-determination. An analysis of the effects of the post-neo-liberal framework on the governing class that enacts COIN strategies through the media will not only illuminate the machinations of the media but will also unravel its social and cultural effects and their role in perpetuating an unjust social order in a contested space. An examination of the roots of ethnonationalism will expose the media's nexus with power and the nature of COIN operations through the media in Kashmir. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Malaysia has retained the death penalty for violent crimes and some nonviolent drug offenses. Major news dailies, controlled by political parties in the ruling coalition, have helped justify this stance in the past. This situation changed over 22 months when a new coalition, which campaigned on abolishing capital punishment, took office and sparked renewed public discussion on this issue. Depictions of the death penalty debate were analyzed by conducting a content analysis of two major English-language newspapers, The Star and New Straits Times. Our findings suggest that The Star provided more international coverage and the New Straits Times prioritized domestic coverage. While both outlets provided comprehensive, and sometimes, critical coverage of executions elsewhere, they downplayed the fact that Malaysia engages in the same practice. There was no evidence to indicate that they were pushing an agenda as neither took a formal position on the issue. Content to transmit the differing views on the subject, neither functioned as forums to air nor shaped policy positions. This posture was possibly shaped by preconceived notions of what their readership wants and/or self-censorship—a legacy of past subjugation that will hopefully change when press freedom is perceived as a right, not a privilege. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The post-apocalyptic environment has been popular in video games for many decades—from nuclear fallout to alien invasions, there is a fascination with the decline of mankind. This article looks, in light of the Covid-19 outbreak, at the depiction of failing and inhuman worlds in video games about pandemics. The environments in games such as Bioshock (2007), Left 4 Dead (2008, 2009), and The Last of Us (2013), are unflinchingly cruel, often depicting humans (and the player) as selfish entities seeking only self-survival. These environments are destructively violent, and, although the player is often surrounded by 'mutants', these worlds are also oppressively lonely. This article looks at the fears reflected in pre-Covid-19 pandemic video games and what they say about our world, offering a retrospective view now we are living through a global pandemic perhaps not so different from those found in these games. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article delves into the coverage of the Israel-Hamas war by the Hindi media in India since October 7, 2023. The analysis concentrates on eight prominent Hindi dailies, namely, Danik Bhaskar, Danik Jagran, Amar Ujala, Hindustan, Jansatta, Rajasthan Patrika, Prabhat Khabar, and Punjab Kesari. There were divergent perspectives on Israel-Hamas War that are highlighted by the choices of language and the argumentation that the authors and editors justified through historical, religious and moral viewpoints. However, a nuanced narrative also emerges, reflecting the support of Indian perspective and interests. The article contributes to understanding how the Hindi-speaking public perceives this historical conflict within India's overall foreign policy framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last four decades, feminist sports media research has developed into an established transdisciplinary branch of research that contributes to highlighting the contradictions and unevenness of social change at the level of women's sports and its positioning in society. In this context, the increasing media visibility of athlete mothers as an expression of an emerging social phenomenon provides an opportunity to examine and reflect on the patterns of media portrayal of sportswomen. This article focuses on the media representations of Gloria Kotnik, the Slovenian snowboarder and bronze medalist at the 2022 Winter Olympics. Through textual analysis, it attempts to identify how Kotnik was portrayed in selected Slovenian media and what role her motherhood, in particular, played in this. While ambivalence was identified as a predominant pattern in the media representations of Kotnik, the role of motherhood was presented both as something seemingly incompatible with the role of an elite athlete and in a way that perceived these two roles as compatible. Due to the reproduction of traditional gender ideologies and hierarchies, the article problematizes both patterns and concludes by linking the desire for social change with the need to redefine the ethics of care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Plymouth shooting in August 2021 attracted worldwide attention after media outlets reported on it as 'incel violence'. By examining misogynist incels' discussions of the shooting, the perpetrator's YouTube videos, and media reportage by five UK newspapers, this article takes a critical look at newspapers' representations of the shooting. While the perpetrator did not unambiguously self-describe to the incel identity, and misogynist incels were divided on the perpetrator's incel status, the newspapers saw the attack as the spread of 'incel culture'. This indicates that the media plays a role in the public imagination of misogynist incels. The article argues that the concept of incel violence risks overshadowing other forms of misogynistic violence in society through how the misogynist incel is imagined in public discourse which, consequently, impacts our understanding of misogyny. This article contributes to our understanding of how public discourse forms representations of gender-based violence in Britain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study identified risk, promotive, and protective factors for handgun carriage among 265 primarily African American adolescents (M age = 14.3) living in low-income urban areas. Community-based violent victimization and witnessing violence and in-person and cyber forms of peer victimization increased the probability of handgun carriage. Community collective efficacy, including caregiver-reported social connectedness and informal social control, and community developmental strengths/supports, including youth-reported community recognition for prosocial involvement and community developmental assets, moderated relations between both violent victimization and witnessing violence and handgun carriage. School developmental strengths/supports, including school developmental assets and