Online social media present unprecedented opportunities and challenges for a range of organizing processes such as information sharing, knowledge creation, collective action, and post‐disaster resource mobilization. Concepts and tools of network research can help highlight key aspects of online interaction. This editorial introduction frames the thematic issue along three themes of networked processes: identity and identification; interaction patterns in online communities; and challenges and cautionary notes concerning social media organizing. A diverse range of country contexts, as well as theoretical and methodological approaches illustrated in this issue, represent the multifaceted research that scholars can undertake to understand networked organizing on social media
More than simply tools used by social movements to reach other substantive aims, media are increasingly becoming subjects of activism. This article contributes to advancing understanding of such media-focused activism through a case study of the World Forum of Free Media, a thematic forum for media activists and media advocacy organisations linked to the World Social Forum. Based on qualitative research conducted between 2008 and 2016 -including participant observation, in-depth interviews and textual analysis- the article critically explores the extent to which the World Forum of Free Media can be considered a 'free media' movement in the making, and examines some of the challenges and contradictions that such a movement-building project entails. Drawing on social movement theory, specifically the concept of collective identity, it analyses efforts by forum organisers to mobilise a very diverse range of actors -from alternative media activists to policy- and advocacy NGOs- around a plural and inclusive "free media" identity. While the World Forum of Free Media has to some extent succeeded in facilitating convergence around a set of core principles and ideas, it has so far struggled to develop a clear outwards-facing identity and mobilise a broad grassroots base.
The Covid-19 pandemic has been accompanied by an excess of accurate and inaccurate information (infodemic) that has prevented people from finding reliable guidance in decision-making. Non-professional but popular science communicators - some with a political agenda - supply the public with scientific knowledge regarding Covid-19. This kind of communication represents a worrisome force in societal discourses on science-related political issues. This article explores online content (N = 108 articles) of two popular German "alternative news" media (NachDenkSeiten and PI News) that present and evaluate biomedical research concerning Covid-19. Using thematic analysis, we investigated how scientific evidence was presented and questioned. Regarding the theoretical background, we drew on the concept of "evidencing practices" and ideas from argumentation theory. More specifically, we studied the use of the following three evidencing and counterevidencing practices: references to Data/Methods, references to Experts/Authorities, and Narratives. The results indicate that the studied alternative news media generally purport to report on science using the same argumentation mechanisms as those employed in science journalism in legacy media. However, a deeper analysis reveals that argumentation directions mostly follow preexisting ideologies and political agendas against Covid-19 policies, which leads to science coverage that contradicts common epistemic authorities and evidence. Finally, we discuss the possible implications of our findings for audience views and consider strategies for countering the rejection of scientific evidence.
The world has faced a major increase in forced displacement and the theme has also become the subject of many public, media and political debates. The public communication of refugee organizations thereby increasingly impacts their operations, the public perception on forcibly displaced people and societal and policy beliefs and actions. However, little research has been conducted on the topic. Therefore, this conceptual article aims to (1) define refugee organizations' public communication, (2) situate it within broader research fields, and (3) motivate the latter's relevance as research perspectives. In order to be able to achieve these research objectives, the article first discusses the social and scientific relevance of the research subject and identifies important gaps within literature which both form an essential scientific base for developing the main arguments. Adopting a historical perspective, the article demonstrates that in recent decades the social and scientific relevance of research on strategic and non-profit communication in general and on refugee organizations' public communication in particular have increased. Nevertheless, these fields remain underdeveloped and are mostly text-focused, while the production and reception dimensions are barely explored. Remarkably, however, little or no research has been conducted from an organizational communication perspective, although this article demonstrates that the subject can be adequately embedded in and examined from the fields of strategic, non-profit and public communication. Finally, the article highlights the relevance of the holistic Communicative Constitution of Organizations perspective and argues that future research can benefit by adopting multi-perspective, practice-oriented, multi-methodological, comparative and/or interdisciplinary approaches.
This paper posits that the concept of European identity is an important indicator of the legitimacy of the European Union (EU). It further assumes that the exposure to EU related media content can influence the feeling of European identity. In order to verify this assumption, we combined the mere-exposure-theory and the hostile media phenomenon. We assume that these theoretical concepts could help to understand the influence of media on people's levels of attachment to the EU. Regression analyses are performed on secondary data that were collected in a Eurobarometer survey in 2013. Our findings revealed that media exposure affected the respondents' identification with Europe, as well as the modifications of this effect based on their assessments of EU media coverage. The results of the current study not only validate assumptions about the mere-exposure effects on identity but also confirm the theoretical assumption that perceived hostility reduces such effects, whereas exposure to information that is perceived as neutral promotes the effects of media exposure on the feeling of European identity.
Digitalization challenges science communication in theoretical as well as methodological ways. It raises questions on how scientists, organizations, and institutions, as well as citizens and actors from other fields communicate about science and how science communication affects politics and the public. This thematic issue presents a collection of articles attempting to tackle digitalization's challenge for science communication research. In this editorial, we provide a short overview of the included articles. Additionally, we outline some future avenues that research could follow to examine further the implications that digital channels could have for science communication.
It was expected that the increasing coverage of EU affairs in national public spheres would lead to a greater sense of European belonging. The Internet was expected to foster this process. However, these expectations do not square with the current political climate of identity politics and the revitalisation of nationalism. How can this incongruence between theory and reality be understood? An intervening variable has added an unpredictability to the mix: information disorder. It is our view that this theory needs revising to include other intervening variables such as social media and information disorder. In this article, we argue that the current dynamic of Europeanised political communication is likely to compromise the civic and vertical components of EU-identity.
