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Today, media literacy and digital skills are essential for personal communication and social interaction. Children and adolescents need these skills to act autonomously in highly digitised social contexts. These skills are acquired in different social spaces, most frequently and primarily at home, followed by peer groups, school, and extracurricular activities. The present study aims to conceptually situate media literacy within a broader network of social power relations. It is therefore grounded in an academic theoretical framework that constructs media literacy as a form of digital cultural capital. As such, media literacy also contains the principles of media preferences and choices that condition the media choices of young people. This draws our attention to the social contexts in which media literacy and digital skills of children and teenagers are formed: within the family, school, and peers. With a selective thematic analysis of qualitative interviews with 67 primary and secondary school students (12–19 years), the empirical research is focused on different contextual incentives and regulations related to the formation of students’ media literacy, primarily in relation to digital media. First, we examine parenting practices that frame home access to media and media practices within families. Then, we explore the characteristics of formal media education within schools, which seems limited to teaching with/through media. Finally, we identify peer networks as important promoters of both digital capital and elements of advanced media practices and skills, compared to the media literacy encouraged within families and schools.

Media consumption by young people has traditionally been receiving much attention within Russian science. However, scholars rarely analyze various aspects of political dimension of media practices widely spread among young people. In this regard, the purpose of the study was to analyze the influence exerted by media consumption on the nature of modern youth political socialization. The article presents a brief overview of the latest research on media practices of modern Russian youth, highlights the features and trends of media consumption by the “digital” generation, i.e. personalization of consumed content, priority of online forms of information dissemination, “situationality” and ritualization of news consumption, a high level of technical literacy, an increase in the scale of digital escapism, multi-screen communication, etc. The main attention is paid to the importance of media consumption by young people during their political socialization. Distinctive properties of media and cyber socialization are highlighted, and their role in shaping the attitude of young people to events occurring within the country and abroad is shown. Specific practical recommendations are formulated on the possibilities of correcting media practices and transforming media consumption by young people in order to form more balanced and objective assessments of political reality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are at least two perspectives concerning the role of digital and connected media systems in relation to individual agency. One suggests that individuals have a gain in agency while using digital devices and services while other approaches see that users become dependent on tech companies that use data flows to analyse and manipulate user behaviour. In our paper, we want to examine empirically how those two descriptions of agency work out and relate to each other. We use conversation analysis of face-to-interface interactions with smart speakers and intelligent personal assistants to examine the agency in front of the device and we rely on interviews with smart-speaker users to understand the users' strategies to curtail the potentially unwanted effects of smart and connected devices and services. With reference to concepts of 'co-operative work' and 'cooperation without consensus' and a discussion of media and data practices, this paper elucidates how the two agencies of users and of device and service providers are intertwined and distributed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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With growing concerns over children's data agencies, researchers have begun to draw attention to children's and young people's privacy practices in social media environments. However, little is known about the experiences of pre-service teachers who play a key role in educating future generations. This study aimed to address this gap by exploring Finnish pre-service teachers' conceptions and experiences of data agency in social media environments. Drawing from in-depth interviews of pre-service teachers (N = 14), the analysis revealed that pre-service teachers construct their data agency in terms of social frames and shared social norms, and they also recognize the lack of understanding regarding wider socio-technical systems within which data agencies are situated. This research argues that without a sophisticated understanding of algorithmic governance and commercial use of data, it is unlikely that these future teachers would be prepared to facilitate children's and youth's agentive actions in a data-driven society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores the media practices of Peruvian internet users based on their self- perceived educational level. The purpose is to provide an original theoretical perspective on the formation of media assemblages, shaped by the uses and interactions of specific social groups with media outlets. Utilizing a custom questionnaire, grounded in an updated version of the Uses and Gratifications Theory, administered to a sample (n=465) of users from various age groups and socioeconomic backgrounds, we examine the similarities and differences in these media assemblages and their impact on users' agency as critical media consumers. The results reveal that the national context, characterized by technological disparities and the COVID-19 pandemic, has influenced consumption practices. The smartphone stands out as the most widely used device, valued for its immediacy and diverse content. Both less educated and highly educated groups resort to it