family prosocial involvement in school, moderated relations between in-person and cyber victimization and handgun carriage. Family developmental strengths/supports, including family developmental assets and family recognition and opportunities for prosocial involvement, were associated with lower odds of handgun carriage. Study findings revealed distinct protective factors related to community violence exposure or peer victimization that can inform youth violence prevention efforts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Circles of Support and Accountability (CoSA) are now part of the criminal justice landscape in various parts of the world. While CoSA have received considerable media attention, it is not yet known how they are portrayed in the media. This study addressed this gap by analyzing newspaper coverage of CoSA from across the English-speaking world. Overall, it identified that representations of those convicted of sexual violence in print media accounts of CoSA differ substantially from those identified in previous scholarship. We argue therefore that the nature of CoSA as an intervention may allow for more sympathetic and humanistic representation. The findings provide a platform from which the international CoSA community can develop strategic approaches to interacting with the media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes cultural production in theaters across three pivotal historical moments from the 1980s to the present, including the theater as ruins, refuge, and resistance. It begins with the theater in ruins as depicted in the 1986 film, The Black Sheep, by the legendary playwright, director, and filmmaker, Román Chalbaud, in which a commune of artists, outcasts, and misfits squat in the theater, taking shelter from a storm of state-sponsored neoliberal austerity, corruption, and persecution in the pre-Chávez era of Venezuela. The article then turns to the work of community groups during Chávez-led revolutionary reforms to recuperate abandoned theaters as vital spaces for democratic assembly through municipal government programs. The last section of the article juxtaposes the advanced democratization of theaters and cultural production in Caracas during the Maduro era with a phase of violent street mobilizations in middle-class and wealthy sectors of the city (known as guarimbas), to raise questions about the role of the media as an intervening character in global theaters of illusion. Where the spotlight shifts in location from stages to streets, and the street to the screen, the actual conditions of democratized access are happening behind the unlit marquis, a global majority operating in an 'underground' commune in the same scenario as the film. Except in this case, the military-media arm of the US polices the 'streets' of the global media commons to malign the Bolivarian Revolution as a black sheep political project. The conclusion points to the media's role in promoting a dangerous misperception of reality by erasing the constituent power of a revolutionary society and the perpetuation of violence against them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that children's media can be a powerful source for embedding nationalist assumptions from an early age, by looking at Avatar: The Last Airbender and its sequel The Legend of Korra. In the shows, the world is divided into four discrete nations. Drawing on Billig's concept of banal nationalism, I intend to explore how, despite being critical of nationalism, they nevertheless reinforce and communicate core tenets of national ideology: that nations are the natural way of organising the world. This then leads to wider conclusions about how children's media can communicate and embed these ideas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Food television offers a new and unique lens on national identity, the Anglo-Scottish relationship, and their cultural representation in contemporary Britain. This article is based on the analysis of three British travelogue cooking shows, first broadcast between 1995 and 2011, about Scotland and its food. The programmes analysed exemplify and reinforce long-standing cultural constructions of the relationship between England and Scotland as sub-state nations of the United Kingdom, as well as illustrating and creating new national scripts, notably in relation to class and gender. These 'homeland' travelogue cooking shows consistently associate Scotland with a defined set of local and traditional foods, closely associated with a Romantic construction of Scotland, its history and landscape. However, the programmes also indicate wider changes in British and Scottish food culture during this period, including the rise of the local food movement and the increasing economic success and cultural confidence of the Scottish food and drink industry. The article highlights the role of celebrity chefs in the cultural construction of contemporary British sub-state national relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The epistemological formations of area studies and critical regionality have been instrumental in situating the politics of gender-sexual variance in the Global South. Recent scholarship in India encourages further rescaling of queer and trans studies to account for the mutual entanglements of sexual and caste modernity, rights-based organizing, and metronormativity. Following this work, this article considers the possibilities offered by emphasizing the micro-locality of the urban neighborhood. A reading of two Delhi-based documentary films, Who Can Speak of Men? (2003) and Yeh Freedom Life (2019), the article troubles the idea of a unitary global and national trans subject. Conceptualizing the urban neighborhood as method and mode of reading transmasculinity compels a rethinking of the dichotomous framings of metropolitan queer as elite and transgender as abject. This article provides a trans microcartography wherein the world- and place-making work of transmasculine people enables a reimagining of masculinity in the neoliberalizing Indian "world-class city". