IJoC Publishes Special Section on Online Entertainment

Media globalization has been one of the most enduring topics in public debate about the impact of media on society. Debate has been traditionally centered on questions of U.S. “cultural imperialism” through widespread dissemination and popularity of its film and television output.  But a reassessment of this debate is imperative in the light of the current explosion of the virtually frictionless global reach of YouTube and major social media platforms such as Facebook, SnapChat, Twitch and Instagram, and the innovative content they have spawned. “Social media entertainment” is the term we use for the phenomenon of rapidly professionalizing amateur content creators engaging in entrepreneurial forms of creator labor to create innovate content and aggregate global fan communities in an effort to incubate and monetize their own media brands.

While the relatively frictionless global reach of such phenomena demands attention, we stress the differences between such platforms and the system of national broadcasting, film, and DVD release and licensing by windowing and territory. The latter, established forms of media globalization enter territories with IP-controlled content, whereas platforms such as YouTube exhibit facilitation rather than content control and much greater content, creator, service firm and language and cultural diversity than traditional global media hegemons. The fundamental takeaway is that we are witnessing the rise of a nascent media industry that represents non-traditional media ownership, disruptive platforms, and unique content innovation that challenges our prior conceptions of media globalization, including nationalized regulatory regimes.

Guest edited by Stuart Cunningham and David Craig, this Special Section on Online Entertainment: A New Wave of Media Globalization? pays particular attention to China, which represents a singular and central exception to notions of a new U.S. imperium, and India, which together with China constitutes one of the two largest emerging non-Western online spaces in the world and whose online cultural sphere is one of intense localization.  This collection of papers also advocates for updating cross-cultural analysis in the light of social media, whether comparative reception studies of sociability or new methodological approaches for conducting social media content analysis.

We invite you to read this new Special Section that just published November 1, 2016 at http://ijoc.org. For direct access to the articles, click  the respective article title below.

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Online Entertainment:  A New Wave of Media Globalization? — Introduction
Stuart Cunningham, David Craig

Disconnecting, Connecting, and Reconnecting:  How Chinese Television Found its Way out of the Box
Michael Keane

Professionalization of Amateur Production in Online Screen Entertainment in China: Hopes, Frustrations, and Uncertainties
Elaine Jing Zhao

Mapping and Managing Chinese Social Media Entertainment:: A Conversation with Heng Cai, Chinese Media Entrepreneur
David Craig, Heng Cai, Junyi Lv

YouTube Nation: Precarity and Agency in India’s Online Video Scene
Sangeet Kumar

The Globalization of On-Screen Sociability:  Social Media and Tethered Togetherness
Ralph Schroeder

Cross-Cultural Comparisons of User-Generated Content: An Analytical Framework
Limor Shifman

IJoC Publishes 14 Articles in September

The International Journal of Communication (IJoC) has published 14 papers in September 2016. Please click on the article title below to access any of the manuscripts that may be of interest to you. We look forward to your comments!

ARTICLES

Free to Expose Corruption: The Impact of Media Freedom, Internet Access and Governmental Online Service Delivery on Corruption
Christopher Starke, Teresa K. Naab, Helmut Scherer

Third-Person Effect of ISIS’s Recruitment Propaganda: Online Political Self-Efficacy and Social Media Activism
Guy J. Golan, Joon Soo Lim

Taming Online Political Engagement in Russia: Disempowered Publics, Empowered State and Challenges of the Fully Functioning Society
Anna Klyueva

White Millionaires and Hockey Skates: Racialized and Gendered Mediation in News Coverage of a Canadian Mayoral Election
Randy Besco, Bailey Gerrits, J. Scott Matthews

What We Need is Good Communication: Vernacular Globalization in Some Hungarian Speech
David Boromisza-Habashi

E-Democracy and Collaborative Lawmaking: The Discussion of the Political Reform in Brazil
Patricia Gonçalves da Conceição Rossini, Vanessa Veiga de Oliveira

Fonts of Potential: Areas for Typographic Research in Political Communication
Thomas J Billard

First and Second Levels of Intermedia Agenda Setting: Political Advertising, Newspapers, and Twitter during the 2012 U.S. Presidential Election
Yeojin Kim, William J. Gonzenbach, Chris J. Vargo, Youngju Kim

Uncomfortable Proximity: Perception of Christianity as a Cultural Villain in South Korea
Seung Min Hong

Political Invasions into Collective Memories: Russia
Julia Sweet

BOOK REVIEWS

Tristan Anne Borer (Ed.), Media, Mobilization and Human Rights: Mediating Suffering
Lisa Brooten

Victor Pickard, America’s Battle for Media Democracy: The Triumph of Corporate Libertarianism and the Future of Media Reform
Josh Shepperd

Michael Schudson, The Rise of the Right to Know, Politics and the Culture of Transparency, 1945-1975
Mark Hannah

S. Katz, Kids in the Middle: How Children of Immigrants Negotiate Community Interactions for Their Families
Teresa Correa

IJoC Publishes 34 Articles in August

The International Journal of Communication (IJoC) has published 34 papers in August 2016— including the Special Section on Communication Activism Research as well as the Special Section on Discussion, Dialogue, and Discourse in Action.