for information, education, and entertainment. Television also plays a significant role, serving as entertainment for older generations and a source of information for higher socioeconomic levels. The choice of streaming services among different income groups reflects the influence of connectivity and bandwidth. Information consumption is driven by curiosity, while entertainment is used for learning and following trends. Furthermore, there is little planning involved in entertainment and information consumption, although educational content is more planned among the highly educated group. This difference may be linked to access opportunities for educational materials, suggesting avenues for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents qualitative research findings on parents’ digital media practices. Through 32 in-depth interviews with parents of 0–6-year-olds in French-speaking Belgium, the study addresses digital inclusion by exploring the diverse ways parents experience and benefit (or not) from digital media. Our research uncovers the dual nature of digital media use in parenting, presenting both advantageous and problematic outcomes across four dialectical dimensions. Our work sheds light on how digital media can (a) offer informational support or constitute an informational challenge, (b) provide emotional assistance or cause emotional struggles, (c) grant access to social support or contribute to social pressures, and (d) serve as a tool for the daily organisation or complicate daily life. Our article also investigates the factors associated with either positive or negative outcomes. We show the role of personal, situational, social, and normative factors. To conclude, we identify strategies for childcare and parenting support professionals to promote digital inclusion among parents by addressing barriers to positive experiences and outcomes related to the use of digital media. By integrating the outcomes of parents’ experiences with digital media into discussions of digital inclusion, this article contributes to a comprehensive approach to promoting digital equity beyond questions of access and skills. It calls for user-centric strategies that consider the diverse experiences and concrete outcomes associated with digital media use and emphasises the importance of supporting parents and families regarding these tools.

The article presents the theoretical justification and empirical approbation of the author’s model of the individual adaptive potential in the conditions of the media ecosystem. The basis of the author’s approach is the consideration of the individual as the main subject of media activity practices that actualise the personal resources of Internet users associated with their readiness for effective communication, for production and consumption of media content in modern institutional conditions of the media ecosystem (considering existing risks and limitations). A theoretical model of adaptive potential is proposed, according to which such a potential is a complex multi-level education containing three successive levels: value, dispositional and practical. It is shown that each level consists of a number of sublevels, of including the types of values, dispositions and users’ practices prevailing in the media ecosystem. Based on the development of these operational indicators and a special scale, the author’s methodology for the adaptive potential sociological measurement of the individual in the media ecosystem is presented. According to the results of the author’s sociological research with the usage of cluster analysis (online survey of social networks and messengers’ users, N = 900), four clusters of media users were found, differing in the level of development and structure of adaptive potential. These clusters are characterised as “cautious users”, “theorists”, “unadapted”, “adapted”. The article concludes with promising directions for further scientific research on the topic.

This paper explores ways in which the strategic use of discursive and generic conventions has the potential to create a non-existent pathology and mislead the public. This case study compares and examines datasets of different genres (newspaper issue reports, online videos, and Wikipedia pages) dealing with a condition considered as an actual illness (Sluggish Cognitive Tempo, SCT), and another (Motivational Deficiency Disorder, MoDeD), invented as a spoof to raise awareness about disease mongering, overdiagnosis, and medicalization. We evince common language strategies that, irrespective of the genre, can be employed in media discourse, both in the name of genuine medical information and in pursuit of more ethically questionable ends. The methodological tools provided by Critical Discourse Analysis are applied to both the authentic and the hoax texts in order to investigate the media representations of SCT and MoDeD, juxtaposing the ways in which both are framed conceptually, defined linguistically, and popularized to lay audiences. The findings indicate the existence of a common repertoire of lexical-phraseological, rhetorical and discursive patterns that typify the popularization of medicalized statuses and combine to increase the persuasiveness and authority of overdiagnosis, ultimately advancing the case for medicalization with the public at large. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between media practices and social inequality has been studied within a range of sub-disciplines in media and communication studies and cultural sociology. In various, more or less direct, ways these studies point to the fact that habitus – the socially formed class specific relations to the social world – generates certain tastes, lifestyles, practices and preferences. When social groups form relatively distinct media practices, and distance themselves from the practices of other groups, they reproduce their social position, and 'make' their class. By analysing in-depth interviews with members of an emerging cultural middle-class, this study shows how class-making also manifests in the ways in which people expect that others would 'look down' on their media practices. By anticipating stigma from imagined others, the cultural middle-class stays in line with class-specific lifestyles and media practices, thus