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Researchers have long debated how radio broadcasts affected the dynamics of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, with some arguing that the radio was highly consequential, and others suggesting such effects have been overstated. This article contributes to these debates—as well as to debates regarding the role of old and new media in collective action—by examining whether and how Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines (Radio RTLM) coverage was associated with two core aspects of the violence: (1) subnational onset of genocidal violence and (2) participation in genocidal violence across subnational spaces. Drawing on new data on Radio RTLM coverage, we find that areas with coverage were more likely to experience immediate onset of violence. However, our analysis of participation in the genocide—which uses more accurate measures of participation and of radio coverage than prior studies—finds no significant association between Radio RTLM coverage and subnational levels of participation. After illustrating that these results are robust to numerous model specifications, we theorize that information broadcast over the radio's airways contributed to the creation of a critical mass that initiated genocide in localized spaces. We conclude by considering the importance of understanding the role of media in the subnational onset of violence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A large corpus of scientific literature details how the media generates an imbalance in their portrayal of society and thus contributes to the reproduction of extant power structures, particularly gender. However, there has been scant attention paid to understanding how the media adapt to changes in the social environment, especially with power structures modified by exogenous shocks such as new laws requiring gender parity in politics. This study examines how such shocks affected gender imbalance in the coverage of politics in France between 1990 and 2020. It highlights the shortcomings of an overly linear approach to the time lag effect in understanding the parameters and substance of gender imbalance in political news and advocates instead for utilizing the concept of gender imbalance hysteresis to understand why media stories do not demasculinize as quickly as the gender composition of Parliament. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Modern societies are characterized by unprecedently broad and fast diffusion of various forms of false and harmful information. Military personnel's motivation to defend their country may be harmed by their exposure to disinformation. Therefore, specific education and training programs should be devised for the military to systematically improve (social) media literacy and build resilience against information influence activities. In this article, we put forward a useful methodological approach to designing such programs based on a case study: the process of developing a media literacy learning platform tailored to the needs of the Estonian defense forces in 2021. The approach is grounded in data on (a) the current needs and skills of the learners, (b) the kinds of influence activities that the learners may encounter, and (c) the learning design principles that would enhance their learning experience, such as learning through play and dialogue through feedback. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Elite-level women's artistic gymnastics is (in)famous for the youth of its competitors. Yet if age representation constructs the limits and possibilities of sport, it is important to explore the effects of these representations. Here we examine media coverage of gymnast Oksana Chusovitina, who has competed internationally up to the age of 46. We conduct content analysis of 17 international competitions in which Chusovitina competed, from 2001 to 2018, exploring coverage of her and the younger gymnasts with whom she competed. As hegemonic masculinity structures a gender order in sport and beyond, we argue that gymnastics coverage constructs an age order in the sport by (1) emphasizing the exceptionality of older competitors; (2) focusing on athletes' private lives; and (3) constructing the athlete-coach relationship as familial, where coaches are represented as surrogate parents. These techniques diminish the agency of young gymnasts and produce their youthfulness as hegemonic, treating athletes competing beyond their twenties as unworthy of serious attention. When older athletes like Chusovitina are categorized as outliers, the sports media is free to infantilize younger gymnasts, naturalizing their ostensible lack of agency, as well as the sport's high burn-out and injury rate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is an audience ethnography, focusing on the documentary The Work (dir Jairus McLeary and Gethin Aldous, US, 2017), which depicts a four-day therapeutic programme involving men from the community and men from a high security prison. The film was screened to audiences of people who live and work in an English prison-based therapeutic community. Previous prison-based audience studies have highlighted the significance of the media text and the characteristics and experiences of the audience, but have not specifically addressed the salience of the context in which the media is consumed. By conducting the research in an atypical penal environment, the intention is to illuminate how consumption is affected by different penal contexts. The audience offered macro, meso and micro level responses to the documentary. At a macro level, they recognised the reforming intentions of the film, but also revealed the limitations of popular culture, with its emphasis on spectacle. At a meso level, the audience offered a sophisticated and expert analysis of the content and omissions of the film's representation of therapeutic processes and cultures. At a micro level, those serving prison sentences used the content of film as therapeutic material, reflecting on their own emotions and experiences, while the prison staff used the content to explore their professional identities. The audiences viewed the film through a therapeutic habitus, and media consumption was a way of enacting and reinforcing the expectations and practices of therapeutic community life. By highlighting the salience and variability of penal contexts, the study extends prison-based audience scholarship, but also highlights a factor that should be considered in the planning and design of media and arts programmes in prison. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of transmediation might be one of the most influential intellectual tools for studying, discussing and fostering innovative phenomena across fields of study. One could argue that the term itself is self-explanatory. Etymologically, it suggests a transition (to go across) between different media but the concept of transmediation has been shaped both by the somewhat historically lax definition of media and the disciplines that have adopted the term. And while the looseness of media gives transmediation a potential for interdisciplinarity, the siloed nature of academic disciplines could have, at the same time, hindered such potential. In this paper, we introduce a framework for transmediation based on an analysis of the use and evolution of the concept and our own explorations over the last few years. This framework aims to provide a common language and a set of conceptual prompts to explore the notion of transmediation further. