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Journalistic media increasingly address changing user behaviour online by implementing algorithmic recommendations on their pages. While social media extensively rely on user data for personalized recommendations, journalistic media may choose to aim to improve the user experience based on textual features such as thematic similarity. From a societal viewpoint, these recommendations should be as diverse as possible. Users, however, tend to prefer recommendations that enable "serendipity" - the perception of an item as a welcome surprise that strikes just the right balance between more similarly useful but still novel content. By conducting a representative online survey with n = 588 respondents, we investigate how users evaluate algorithmic news recommendations (recommendation satisfaction, as well as perceived novelty and unexpectedness) based on different similarity settings and how individual dispositions (news interest, civic information norm, need for cognitive closure, etc.) may affect these evaluations. The core piece of our survey is a self-programmed recommendation system that accesses a database of vectorized news articles. Respondents search for a personally relevant keyword and select a suitable article, after which another article is recommended automatically, at random, using one of three similarity settings. Our findings show that users prefer recommendations of the most similar articles, which are at the same time perceived as novel, but not necessarily unexpected. However, user evaluations will differ depending on personal characteristics such as formal education, the civic information norm, and the need for cognitive closure.

This article takes a quantitative approach to Spanish radio advertising and the stereotypes and female roles that it broadcasts in a medium that has traditionally had high female audience rates in our country. From content analysis of 679 radio ads extracted from the 3 main general Spanish radio stations and collected 10 years apart, the study attempts to show the evolution (or regression) of how radio advertising portrays women. The radio in Spain has always been a medium anchored in the real world that has also provided some degree of space to broadcast social movement. #MeToo, as a phenomenon promoting female empowerment, was no exception. Therefore, this longitudinal study aims to demonstrate whether the social movements that led to increased female activism have been reflected in a change of roles and stereotypes projected by radio advertising messages. The work presented here looks at the concept of role from a dual perspective: firstly, it focuses on the role played by female voices in radio advertising items. Secondly, it works on the concept of role by assimilating it into the female image projected in radio advertising items. The results obtained between the two samples are remarkably similar, demonstrating a clear tendency to polarise the female image and confirming that women are still being portrayed in significantly traditional roles.

In recent years, there has been an increased academic interest revolving around the beneficial or pernicious effects of ideological extremity and (uncivil) political discussion over democracy. For instance, citizens' ideological predispositions and higher levels of political discussion have been linked with a more active and vibrant political life. In fact, ideological extremity and uncivil discussion foster institutionalized political engagement. However, less explored in the literature remains whether such polarization and uncivil discussions may be related to unlawful political behavior such as illegal protest. This study contends that one of the main drivers of illegal protest behavior lies in online uncivil political discussion, specifically through the normalization and activation of further incivility. We tested this through a two-wave panel data drawn from a diverse US sample and cross-sectional, lagged, and autoregressive regression models. Mediation analysis was also conducted to test whether uncivil online discussion mediated the relationship between frequency of online political discussion and illegal protest engagement. Overall, we found that illegal protest was particularly associated with online uncivil discussion, while ideological extremity and other forms of online and offline discussions seemed to have no effect on unlawful protest over time.

A number of recent high profile news events have emphasised the importance of data as a journalistic resource. But with no definitive definition for what constitutes data in journalism, it is difficult to determine what the implications of collecting, analysing, and disseminating data are for journalism, particularly in terms of objectivity in journalism. Drawing selectively from theories of mediation and research in journalism studies we critically examine how data is incorporated into journalistic practice. In the first half of the paper, we argue that data's value for journalism is constructed through mediatic dimensions that unevenly evoke different socio-technical contexts including scientific research and computing. We develop three key dimensions related to data's mediality within journalism: the problem of scale, transparency work, and the provision of access to data as "openness". Having developed this first approach, we turn to a journalism studies perspective of journalism's longstanding "regime of objectivity", a regime that encompasses interacting news production practices, epistemological assumptions, and institutional arrangements, in order to consider how data is incorporated into journalism's own established procedures for producing objectivity. At first sight, working with data promises to challenge the regime, in part by taking a more conventionalist or interpretivist epistemological position with regard to the representation of truth. However, we argue that how journalists and other actors choose to work with data may in some ways deepen the regime's epistemological stance. We conclude by outlining a set of questions for future research into the relationship between data, objectivity and journalism.

This article examines leaders' ability to take care of the people during a global pandemic. The article focuses on two populist leaders in Spain: Ada Colau, Barcelona's mayor and a global municipalist referent, and Isabel Díaz Ayuso, president of the Community of Madrid and a referent of the new right in Europe. The analysis is informed by theoretical discussions on care, examining how populists perform micro and macro practices of care(lessness) as reflected on their Instagram accounts. How has a global pandemic affected populists' unspoken role of taking care of "their people"? Do they understand care as an individual or as a collective enterprise that challenges capitalist forms of annihilation? The article takes a feminist approach by challenging traditional male-centric analyses of populism. Methodologically, the article advances our understanding of discursive, visual, and affective approaches to digital storytelling. The data is analyzed through a combination of content analysis, a performative approach to populism and visual rhetorical analysis. The results show important differences in how right- and left-wing populists create their ethos as carers and establish emotional connections with those they care about, performing radical care versus neoliberal carelessness.

Even under the authoritarian political system, the Association of Polish Journalists was able to achieve a certain level of independence. Journalists sought to use any possibility to expand the area of their freedom; however, the more possibilities arose, the bigger were differences of opinions about the ways and means of democratization. Contemporary arguments between diverse journalists' associations in Poland reveal how difficult it is to separate a common concern for professional journalism from political divisions.