cementing their distinct character in the social space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Parkour is a recent type of sport where the body appears to produce moving sequences along urban spaces. Now, however smooth these sequences might seem, our perception of them entails media representations of the sport already. These actually generate certain uneasiness in practitioners themselves, who see them more like stagings than accurate depictions. Still, media representations are paramount to understand the social organization of parkour. What ensues is thus a paradox on parkour's media uses, which on a closer examination uncovers the role of non-representational strategies that contribute to organize the activity. Some non-representational forms may be read or discerned through media traces, while other non-representational strategies may function as contextual common ground. Developing emergent categories out of a grounded theory approach,this article examines how both representational and non-representational elements interact together, underlining the unique capacity of a urban experience to set an distinctive organization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article, grounded in virtual ethnographic observations during the first sixteen months of Russia's 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine, examines the role of personal stories, testimonies, and other communicative acts of Ukrainian social media users in the digital realm, their place in the process of knowledge production, and the value and authority they hold in the context of participatory warfare. Drawing on the notions of 'affective publics' [Papacharissi in Inf Commun Soc 19(3):307–324, 2016] and 'media practices' [Mattoni and Treré in Commun Theory 24(3):252–271, 2014], I reflect on how such affective media practices are strategically enacted, articulated, and circulated by Ukrainians in the networked spaces of war and how they interact with high-level state war narratives and traditional expert commentary that tend to dominate wartime knowledge production. I argue that personalized, reflexive, embodied, socially situated knowledge, and lived experiences of war shared on social media can act as forms of resistance, while also redefining the meaning of expertise in wartime and centring citizen voices in the hybrid media sphere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aula is a mandatory public school platform in Denmark with more than two million users. The idea behind Aula was to provide a shared space for communication and cooperation around children, both within the school/municipality setting and between teachers and parents, while adhering to the requirements of EU's General Data Protection Regulation. In this article we examine the incorporation of Aula in the daily practices of teachers, especially as they relate to children's privacy and data protection. Based on qualitative interviews with nine teachers and four experts, and drawing on practice theory, platform theory, and theories on children's privacy, we find that Aula – despite the intentions behind it – fails to support the complex nature of teachers' work practices and, therefore, to provide a solid data protection framework for the children. As such, the teachers mainly view the platform as being conducive to their non-sensitive communication with parents and deploy a range of other digital tools to support, for instance, cooperation with colleagues. Consequently, gaps in children's privacy and data protection arise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Introduction. The discussions in the scientific and educational environment on the scientific status of theology, its prospects in the system of university education, the opportunities opening for religious education in Russia, show the relevance of the analysis of the place of theology as a sphere of scientific knowledge in a number of social and humanitarian sciences and reflections on the essence of theological education and enlightenment that influence the axiological basis of society.Aim. The aim of the study is to conceptualise “theological education” and “theological enlightenment”, which define the focus of the conversation about religion today. The objectives of the study are related to determining the scope of each of the concepts and considering promising educational and enlightening practices in Russia.Methodology and research methods. The scientific argumentation presented in the article is based on the following theoretical research methods: logical analysis, structural and functional method, discursive analysis, axiological approach. The basis is an interdisciplinary methodology that allows synthesising approaches peculiar to various social and humanitarian sciences. When describing educational practices, the methods of comparative analysis, systematization and classification were applied.Results. It is determined that the educational paradigm is being changed today: the “return” of the religious component to education is considered as an attempt to set a new education coordinate system in the unity of horizontal (institutional) and vertical (meaning-forming) vectors. The authors define the essence of theological education in a broad (the formation of an axiological basis) and narrow (the process and result of the implementation of values in educational practice) sense. Moreover, the authors reveal the specifics of theological education in professional and comprehensive education. Changes in educational practices over the past few decades have affected educational activities in the field of religion, which required an analysis of the “theological education” concept and the definition of its prospects in a digital society. The authors describe the principles, conditions and directions of the implementation of theological enlightenment.Scientific novelty. The paper presents a terminological analysis of the categories of “theological education” and “theological enlightenment”, which are relatively new for pedagogical science.Practical significance. The conclusions presented in the study on the possibilities of theological education and theological enlightenment may be of interest to developers and organisers of religious educational programmes.