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: Social workers, alongside many professionals in "caring" domains, often feel they are poorly represented in television dramas. This study draws on a 172-million-word database to consider how social workers and seven other professional groups (cop, doctor, nanny, nurse, priest, teacher, and therapist) are portrayed in English-medium TV programs in the period 2010–2017. IMDb plot summaries are analyzed, and 200 examples per profession (n = 1,600) are classified as negative, positive, or neutral. Employing the methodology of corpus linguistics, the study contrasts with previous research as the focus is on the language surrounding mentions of professionals rather than on visual depictions or characters' actions. Findings: The study evidences the prevalence of negative societal discourses around social workers as either judgmental bureaucrats or uncaring "childcatchers," contextualizing the findings through comparison with other professionals. The analysis also suggests that social work characters on TV—in common with those from other female-dominated professions such as nanny or nurse—are frequently referred to in terms of their sexual availability or physical appearance. Applications: Findings will have practical relevance for those interested in the recruitment, job satisfaction, and retention of practitioners, and in reducing the stigmatization of social workers and their clients. The innovative methodology employed in the study offers particular insights for social work researchers and also scriptwriters. The study evidences the ongoing need to support media professionals and the general public to better understand the challenges facing the profession and thereby reduce the tendency toward a culture of blaming individuals for society's failings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The internet was once seen as a beacon of hope for democratizing public access to information, but scholars argue that social media has led to frustration, isolation, and pseudo-information. This volume presents empirical studies exploring paths to potentially rebuild ideal communication situations, if ever, in the digital age and cope with digital information failure. Can we salvage an ill-informed society? These studies offer insights into addressing these issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An economic model of news contends that the pressures of limited column space and market competition force media actors to be strategic concerning which notable events receive exhaustive coverage, if any at all. Applying this framework to the Supreme Court can explain why coverage of the Justices' decision-making has historically been sensationalized and reserved for decisions sure to have a pronounced effect on public discourse. However, the emergence of social media as a practical alternative for mass media dissemination raises notable questions, chief among them being whether the economic framework fully extends to this newer medium. In this study, I analyze media coverage of the Court's decisions using Twitter and observe important distinctions among environments for news dissemination. I argue that the apparent reduction in the economic costs associated with coverage dissemination and consumption on social media platforms like Twitter requires viewing Supreme Court news in these environments through an amended theoretical framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Audience studies highlight the relevance of studying citizens' participation in the media convergence environment. This study evaluates audience participation in the three foremost local radio newscasts in Aguascalientes, Mexico, where radio remains present in everyday life and public issues trigger audience's interest to express themselves through this medium. The methodology was designed based on Carpentier's Analytical Tool for Critical Analysis of Media Processes and UNESCO's Media Development Indicators (MDI). It consisted of an analysis of modalities of audience participation and interviews with audience members, production teams, activists, and politicians. Findings show that audiences prefer to listen to other citizens on air, but participation is scarce and mainly limited to messages on the radio newscasts' social networks sites. Audiences' rights and the role of radio as a platform for democratic conversation among citizens and government need to be promoted and regulated, because commercial interests prevail. Despite technological innovations, the design of newscasts remains unidirectional. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the notion of a 'morally equipped' childhood and adolescence, and how such a notion can help us get a fresh perspective on the relation between young people's participation and empowerment, and the formation of personal and the collective moral repertoires of modern society. Utilising a mixed-methods approach inspired by the sociology of conventions (SC) and the sociology of regimes of engagement (SRE), we analyse letters to the editor of the Norwegian children's newspaper Aftenposten Junior, to investigate the formats of children's generalised moral arguments. We demonstrate that our informants exhibit a broad moral sensibility in the letters we have analysed, particularly showing keen engagement with issues related to civic rights. We discuss the young participants' expressions in the light of convention theory. We make a case for how becoming 'morally equipped' could be understood as being able to engage, challenge, and articulate the tensions and negotiations between personal formats of daily experiences and interactions, and collective formats, such as public expressions, throughout childhood and adolescence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Selective exposure literature indicates that not all users take away the same messages from their media exposure; it is suggested that viewers are not merely exposed but rather reactive to multiple—and possibly opposing—messages. The current study aims to introduce an active media-processing perspective, focusing specifically on the media-body image association among an early adolescent sample. Results of a three-wave longitudinal survey among 971 early adolescents (Mage = 11.14; SD = 1.13) show that media-focused peer interactions (W1), but not media exposure (W1), were associated with contradictory perceptions of attractiveness (i.e., perceived benefits and perceived costs for investing in appearance) (W2). Polynomial regression analyses pointed out that the association between these contradictory perceptions (i.e., interaction between benefits and costs; W2) was curvilinearily related to body image investment (W3). The findings emphasize the variable vulnerability of adolescents to