Due to societal trends, such as digitalisation, platformisation, and active and co-creative audiences, new organisational practices have surfaced. This study examines how communication practitioners experience their changing work in a new communication environment in which participatory cultural norms are becoming standard in strategic communication. I argue that the requirements to produce audience engagement affect the communication work and the communication workers. This study uses the popular music industry as a case, and is based on interviews with communication practitioners as well as on the qualitative text analysis of reports and newsletters from the music marketing firm Music Ally to the music industry. The study shows that communication practitioners within the industry experience a duty to create audience engagement - an engagement imperative. Although the practitioners are highly skilled in digital communication and social media, they often see the development of digital promotional culture as a challenge and express a lack of a deeper understanding of engagement. This study highlights implications for their professional roles, competences, and identities as well as ethical implications regarding the exploitation of audiences in communication work.
Few countries in the world have introduced media education into their curriculums. Montenegro became one of them in 2009, when "media literacy" was introduced as an optional subject for 16 and 17 year old students of Gymnasium high schools. This article presents the findings of the first and only research conducted so far on media education in Montenegro. It is a national case study which examines the potential of media education to change the school culture and accelerate education system reform towards embracing the new digital education paradigm in the future. The focus is on the results of research conducted through in-depth interviews with media literacy teachers all over the country. Despite the many challenges, all teachers identify the potential of media education to strengthen some of the key competences of the students and to improve their motivation and academic performance. They also identify potential to change positively school culture by transforming teachers into "cultural mediators" (Morcellini, 2007) and by supporting the formation of a "participative culture" (Jenkins & Kelley, 2013) in schools. This research recommends focusing education reform on spreading the media education pedagogy to the entire curriculum in order to embrace the new digital education paradigm in the future. (author's abstract)
Many communication theories in the context of political communication are based on the premise that humans are social beings affected by their perception of what others think, do, or say. For example, the spiral of silence theory predicts that individuals publically speaking their mind on certain issues is dependent on whether they perceive their opinion to be that of the majority or minority, and that the media is a core source for gauging public opinion. Yet, communication research has produced contradictory findings regarding the relationship between media coverage, perceived public opinion, personal opinion, and behavior. We argue that these contradictory findings can be explained by different inference hypotheses that people apply when inferring the opinion and behaviors of others from media coverage. There are two competing inference hypotheses discussed in the literature: While the reflection hypothesis assumes that the audience sees media content as a mirror of what the public thinks, persuasive press inference postulates that individuals perceive media as an influence on public opinion. Drawing on different research strands such as the spiral of silence theory, hostile media, persuasive press inference, and corrective action, several propositions are put forward that link these inference hypotheses to the media coverage and its effects on individual outcomes, and potential drivers are discussed. The propositions are then put to an initial test using an existing data set.
The article argues the importance of intermediality as a concept for research in mobile communication and media. The constant availability of several, partially overlapping channels for communication (texting, calls, email, Facebook, etc.) requires that we adopt an integrated view of the various communicative affordances of mobile devices in order to understand how people choose between them for different purposes. It is argued that mobile communication makes intermediality especially central, as the choice of medium is detached from the location of stationary media and begins to follow the user across all contexts of daily life.
This article outlines a first attempt at analysing counter-media publishing through the lens of remix theory. We concentrate on two key concepts - appropriation and authorship - which have a permanent standing in the remix research literature. To support our theoretical analysis, we investigate the coverage of two cases in the Finnish right-wing counter-media online publication MV-lehti. Our findings enable new readings on the nature of both counter-media work and remix culture. In fact, counter-media publishing leans more in the direction of remix culture - which is based on the act of using pre-existing materials to produce something new - than towards traditional journalistic convention, with its rules and ethical guidelines. MV-lehti's practice of combining and layering different material is discernibly political, often resembling media activism. Our study provides the argument that counter to the utopian democratising assumptions of remix culture, the proliferation of remix practices has also given antidemocratic actors the means to challenge collectively and institutionally supported ideas of knowledge and justice. Counter-media publishing is perhaps democratising in that it offers the means to participate, but these antagonistic actors also remix news to undermine liberal-democratic ideals and social justice. Evidently, remix practices can be co-opted for a reactionary agenda.
Advocates of elicitive conflict transformation (ECT) maintain that the parties to a conflict are the most important resource in efforts to render that conflict less violent. According to them, the transformation of the conflict is immanent to the conflict itself. The claim of ECT theorists is that classical conflict resolution has mostly aimed at overcoming a conflict by means of neutral mediation, while conflict transformation is not primarily concerned with terminating a conflict and considers the conflict worker as part of the conflict system. Although ECT is a communication-based model of conflict management and relies on human media, its media-theoretical aspects are not made explicit, raising the question of what role technological media play in the communicative processes that make up ECT techniques. Through an examination of the claimed differences between conflict resolution and conflict transformation, and focusing on the common roots of new media and the elicitive model in systems and cybernetic theory, this paper asks whether any peacebuilding potential of new media could be found in a specific anti-propagandistic quality of distributed technological media. It concludes by looking at any such potential in social media. (author's abstract)
Critical scholarship investigating media and the Arab uprisings has called for "a return to history". This article argues that researching the contemporary constraints and opportunities of social movement media in the Arab region requires historicizing such practices. Reflecting on the role of media activism within the Arab uprisings necessitates broadening the historical context of social movement media in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region by investigating the diversity of media tactics and alternative political economies mobilized to resist the military-industrial communications complex. This article develops a political economy framework to historicize social movement media practices from Chiapas to Palestine and provides a critical reflection on the use of media for revolution before and beyond the Arab uprisings. Learning from the long and global history of revolutionary media struggle is beneficial to media activists and researchers working in the MENA region.