The article presents a study of the "fake news" problem from an emic perspective, focusing on media practices. The study aims to place people as conscious and active subjects of cultural production and consumption at the analysis's centre and present the problem through their actions, reactions and interpretations. Different cases of questionable content circulating through Bulgarian media space are analysed, and their functions and uses are outlined. Two main functions of fake news are specified: 1) as an aspect of popular culture and 2) as a genre of disinformation. The features of users' reception and interpretation, the subversive impact of fake news in the media ecosystem and its usage in the so-called 'information wars' are examined in detail. The conclusions emphasise the role of humour and laughter as mechanisms of counteraction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change is one of the most important global topics of public interest. Consequently, the role of the media is crucial to inform citizens about it and to raise public awareness. This paper is devoted to an analysis of the reporting methods of the most visited Montenegrin web portals regarding the topic. We al-so aim to determine how media workers and political agents cover this topic. Since 2007, Montenegro has been constitutionally represented as an ecological state, which has an excellent legislative framework but also numerous environ-mental problems. Bearing these facts in mind, we investigate this topic through the content and discourse analysis of 268 media texts on web portals in the period from October 21 to November 22, 2021 (UN Climate Change Glasgow Conference) and in-depth semistructured interviews with seven important people covering this topic in Montenegro. We conclude that Montenegrin society is environmentally illiterate, although young people are more aware of the threat posed by climate change. The apathy of Montenegrin citizens can partly be attributed to the influence of media that superficially report on this issue and make no effort to educate the population or raise awareness about environmental protection and climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How are teenagers and young adults changing in today's media landscape? What representations do they have of the journalistic profession, and what influence do the new media formats have on these representations and on news evaluation practices? To find out, we have adopted an anthropological approach to information, based on three survey methods that have the common feature of being conducted over a long period of time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Asian organizations need to engage media to establish trust and reputation. This research examines the phenomenon of press engagement, focusing on the relationship between public relations professionals of organizations and journalists. The study draws on both the public relations and relationship marketing literature to examine the efficacy surrounding various press engagement strategies. Eighteen indepth interviews were conducted with journalists from broadcast, print, and online media in Hong Kong. The results were analyzed using a grounded theory approach. Four press engagement themes emerged, including role reinforcement, responsiveness, social justice and segregation. These themes provide guidance for Asian businesses and organizations to develop their media relationship strategies. As there is no study that has investigated PR-journalist dyad relationships from the angle of the PR and customer engagement literature, this study offers new insights on organizational relationship marketing within a corporate communication context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While communication and media studies tend to define privacy with reference to data security, current processes of datafication and commodification substantially transform ways of how people act in increasingly dense communicative networks. This begs for advancing research on the flow of individual and organizational information considering its relational, contextual and, in consequence, political dimensions. Privacy, understood as the control over the flow of individual or group information in relation to communicative actions of others, frames the articles assembled in this thematic issue. These contributions focus on theoretical challenges of contemporary communication and media privacy research as well as on structural privacy conditions and people’s mundane communicative practices underlining inherent political aspect. They highlight how particular acts of doing privacy are grounded in citizen agency realized in datafied environments. Overall, this collection of articles unfolds the concept of ‘Politics of Privacy’ in diverse ways, contributing to an emerging body of communication and media research.