the media effect and the importance of acknowledging multi-layered media messages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article contributes to research on everyday resistance as a means of citizens' political subjectification in autocracies and advances the literature on the manipulation of news. Through analysis of state-controlled media and individual interviews, it traces how older people in Belarus engage in anti-authoritarian protests by relying on pre-existing patterns of interactions with the state. My analysis demonstrates that to promote its legitimacy, the paternalist regime cultivates dependence in older citizens and represents itself as the primary solution to problems associated with old-age vulnerability. In response to their systemic marginalisation in the job market, urban development and public health policies, older people claim their equal rights by resisting old-age vulnerability or performing it to challenge the system. The article argues that by practising low-key acts of insubordination, older Belarusians acquire the collective self-awareness and cultural competence that allowed them to engage in the 2020 protests as a distinct political subject. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on analogue postcards as a communicative and artistic tool for potentially engaging nostalgically with the past, present, and future. It poses questions about the experience of time and place in a specific setting (the city of Montreal, Canada), as well as in a specific project that looks at cultural mediation in public spaces. During the summer of 2017, Comptoir public, an organization that works with artists and cultural mediators, launched the project "Postes du futur" (Mail from the Future). The organizers asked Montrealers to write a postcard to a recipient of the sender's choosing, so that it will be mailed in 2042 during the celebration of Montreal's 400th anniversary (i.e., 25 years later). One of our main findings is that most of these postcards will be sent to the current addresses of future recipients. Choosing one's home as one of the settings to write to and to write about finally made it possible to connect to the historical and medical meaning of nostalgia: the homesickness, the yearning for a place of one's own, for a space we now miss prospectively on in the future. Home, where people live their lives, is not yet "lost" or "left behind." But anticipating its loss and transfer to others becomes one of the primordial factors shaping instantaneous nostalgia and its expression—a future in which postcard senders are no longer present or even alive. The issue of the finiteness and the irreversibility of time is usually an indicator of past-oriented nostalgia. In our case, it is projected toward the future. The printed, analogue postcard becomes the writing space that leaves room for anticipated and anticipatory nostalgia and for imagining future communication technologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do cultural critics in the digital age convince audiences that their writings are valuable? What discursive strategies do they employ to construct their authority? And which differences can we see between professional critics working in institutionalized media and amateur critics contributing to online platforms? This article presents an in-depth analysis of book reviews by different critics to answer these questions. The results indicate that long-standing critical strategies are still largely intact: both professional and amateur critics construct authority by analyzing the book, contextualizing the book and discussing its reception, suggesting that amateurs have adopted to a large degree the skill sets of professionals. At the same time, amateur critics distinguish themselves by a pronounced presence of their personal experience in their reviews. This could point to a new way of constructing authority. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Professional sport is a central element of our daily entertainment that contributes to shaping us individually and bonding us collectively: it provides us with shared 'historic' moments. This article is interested in these moments, and how the field of sports generates them, by asking the following questions: (1) has the frequency of 'historic moments' changed over time, and (2) is the way we make sports history consistent throughout the years? We conducted a temporal analysis of newspaper and magazine articles (n = 1062) published in France (Le Monde, l'Équipe) and in the United States (USA Today, Sports Illustrated) during three time periods in the 21st century (2003, 2010, 2019). Our results show that: (1) as time passes, 'historic' moments occur more frequently; (2) sporting history is increasingly linked to social dimensions; and (3) statistical performances continue to mark history above all else. Although performance-based achievements are consistently celebrated, sporting history cannot be separated from our collective social existence, and the currents therein. We show that the act of making sports history is also bound to the normative, social, and cultural history of a society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Typically free, accessible on-demand and easy to use, smartphone-based applications (apps) targeting mental health have expanded in recent years. This article discusses a qualitative research study with 14 young adults aged 18 to 25 years old who use apps to understand, track, and monitor their mental health. I present four vignettes drawn from a screenshot elicitation and a qualitative interview that sought to explore what is significant, socially and materially, for young adults in their usage of apps for their mental health. In this article, I examine how apps transform, interrupt, and mediate young adults' understandings and experiences of mental (ill) health. The analysis draws on sociomaterialism to demonstrate how, at a time when digital mental health is expanding, mental (ill) health is assembled and disassembled with and through apps, and users' experiences are enmeshed in affective intensities and entangled with technology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While conspiracy theories have traditionally received attention from the Turkish public and political elite, recently, however, they have proliferated when explaining complex situations. This paper examines conspiracy theories in Turkey and the role of entertainment media, specifically the popular period drama, Payitaht: Abdülhamid, in mainstreaming conspiracy theories. Payitaht: Abdülhamid, as an ideological state apparatus, repurposes anti-Semitism as salient conspiracy theories by creating scapegoats and existential others. This paper argues that the state uses entertainment media to disseminate conspiracy theories