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In the context of the COVID-19 "infodemic," we explore discourse around a highly polarized health issue: mask wearing during the pandemic. Probing ideologically charged discourse from #masks on Twitter, we examine the potential for visual tools to promote digital citizen social science. Our case study reveals the promise of visualization to make ideological discourse on social media more easily identifiable by members of the general public. This leads us to argue that accessible visualization tools are needed for the public to ethically engage as digital citizen social scientists who actively analyze their own media consumption and outputs. Doing so would potentially awaken the sociological imagination by giving digital prosumers the agency to contextualize the social structure of debate around issues of public concern. In this way, visualizations of social media may ignite the sociological imagination in the tradition of digital public sociology.

Adding to the work on creative conflict management that has been the object of organizational and management studies for the last several decades, we focus on a subset of Gen Z or "Generation Tech" (Gen T). This generation will be the first to instinctively and reflexively bring a "technology first" approach to their work practices including conflict resolution. Scholars of organizational communication identify the management of creative conflict as a prosocial process with important ramifications for organizational well-being. Taking a social diagnosis approach, we contribute to this growing literature by bringing it into dialogue with digital sociology and Gen Ters who are well-suited to use digital communication platforms (DCPs) like Teams and Slack to engage in creative conflict that benefits the well-being of organizations and their members. Our analysis shows that DCPs can encourage prosocial behaviors, when they (1) include nonsynchronous functionality, (2) associate contributions with members' real names, and (3) make all interactions visible to all team members. Our study reveals that when organizational DCPs are governed by these parameters, they can foster the Seven Cs of Creative Conflict that we identify as clarity, candor, contribution, cooperation, challenge, courage, and collegiality. The Seven Cs foster a growth mindset feedback loop in which members learn to self-reflectively apply a social diagnostic approach to their own digitally mediated well-being, thereby potentially improving organizational communication. Therefore, the Seven Cs form a core of communication competencies that will be increasingly important for organizational success as Gen Ters continue to mature and become colleagues in a variety of organizations.

Sponsored by the American Sociological Association Section on Communication, Information Technologies, and Media Sociology (CITAMS), Creating Culture Through Media and Communication asks important questions about digitalization shaping our everyday lives, and the ethics of tech occasioned by AI.

Sponsored by the Brazil-U.S. Colloquium on Communication Studies of the Brazilian Society for Interdisciplinary Studies in Communication and the Communication, Information Technologies, and Media Sociology Section of the American Sociological Association (CITAMS), this volume of Studies in Media and Communications is entitled Geo Spaces of Communication Research. The volume brings together scholars from across the Americas to address the complex evolution of political and policy media spaces as they are studied from a range of perspectives. The volume probes how media and digital tech are transforming how individuals, groups, and societies communicate within and across social worlds, as well as how emergent methodologies are evolving to keep pace with these phenomena.

Using a social diagnosis approach to COVID-19-related trauma, this research bridges the fields of sociology of medicine, disaster response, digital sociology, and digital divides. Bringing these literatures into dialogue, we problematize the digitally mediated trauma ensuing from COVID-19. We unpack two emergent media pathways or channels leading to a social diagnosis of trauma specific to sharp increases in reliance on digital media occasioned by the pandemic. The research advances the theoretical concept of the digital media trauma paradox in which trauma ensues from both oversaturation from toxic digital content and exclusion from digital resources. In either case, digital media engagements may act as a social determinant of health, particularly digital inequalities that to co-occur with other forms of disadvantage. The research closes by arguing that social diagnosis approaches are an excellent tool to understand the complexities of disaster response in the digital age.

Sponsored by the Brazil-U.S.Colloquium on Communication Studies of the Brazilian Society for Interdisciplinary Studies in Communication and the Communication, Information Technologies, and Media Sociology Section of the American Sociological Association (CITAMS), this volume of Emerald Studies in Media and Communications is entitled Creating Culture Through Media and Communication. The volume is a vibrant collaboration of global voices addressing the media and communications challenges of our time. Contributors ask us to reconsider the ethical implications of media and technology from historical, contemporary, and future perspectives. In addition, case studies show the diverse ways that cultural media production has ripple effects throughout larger society. Authors ask important questions about how digitalization is shaping our everyday lives, as well as how the ethics of tech is needed now more than ever with the sea change occasioned by AI.