The article explores the phenomenon of the popularity of screenshots and the variety of contexts in which they are used. Screenshotting is treated as a social practice, drawing on the theory of practices, primarily Theodore Schatzki's approach. On its basis, two aspects of the creation of screenshots are highlighted: bodily-material and social framework. Analysis of both results in the description of screenshotting as a dispersed practice and a key component of integrative practices, especially those that deal with proving the truth. Finally, those reflections lead to the postulate that screenshots should be given greater recognition in the social sciences as an important source of knowledge about everyday life on the internet. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic has fostered the increasing use of digitally-mediated communication, which has substituted a large part of the face-to-face encounters, work, political, social, and leisure activities, made impossible during the long period of lockdown. What did this entail in small villages, in respect to both citizens and local government, where face-to-face communication has been more resistant to digital mediation? This study aimed to explore the changes seen in institutional communication, and more generally, in the everyday life of citizens and their relationship with local administrators during the first lockdown in Italy. The context explored was the small-scale local community of Peccioli (Tuscany), a village where face-to face communication usually played a pivotal role in the interaction between local government and citizens. This small village represents a good point of observation to understand whether, in contexts such as this, there has been a change in the balance between different modes of communication similar to that seen in more urban environments. More specifically, the paper presents the main findings emerging from a study exploring on the one hand, the attitudes and opinions of local administrators regarding institutional communication, and, on the other, the evaluations by citizens of the initiatives and the communication by local government and an analysis of their information behaviors. In the first case, a qualitative approach was used, based on 10 semi-structured interviews with local administrators; in the second case, a quantitative approach was adopted based on a survey conducted with a representative sample of Peccioli's citizens. The main finding of the study revealed the crucial role of word of mouth, thus indicating that, contrary to what is generally believed, not all communication has become automatically digital during COVID-19. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides a historical perspective on media practices in refugee camps. Through an analysis of archival material emerging from refugee camps in Germany between 1945 and 2000, roles and functions of media practices in the camp experience among forced migrants are demonstrated. The refugee camp is conceptualized as a heterotopian space, where media practices took place in pre-digital media environments. The archival records show how media practices of refugees responded to the spatial constraints of the camp. At the same time, media practices emerged from the precarious power relations between refugees, administration, and activists. Opportunities, spaces, and access to media practices and technologies were provided, yet at the same time restricted, by the camp structure and administration, as well as created by refugees and volunteers. Media activist practices, such as the voicing of demands for the availability of media, demonstrate how access to media was fought for within the power structures and affordances of the analogue environment. While basic media infrastructure had to be fought for more than in the digital era and surveillance and control of media practices was more intense, the basic need for access to information and connectivity was similar in pre-digital times, resulting in media activism. This exploration of unconsidered technological environments in media and refugee studies can arguably nuance our understanding of the role of media technologies in “refugee crises”.

Recent data confirm the central role that YouTube plays in the media life of young people in the west, and especially in the media practices of adolescents and preadolescents. This article presents a study on tweens’ YouTube preferences and media practices. The study was based on the uses and gratification theory and applied a quantitative-qualitative approach: a questionnaire was administered to 1,406 preadolescents (x = 12, 11 years-old) from 41 secondary schools, and three focus groups with six participants (three girls and three boys) each were carried out in three schools. The results reveal that the tweens participating in the study consider YouTube as a social media and a video catalogue. They especially like YouTube’s content, in particular entertainment (music and humour) and self-learning (tutorials); however, they generally dislike its interactive functions (e.g., sharing and commenting). Moreover, their media practices on YouTube reveal that tweens incorporate YouTube into their everyday media life within other social media, although they use it predominantly to consume media content in a “traditional”/“non-interactive” way, similar to traditional television use. Despite this they do not consider it as a “new” television. Finally, tweens in our study use YouTube especially for entertainment, and, on a second level, for self-learning and socialising functions. Further studies need to be carried out to go deeper into the prosumption possibilities for tweens’ both on YouTube and other social media.

The Southern Mediterranean border has in the past decade become one of the most deeply contested political spaces in Europe and has been described as a site of the border spectacle. Drawing on textual and visual analysis of Twitter messages by two of the most prominent actors in the field, the European Border and Coast Guard Agency, Frontex, and the humanitarian and medical NGO Médecins Sans Frontières, the article examines the split nature of the Mediterranean border which is, among others, visible in radically different narratives about migrants' journeys, border deaths and living conditions. The findings challenge previous scholarship about convergence of humanitarianism and policing. The two actors are waging a fierce media battle for moral authority, where they use widely diverging strategies of claiming authority, each of which carries a particular set of ethical dilemmas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article constitutes a critical intervention in the current, dramatic debate on the consequences of algorithms and automation for society. While most research has focused on negative outcomes, including ethical problems of machine bias and accountability, little has been said about the possibilities of users to resist algorithmic power. The article draws on Raymond Williams' work on media as practice to advance a framework for studying algorithms with a focus on user agency. We illustrate this framework with the example of the media activist campaign World White Web by the Swedish artist and visual designer Johanna Burai. We suggest that user agency in relation to algorithms can emerge from alternative uses of platforms, in the aftermath of algorithmic logics, and give birth to complicit forms of resistance that work through 'repair' politics oriented towards correcting the work of algorithms. We conclude with a discussion of the ways in which the proposed framework helps us rethink debates on algorithmic power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article addresses how and why the Royal Society of Medicine (RSM), as a hub of research and education and with its multidisciplinary membership, became active in lantern projection, circulation and popularisation as a scientific teaching practice in First World War Britain. From the interactions it fostered during dialogue to its mobilising of surgeons’ visual experiences and related photographic practices in the facial wards, the article considers how and why the projection services that were made available at the RSM between 1914 and 1919 facilitated collaborative and contested debates in immediate exchanges of information and thus early intervention. Despite the lantern and the camera being referred to in conjunction with each other during this historical moment, the role of photography via magic lantern technology has not been the subject of an in-depth study. During the war, the lantern was received as an extension of photography and toward successful simulation of the spatial and temporal contingency of human vision. This article charts aspects of the nature and body-machine characteristics of these technical innovations in a period of change and transition for both surgical practice and visual technologies in medicine. Overall, the article will argue that the RSM was a major institutional catalyst for First World War uses of the lantern in surgery, producing modern medical thinking that wished to use the camera apparatus in new ways.