and, in effect, endorses anti-Semitism. As a result, anti-Semitism has transformed from a marginal movement to a mainstream movement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In news media, one stereotype that is continually over-represented is Black men as criminals, leading to what many refer to as "the Black criminal stereotype." Although research demonstrates that distorted news portrayals of criminals can provoke stereotypical responses in viewers, limited evidence connects these effects to sport media. Anderson and Raney (2018) explored this in an experimental study (n = 234) and found evidence of the Black criminal stereotype among sports fans. However, more research was needed to further explore this phenomenon. The current study employed a similar experimental design (n = 603) in an attempt to (1) replicate their 2018 study to examine whether sports fans' perceptions of criminal athletes have changed over the past several years, especially in light of the Black Lives Matter movement, and (2) determine whether the sport played by an alleged criminal athlete might be linked to judgments regarding race and crime in sports. Our findings indicate that sports fandom still predicts stereotypical judgments. However, individual difference variables—particularly social conservatism, African American stereotype endorsement, and gender—were more strongly related. Our findings point toward the potential power of social movements in influencing attitudes and beliefs regarding race and crime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses Italian responses to the Treaties of Rome in 1957 by looking at media's role as a tool to both amplify voices and construct ideas on European integration. It attempts to expand upon and also challenges existing narratives on integration in Italy – which have tended to assume that 'Euroscepticism' largely emerged in a post-Maastricht context – by showing that the matter was already the source of significant politicisation and contestation, and that political actors used the outlets at their disposal to influence public opinion. Indeed, the Italian media conversations enveloping the Treaties of Rome – at a time when the introduction of RAI television was revolutionising the media landscape, and the Treaties were broadcast and politicised as a landmark event – highlight the variety of visions of European integration that had emerged. On the one hand, the ruling Christian Democratic government had radio and television under its harness, and used these channels to push a pro-integrationist orthodoxy on the Italian public. Nevertheless, we also see dissenting visions expressed in much of the printed press, not only from the anti-Western Communists and Socialists, but also from a broad church including neo-fascists, monarchists and even federalists. The article crucially finds that there was a deliberate effort by government-aligned journalists to marginalise – rather than engage with – any dissenting views on European integration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Though young adult coresidence (in which individuals aged 18–35 reside within the family home) is stigmatized in mass media, research has not explored how such depictions relate to understandings of development. We used qualitative content analysis to explore how contemporary Canadian and American films depicted coresiding young adults and their similarly aged, residentially independent siblings with respect to various markers of adulthood. We found that coresiding characters were largely portrayed as developmentally immature both socially (e.g., full-time work) and characterologically (e.g., relational competence). In contrast, residentially independent siblings were overwhelmingly cast as developmentally on time. We argue that these depictions and contrasts reinforce a stigmatized coresider trope, framing the traits and actions of coresiders in terms of atypical development and attributing this living arrangement to individual faults. Implications for social attitudes and the wellbeing of emerging adults are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the media lives of a particular class taxonomy in the Swedish press from 1945 to 1976. Invented by the Central Bureau of Statistics in 1911, the 'social group division' system was abandoned in the early post-war period. Around the same time, however, it gained popularity in Swedish culture and political debate. While earlier research has noted that such bureaucratic class taxonomies – as in several other Western countries – conditioned how actors understood and created new knowledge about the population, this process of wider circulation remains understudied. Using insights from literature on 'the social life of methods' and the history of knowledge, which underline that knowledge is transformed by and transforms the contexts it circulates in, I show that print media was an arena for circulating and producing new meaning around class taxonomies. Although editorials shunned the social group division for incorrectly representing Swedish society and creating artificial class boundaries, journalists used the taxonomy to explain social structures. Furthermore, by interviewing 'typical' members of the different social groups, journalists made the system relatable and personal for their readers. In this context, the social groups were imagined as cultural communities, sharing cultural behaviours and preferences. Lastly, I analyse usages of the social group division in letters to the editor, which reveal that people felt they were being classified and wanted to offer their views of society, using the taxonomy in ways the experts had not intended. This study thereby contributes to the history of social taxonomies and class languages in the post-war period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Even the most conscientious nonprofit organizations can fall victim to fraud. We examine how a nonprofit organization's Form 990 disclosures and media coverage about an asset diversion influence subsequent donor support. Consistent with a loss in trust, we observe a decrease in donations following a diversion. This decrease is amplified when the diversion is reported in the news. We also find that donations decline more when organizations do not provide transparent disclosures and when losses are higher but only if the diversion receives media coverage. Finally, our results indicate that donors punish organizations less when they report higher recoveries and governance improvements. This study describes mechanisms though which news coverage enhances donor oversight. The media can: (a) directly inform some donors, (b) prompt some donors to obtain further information, and (c) motivate organizations to provide higher-quality disclosure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Narrative