Facebook groups host user-created communities on Facebook's global platform, and their administrative structure consists of members, volunteer moderators, and governance mechanisms developed by the platform itself. This study presents the viewpoints of volunteers who moderate groups on Facebook that are dedicated to political discussion. It sheds light on how they enact their day-to-day moderation work, from platform administration to group membership, while acknowledging the demands that come from both these tasks. As volunteer moderators make key decisions about content, their work significantly shapes public discussion in their groups. Using data obtained from 15 face-to-face interviews, this qualitative study sheds light on volunteer moderation as a means of media control in complex digital networks. The findings show that moderation concerns not just the removal of content or contacts but, most importantly, it is about protecting group norms by controlling who has the access to the group. Facebook's volunteer moderators have power not only to guide discussion but, above all, to decide who can participate in it, which makes them important gatekeepers of the digital public sphere.

The Chinese context and theoretical implication of community media -- The media form of community communication -- Interest expression of community residents -- Media use by community residents : information access, neighborhood communication and community action -- Mobilization mode of community residents : resistance identity and cooperative governance -- Community governance based on new media -- The power relations in community communication -- The community-based development tendency in the media industry.

The Chinese context and theoretical implication of community media -- The media form of community communication -- Interest expression of community residents -- Media use by community residents : information access, neighborhood communication and community action -- Mobilization mode of community residents : resistance identity and cooperative governance -- Community governance based on new media -- The power relations in community communication -- The community-based development tendency in the media industry.

Recent social science concerning the information technology industries has been driven by a sense of urgency around the problems social media platforms face. But it need not be our job to solve the problems these industries have created, at least not on the terms in which they offer them. When researchers are enlisted in solving the industry's problems, we tend to repeat some of the missteps common to the study of technology and society.

The term deepfake was first used in a Reddit post in 2017 to refer to videos manipulated using artificial intelligence techniques and since then it is becoming easier to create such fake videos. A recent investigation by the cybersecurity company Deeptrace in September 2019 indicated that the number of what is known as fake videos had doubled in the last nine months and that most were pornographic videos used as revenge to harm many women. The report also highlighted the potential of this technology to be used in political campaigns such as in Gabon and Malaysia. In this sense, the phenomenon of deepfake has become a concern for governments because it poses a short-term threat not only to politics, but also for fraud or cyberbullying. The starting point of this research was Twitter's announcement of a change in its protocols to fight fake news and deepfakes. We have used the Social Network Analysis technique, with visualization as a key component, to analyze the conversation on Twitter about the deepfake phenomenon. NodeXL was used to identify main actors and the network of connections between all these accounts. In addition, the semantic networks of the tweets were analyzed to discover hidden patterns of meaning. The results show that half of the actors who function as bridges in the interactions that shape the network are journalists and media, which is a sign of the concern that this sophisticated form of manipulation generates in this collective.

Despite industry-wide efforts in digitally transforming news organizations, research showed that most newspapers' legacy products still outperformed the same newspaper's digital offerings in terms of engagement, circulation, readership, pricing, advertising, and subscription revenue - all by a wide margin. But Covid-19 created an unprecedented scenario where the need for instant, local news updates, the fear of contacting anything tangible, and financial stress may have changed consumer behavior. To assess the state of the newspaper industry, this study analyzes short-term and long-term trends in US newspapers' digital and print circulation before and during the pandemic. The analysis considered price, an important factor often neglected in discussions about newspaper demand. Utilizing rich industry data, this study analyzed 18 US metro daily newspapers' circulation trends during 2016-2022. The results revealed that digital circulation increased rapidly after the onset of Covid-19 but subsequently decreased after reaching the peak in Q3 2021. Print circulation continued its rapid decline since 2016, accompanied by continuous, substantial price hikes for print subscriptions - a typical print subscription now costs over $1,000 a year. Despite circulation declines, the print edition remains the core product, with more subscribers paying far more than digital subscribers. Because of the immense price gap (6 to 1), the seemingly promising increase in digital subscriptions during Covid-19 could not generate nearly as much revenue to cover the loss on the print side, resulting in a substantial loss in total subscription revenue. The state of the US newspaper industry needs immediate attention.

The article explores the limitations of the current scholarly game studies (GS) field. Its central presuppositions are (1) that there are certain attributes broadly understood as "GS" by those writing in or adjacent to the field; (2) that those attributes are historically rooted in an attempt to disassociate videogames from other types of electronic (and later - digital) media; and that (3) the preconditions that have led to this split are currently moot. In the first section of this article, I elaborate on these presuppositions through reading GS as a historically rooted field, centred around the videogame artefact. Following, by examining the notion of being 'against' something in academic work, I move to my central claim for the article: that maintaining this conception of GS is counterproductive to the state of contemporary videogames scholarship and that adopting a post-dualistic and post-humanities stance will greatly contribute to the broadening of the field. I break down this claim into three separate threads. Ontologically, I show that videogames are much closer to non-videogames than they used to be. Methodologically, I point out how re-integrating methodologies from outside the field is crucial to address the complex phenomena evolved in and around gaming. Politically, I highlight the importance of games in contemporary digital culture and show how boundary-work and gatekeeping might harm the attempt to make game scholarship engage with larger political issues. The article concludes with suggestions for a more inclusive and intermingled vision for the field, focusing on the notion of play rather than games.