Where options to speak out and to find recognition are limited, it is tempting to explore citizens' engagement from an angle of self-expression. With the so-called Arab Spring, narratives about 'Arabs speaking out' gained prominence in Western publics, highlighting Arabs' civic engagement, and also countering long-standing Western images of Arabs as passive and/or violent. In contrast, building on ethnographic research with Moroccan urban women affiliated with the Islamic-oriented Justice and Development Party, this article identifies and discusses listening as a critical media practice. Notably, this article suggests recognising listening as a valuable active citizenship practice next to practices of voice. As a critical part of emerging civic cultures in the Arab world, listening helps revealing understudied links between civic knowledge, listening, civic engagement and empowerment. In this endeavour, this article discusses the interviewees' mediated listening practices for civic knowledge as a duty, struggle and joy pertaining to authoritarianism, class and gender issues, illustrating how reciprocal listening and knowledge redistribution are used as a civic engagement and empowerment strategy. The article aims to contribute to debates on Arab-mediated civic cultures as well as the concept of listening that has previously been discussed mainly in the context of Western democracies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This introduction to the special issue 'ASIA.LIVE: Inaugurating Livestream Studies in Asia' briefly summarizes the virtual workshop at which it originated and describes its contributions to the central concept of liveness. After reflecting on the increasingly constitutive role of liveness in digital media, we argue that research on livestreaming should move beyond its focus on gaming and its Eurocentric approach to platforms, drawing on extensive debates over liveness and expanding its scope to the thriving digital economies in the Asian region. To understand how practices such as livestreaming are changing digital cultures in Asia and beyond, it is necessary to account for the ephemeral phenomena and under-documented practices that emerge from these regional contexts. By bringing together articles about China and Taiwan and relating them to workshop contributions about Hong Kong, Indonesia, and South Korea, we inaugurate livestream studies in Asia and offer some directions for future research in this field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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New age practitioners and other alternative groups seek to create a heterotopia at a distance from mainstream society, and this necessitates some control over the use of media practices. To theorize the role of digital media in the making of a heterotopia, I have studied Ängsbacka, a community for alternative lifestyles, in a small mid-Swedish town. Using the concept of heterotopia as a starting point to understand how Ängsbacka functions as a space outside of mainstream society, I then use media theories about disconnection and the avoidance of context collapse in the analysis of their media practices. The analysis shows that the community has an ambivalent set of both explicit and implicit rules and norms aiming at both inclusion and exclusion of digital media. Studying the role of media use in the construction of a heterotopia adds new layers to the ongoing discussion about the use and non-use of digital media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the media are ascribed much power in discussions about far-right politics, to date the communicative dimension of extreme right mobilization received little rigorous scholarly attention. To address this gap, this paper addresses the media practices of the extreme right, offering an empirical study of two emerging social movement organizations of this area: CasaPound Italia in Italy and Les Identitaires in France. Rather than treating them as incidental beneficiaries of media populism, the paper disentangles the various ways in which these groups interact with the mass media, discussing the forms and meaning of their activism in relation to extreme right political culture, and differentiating between inward-oriented and outward-oriented media practices. Based on ethnographic observation and semi-structured interviews with far-right militants, the paper shows that media practices not only try to respond to the demands of the media environment in which the groups are embedded, but also seek to reinforce the groups' internal organization and hierarchy, building collective symbolic imagery, and ensuring ideological consistency among activists and sympathizers. In so doing, the paper offers initial insight on how protest movements of the extreme right consolidate their profile and become recognizable in the public sphere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We are at a pivotal moment for understanding and deciding what is actually at stake with datafication. In this contribution, I argue for the increasingly important and politicized role of media scholarship to privilege lived experiences and situated practices as a counter to the active neutralization of data-driven systems and their implications. In particular, I argue for the relevance of media studies to emphasize the uses to which technology is put and explore how data practices relate to other social practices and historical contexts as a way to broaden the parameters of response, moving data politics beyond the confines of the technology itself, and contending instead with the premise and