media interventions in the form of edutainment are increasingly used to change behaviors, social norms, and attitudes. The present study examines the effects of a narrative intervention using role models on efficacy beliefs, behavioral options, social norms, and attitudes. I utilize data from a cluster randomized controlled trial with two arms (treatment vs. control) conducted in 132 villages in Burkina Faso (N = 2,904 participants). Randomly selected participants in intervention villages participated in group listening sessions of a radio drama over 3 months. Compared to a business-as-usual control, the narrative intervention increased self- and collective efficacy beliefs to bring about social change, and influenced endorsement of behavioral options to fight corruption. The intervention also reduced the perception that reporting corruption is viewed as dangerous by the community. The findings contribute to the literature on narrative media interventions and social modeling of action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Theoretical work on objectified body consciousness, comprised of body surveillance and body shame, proposes several negative sequelae of holding an objectified view of the self (i.e., valuing the body primarily for its attractiveness to others). Few studies have examined associations between objectified body consciousness and academic beliefs and strategies among adolescent girls, especially girls of color. In the present study, we investigated a conceptual model whereby exposure to Eurocentric appearance norms through TV consumption is related to body surveillance and body shame which, in turn, are related to academic beliefs and strategies among a racially diverse sample of United States girls. Participants were 650 self-identified Asian American/Pacific Islander, Black, and White adolescent girls (M age = 15.45, SD age = 1.50). Higher Eurocentric appearance norms exposure was associated with higher body shame which, in turn, was associated with maladaptive academic beliefs and strategies for all three groups of girls. In contrast, higher Eurocentric appearance norms exposure was associated with higher body surveillance and just one academic belief, and in White girls only. Future work should continue to examine these associations among adolescent girls of color. In addition, we encourage educators to include body image content in media literacy curricula as a means of disrupting associations between Eurocentric appearance norms, body shame, and academic functioning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Individuals formerly involved in armed groups are positioned in the victim–perpetrator binary by legal systems and societies. Media participates in this process and influences the relationship between law and society by reproducing or challenging legal and social designations. We assess the relationship between the International Criminal Court's (ICC) prosecution of Dominic Ongwen, a former child soldier in Uganda's Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), and media representations of Ongwen. We conduct a content analysis of 779 Ugandan, African, and international newspapers' English-language articles published between January 2005 and October 2022. We find that media coverage focuses on Ongwen's adult roles in the group, including as an LRA leader, largely reproducing the ICC's portrayal of the accused. A minority of articles acknowledge a more complex status and increase in frequency once Ongwen's ICC trial is underway. An important faction challenges the ICC's narrative, with non-Africa-based media presenting a more complex depiction of Ongwen. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reality is fleeting, and any moment can only be experienced once. Rewatching a video, however, allows people to repeatedly observe the exact same moment. We propose that people may fail to fully distinguish between merely observing behavior again (through replay) from that behavior being performed again in the exact same way. Using an assortment of stimuli that included auditions, commercials, and potential trial evidence, we demonstrated through nine experiments (N = 10,412 adults in the United States) that rewatching makes a recorded behavior appear more rehearsed and less spontaneous, as if the actors were simply precisely repeating their actions. These findings contribute to an emerging literature showing that incidental video features, like perspective or slow motion, can meaningfully change evaluations. Replay may inadvertently shape judgments in both mundane and consequential contexts. To understand how a video will influence its viewer, one will need to consider not only its content, but also how often it is viewed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On 14 July 2021, the western states of Germany, Rheinland Palatinate and North-Rhein-Westphalia experienced major flash floods and about two hundred people died. This article explores how those affected and journalists they spoke to created meaning from the mayhem of an unprecedented disaster and how social representations of flooding emerged in which language, politics and values were intimately intertwined. Combining thematic analysis with elements of social representations theory, and analysing a sample of articles from a national news magazine, we show how social representations of the floods were shaped by the objectification of the floods through metonymy (mud and debris) and the anchoring of the floods through personification and metaphors (natural and mechanical forces), thus adding a new dimension to the existing body of work on flood and metaphors. We claim that the immediate focus on the extreme force of the 2021 floods, on the one hand, and the weakness of political response, on the other, may entrench feelings of helplessness and divert attention away from more systematic and long-term engagement with flood dangers in the context of climate change, including extreme weather events. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At least five NCAA student athletes died by suicide in spring 2022. The deaths generated national news media attention while underscoring the stressors student-athletes face in relation to mental health. Journalists play an important role in shaping public understanding of issues, including mental health and suicide. By framing issues, journalists can shape the way audiences interpret (a) problems, (b) their causes, (c) their moral implications, and (d) potential treatments. The present study used thematic analysis to understand how four types of news organizations framed the student-athletes' deaths by suicide in 2022. The study examined 75 stories from national news outlets (e.g., Washington Post), sports publications (e.g., ESPN), student publications (e.g., The Badger Herald at the University of Wisconsin-Madison), and community publications (e.g., The Capital Times in Madison, WI). News stories identified environmental factors (e.g., poor mental health resources, stress) as a problem for student-athletes, while describing misplaced university priorities as a cause. Journalists described a need for universities and the NCAA to improve the depth and breadth of mental health resources for student-athletes, describing the action as a moral imperative. Implications are discussed in relation to sports communication and health communication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The behaviour of certain members of a profession can 'taint' other workers. In this qualitative study, we explore how police officers perceive media constructions of their profession. Participating police officers feel ridiculed by the media and are overwhelmed by instances of public disdain. They acknowledge moments of esteem, often as a result of self-sacrifice, yet lament that these are generally temporary and fleeting, and instead, their profession is tarnished by the heinous acts committed by some police officers, constructed as representative of the profession as a whole. We discuss police officers' understanding of the stickiness of 'taint' within their occupation and how it can affect perceptions of the self. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Digital inequalities research has lacked a focus on voluntary non-use and its consequences, whereas digital disconnection studies have focused on non-use but neglected the material implications of digital inequalities. Located at the intersection between these two approaches, this article relies on twelve semi-structured interviews, observations and informal dialogues to examine digital media uses, inequalities and the meanings of disconnection in a village of rural Turkey. The findings show that the main inequalities are due to infrastructure, geography and socio-economic conditions. These inequalities shape the practices and meanings of digital disconnection, revealing obstacles, frustrations and a forced kind of disconnection that is very different from the romantic portrayal of detox retreats that dominate the literature in the Global North. The insights of this research illuminate the unexplored area of intersection between digital inequalities and disconnection, engaging a fruitful conversation that enriches both fields of inquiry and unfolds future research opportunities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the visual representation of the refugee child in digital news media in Cyprus at two historical moments of significant immigration rise in Europe as a result of violent conflict: the period of May 2015-2016 and February 2022-2023. The analysis showed that refugee children were portrayed in ways which led to their de/humanization. However, differences in the language, themes, and visual grammar applied gave way to the emergence of a hierarchy of refugee child subjects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Toilets are political spaces: inadequate toilet access means limited access to wider space and community. Between 2015 and 2018 I led a series of interdisciplinary research projects collectively known as Around the Toilet (http://aroundthetoilet.com), which centred the experiences of trans, queer and disabled people to explore what makes a safe and accessible toilet space. The research sought to consolidate commitments to feminist, queer, trans and disability politics. In this article, I interrogate the repercussions of doing work at these political intersections by focusing not so much on the research findings themselves, but on the ways in which the project has been responded to within a context which is anti-expert, anti-'woke' and one of perceived scarcity. I reflect on my experiences as a trans person, leading a public-facing research project which centres trans lives, within a context of increasing trans hostility. I will show how Around the Toilet has at once been understood as too mundane (a waste of taxpayers' money; a humorous thing to be researching); a fascination (a good journalistic 'hook'; focus on particular aspects of the work, whilst ignoring others); and a threat to social order. I argue that – during a time where 'impact' is valued and academics are expected to be 'public-facing' – universities need to recognise harms that can come from this, and resource the labour that it takes to mitigate these harms (if the risk is deemed worth taking). I also outline ways in which universities and those with varying degrees of institutional power can help to make the academy a more sustainable place to work for those targeted in current culture wars. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: Responsible media reporting is an accepted strategy for preventing suicide. In 2015, suicide prevention experts launched a media engagement initiative aimed at improving suicide-related reporting in Canada; its impact on media reporting quality and suicide deaths is unknown. Method: This pre–post observational study examined changes in reporting characteristics in a random sample of suicide-related articles from major publications in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) media market. Articles (n = 900) included 450 from the 6-year periods prior to and after the initiative began. We also examined changes in suicide counts in the GTA between these epochs. We used chi-square tests to analyse changes in reporting characteristics and time-series analyses to identify changes in suicide counts. Secondary outcomes focused on guidelines developed by media professionals in Canada and how they may have influenced media reporting quality as well as on the overarching narrative of media articles during the most recent years of available data. Results: Across-the-board improvement was observed in suicide-related reporting with substantial reductions in many elements of putatively harmful content and substantial increases in all aspects of putatively protective content. However, overarching article narratives remained potentially harmful with 55.2% of articles telling the story of someone's death and 20.8% presenting an other negative message. Only 3.6% of articles told a story of survival. After controlling for potential confounders, a nonsignificant numeric decrease in suicide counts was identified after initiative implementation (ω = −5.41, SE = 3.43, t = 1.58, p = 0.12). Conclusions: We found evidence that a strategy to engage media in Canada changed the content of reporting, but there was only a nonsignificant trend towards fewer suicides. A more fundamental change in media narratives to focus on survival rather than death appears warranted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]