terms of the debate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on an analysis of both quantitative and qualitative data collected in 2018 from the Žilina region in Slovakia, this paper intends to examine the relationship between parental mediation and parental digital media competence within households of children aged three to eight. Parent participants were recruited through schools that reflect the geographic representation of the entire region. In addition to 517 surveys, six onsite interviews with parents and observations of children interacting with digital media were collected. The research findings show that almost 50% of the children studied have access to tablets and laptops. The use of these digital devices increases with age. Qualitative data found that age and other contextual factors played a crucial role in the type of parental mediation implemented at home while quantitative data showed a significant positive correlation between parent's digital media competence and parental mediation behaviors such as enabling mediation, technical mediation, and monitoring. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents two prevailing media orientations among Syrian migrants in Denmark. The purpose is to show how Syrians relate to, and evaluate, mediated content, and how it relates to political action. The orientations are dyadic, and represent both news about the conflict in Syria, as well as Danish politics – migration policies in particular. The first is the ambivalent-localizing orientation that mirrors the twofold orientation towards both Danish and Syrian political events; and the second is the informed-obliterate, in which Syrians choose to drop out of media content about Syria due to mental health issues, or fear for their families still in Syria. The study shows how media practices among diasporic Syrians in Denmark are multidimensional, and puts forward the complexities of identity processes between here and there, between political activism and demobilization, and between gratitude for being safe and never feeling safe. The argument is that, these multi-local processes involve multiple interdependent factors, diverse encounters, as well as a variety of struggles in belonging. Syrians consequently lack agency as well as social, media and political recognition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This contribution proposes a methodological framework for empirical research into visual practices on social media. The framework identifies practices, pictures and platforms as relevant dimensions of analysis. It is mainly developed within, and is compatible with qualitative, interpretive approaches which focus on visual communication as part of everyday personal communicative practices. Two screenshots from Instagram and Facebook are introduced as empirical examples to investigate collaborative practices of meaning-making relating to pictures on social media. While social media seems to augment reflexive, processual practices of negotiating identities, visual media, in particular, amps up aesthetic, ambivalent and embodied dimensions within these practices.

Various media allow people to build transnational networks, learn about the world and meet people from other cultures. In other words, media may allow one to cultivate cosmopolitan capital, defined here as a distinct form of embodied cultural capital. However, far from everyone is identifying this potential. Analyses of a national survey and in-depth interviews, conducted in Sweden, disclose a tendency among those in possession of cultural capital to recognise and exploit cosmopolitan capital in their media practices. Those who are dispossessed of cultural capital are significantly less liable to approach media in this way. Relying on various media practices in order to reshape one’s cultural capital exemplifies what Bourdieu called a reconversion strategy. As social fields undergo globalisation, media offer opportunities for the privileged to remain privileged – to change in order to conserve.

This paper aims to investigate the development of migrants as political actors and the appropriation of new media technologies for activism and social change. Through an analysis of digital media practices of migrant activists in Marea Granate in recent years, the concept of transnational activism will be developed in order to provide a new approach to media and migration studies. From a distinctly ethnographic perspective, the methodology includes in-depth interviews with Marea Granate activists and field notes collected through participant observation at the first international Marea Granate meeting, held in Berlin in May 2017.

After World War II, radio as a borderless medium became more and more important as an international agent connecting people worldwide. To date, these transnational connections have been explored primarily in relation to their function as political propaganda during the Cold War. In contrast, the present study explores the link between radio listening and the atmospheres emitted by international radio. It includes research in the production archive as well as a reenactment of the listener’s situation using historical radio sets. The article looks at the changes in media-cultural practices which were responsible for the valorisation of atmospheres, as well as at the value of the acoustic interferences of radio transmission. It traces how these auditory and bodily confrontations with noise(s) evolved into a resensing of cosmopolitan feelings. The study is a contribution to a history of mobility intertwined with a history of the senses and atmospheres.

This article develops an ethnographic approach for analyzing the entanglements of digital media and emotions in everyday life. Using the practice of taking selfies at the “Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe” in Berlin as an example, it engages in a discussion of practice and affordance theories as well as ethnographic approaches to the study of emotions. In three related sections, it offers a particular conceptualization of “media practices” which builds upon the concept of “affordances,” an introduction to the analysis of “emotional practices,” and a section proposing the ethnographic concept of “emotional affordances.” This concept, the article argues, can serve as a key link in understanding doing emotion through digital media.

This article explores mediated memory practices in refugee camps in post-war Germany. In response to refugees experiencing a disjuncture of temporality materialized in the liminal space of the refugee camp, the article argues that media practices of camp residents include practices of remembering and witnessing. Drawing on memory studies, media practices are understood as forms of "management of change" and "mediated witnessing", enacting cultural and diasporic memory, as well as providing opportunities to remember, store the present and give witness to one's plight. Based on an analysis of archival records from camp structures in Germany (1945-1955), examples of mnemonic media practices are analyzed. Concludingly, the article argues that mediated memory in refugee camps is characterized by an ambiguity of "hopeful" and "obligatory" memory, affected by structures and control of media and mnemonic activities, as well as agency and initiatives to remember and create memories from below. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the past decade, literature flourished that investigated the nexus between social movements and media from a media practice perspective. The article draws on this body of work to show how we might apply practice theory following at least three different approaches on social movements and media: media-as-practices, media-relatedpractices, and media-in-practices approaches. Then, it proposes an operational definition of practice to investigate social movements and media from a media-in-practices approach, also introducing the method of media practices maps interviews. Finally, the article applies the media-in-practices approach at the analytical level focusing on the practice of coordinating the workflow in the daily grassroots political engagement of Greek, Italian, and Spanish activists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to articulate an overview of recent scholarship developed in the field of communication and media studies that have food cultures as the main object of research. Starting with an initial discussion about the role of food as an object of study in the fields above-mentioned, we present a critical reading of the scholarship that explores the current transformations in food cultures driven by the so-called mediatization of culture and society process from three thematic blocks that dialogue with each other: mediation of culinary knowledge; mediatized of food consumption, and social distinction and media capitals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article adds an empirical production perspective to the widely discussed concept of audience participation. It studies how audiences are integrated in the production of television and what motivations producers have to do so. Increased opportunities for audiences to produce or contribute to media content may change the way television is produced, as audience perspectives can be more easily integrated. Theoretically, the notions of corporate and political participation are discussed as a basis for a qualitative content analysis, focusing on a range of nonfictional television programs in Flanders, combined with in-depth interviews with editors-in-chief to study their motivations, looking at audience participation on screen, beyond the screen and behind the screen. Results show that producers mostly integrate the audience in the production process within a corporate understanding of participation, although some producers have integrated political forms of participation as well. However, rather than focusing on participation, a central motivation for producers is to engage the audience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This commentary provides critical reflections on a number of challenges related to research methodology and ethics when studying organized racism in online environments. Based on ongoing fieldwork of the Nordic Resistance Movement (NMR) in Sweden, I ask three critical questions about researching the neo-Nazi organization and organized racism more generally: (1) How do we produce valid knowledge of these 'closed' groups in their 'open' online spaces? What are the limitations of our research on hidden social life when we only have access to what they want us to know? (2) Why and for whom are we producing research on these groups? Or, put another way, what ethical considerations and problems related to intent and research agendas arise in studies of neo-Nazism and other forms of organized racism? (3) What is the emotional labour involved in studying these groups for the researcher and how might it be used in a productive manner? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies of (new) media and social change should strive to introduce causality into the analysis. Studies relying on quantitative data tend to provide either too simplistic explanations or just point to correlations while qualitatively based studies tend to be so particularistic that the potential for generalizing findings from specific cases is negligible. In this article, it is argued that proper accounts should strive to suggest causal connections between social change and media practices – not by resorting to unrealistic cover law-explanations but by identifying and analysing social mechanisms. Done properly, such analyses would: heed acting subjects; explain these practices through expositions of the minute steps that link A and B; and be realistic accounts – both in the sense of being based on 'thick' descriptions and of being easily recognizable when compared to what is actually happening in everyday life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]