ARTICLES

People are the Message? Social Mobilization and Social Media in Brazil
Gustavo Cardoso, Tiago Lapa, Branco Di Fátima

Welcome to the Club: From Multimodal Voluntary Participation to Community Involvement
Chih-Hui Lai, Wenhong Chen

Je Suis Charlie? The Framing of Ingroup Transgression and the Attribution of Responsibility for the Charlie Hebdo Attack
Nathan Walter, Stefanie Z. Demetriades, Ruthie Kelly, Traci K. Gillig

Theorizing Listening as a Tool for Social Change: Andrea Dworkin’s Discourses on Listening
Valerie Palmer-Mehta

Writing in the Margins: Mainstream News Media Representations of Transgenderism
Thomas J Billard

Navigating the Boundaries Between State Television and Public Broadcasting in Pre- and Post-Revolution Egypt
Rasha Abdulla

Doing “Authentic” News: Voices, Forms, and Strategies in Presenting Television News
Debing Feng

Institutional and Entrepreneurial Engagement in Commons-Based Peer Production
Rong Wang, Giorgos Cheliotis

Nonprofit Communication and Fundraising in China: Exploring the Theory of Situational Support in an International Context
Yue Zheng, Brooke Weberling McKeever, Linjia Xu

Producing Gendered Migration Narratives in China: A Case Study of Dagongmei Tongxun by a Local NGO
Siyuan Yin

Building Bridges, Filling Gaps: Toward an Integrative Interdisciplinary and Mixed Method Approach for Future Audience Research in Relation to the Mediation of Distant Suffering
Eline Huiberts

Resisting Censorship: How Citizens Navigate Closed Media Environments
Golnoosh Behrouzian, Erik C. Nisbet, Aysenur Dal, Ali Çarkoğlu

Freedom Train: Mobilizing Alternative Media
Patricia H. Audette-Longo

The Bharatiya Janata Party’s Online Campaign and Citizen Involvement in India’s 2014 Election
Kalyani Chadha, Pallavi Guha

Reassessing “Whose Story Wins:” The Trajectory of Identity Resilience in Narrative Contests
R. S. Zaharna

You an Opinion Giver, Seeker, or Both? Re-Examining Political Opinion Leadership in the New Communication Environment
Joo-Young Jung, Yong-Chan Kim

Perceiving Different Chinas: Paradigm Change in the “Personalized Journalism” of Elite U.S. Journalists, 1976–1989
Yunya Song, Chin-Chuan Lee

The Effects of Reader Comments on the Perception of Personalized Scandals: Exploring the Roles of Comment Valence and Commenters’ Social Status
Christian von Sikorski

BOOK REVIEWS

Angela McRobbie, Be Creative: Making a Living in the New Cultural Industries
Lisa Henderson

Silas F. Harrebye, Social Change and Creative Activism in the 21st Century: The Mirror Effect
Ian Reilly

Markus Krajewski, World Projects: Global Information Before World War I (Electronic Mediations)
Maria Rikitianskaia

Helen Caple, Photojournalism: A Social Semiotic Approach
Debing Feng

IJoC Publishes Discussion, Dialogue, and Discourse Special Section

Discussion, dialogue, and discourse have long been regarded as important concepts across a range of communication-related disciplines such as public relations, organizational communication, interpersonal communication, and strategic management. These concepts are becoming even more significant with the increasing use of social media and other forms of online communication by organizations and their publics/stakeholders/citizens.

Doing the Talk: Discussion, Dialogue, and Discourse in Action, guest-edited by Uta Russmann, FHWien University of Applied Sciences of WKW, Austria, and Anne B. Lane, Queensland University of Technology, Australia, is the latest Special Section of IJoC. Articles in this Special Section tackle some of the key questions around dialogue, discussion, and discourse: What are they, and how do we carry them out in practice? How are these key concepts translated to the online environment?  And what sort of data and methodological approaches are most appropriate to study discussion, dialogue, and discourse?Authors from a range of disciplinary backgrounds have developed conceptual papers and carried out empirical research to answer these questions.

This Special Section contains seven articles by international scholars—six original papers and an editorial introduction—that aim to provoke new thinking and perspectives on discussion, dialogue, and discourse. The authors offer new insights to both academics and practitioners in the field of communication.

We invite you to read these articles that published in the International Journal of Communication on August 15, 2016.  [Click on the article title for direct link to the paper.]

Doing the Talk: Discussion, Dialogue, and Discourse in Action – Introduction
Uta Russmann, Anne B. Lane

Elegy for Mediated Dialogue: Shiva the Destroyer and Reclaiming Our First Principles
Michael L. Kent, Petra Theunissen 

Language and Discourse in Social Media Relational Dynamics: A Communicative Constitution Perspective
Chiara Valentini, Stefania Romenti, Dean Kruckeberg

Why Dialogic Principles Don’t Make It in Practice – And What We Could Do About It
Anne B. Lane, Jennifer Bartlett

Understanding Dialogue and Engagement Through Communication Experts’ Use of Interactive Writing to Build Relationships
Betsy D. Anderson, Rebecca Swenson, Nathan D. Gilkerson

Dialog in Public Relations Roles—A Q Study Among Young Professionals
Helena Stehle, Simone Huck-Sandhu

Quality of Understanding in Campaign Communication of Political Parties and Mass Media in Austria Between 1970 and 2008
Roland Burkart, Uta Russmann

IJoC Publishes Special Section on Communication Activism Research

Despite calls within the communication discipline (and others) for engaged research that makes unjust social systems and practices more just, communication researchers largely have not produced such scholarship. Indeed, engaged communication research frequently avoids social justice, critiques without changing social injustices, or benefits powerful corporate and political interests that maintain injustices.

Communication activism research (CAR) offers a new form of engaged scholarship that involves communication scholars using their theories, methods, and applied practices to work with oppressed communities and activist groups to intervene into unjust discourses and material conditions to make them more just, and documenting their efforts. CAR, thus, involves communication researchers intervening and acting collectively with marginalized communities and activists groups to secure social justice.

This Special Section on Communication Activism Research examines and debates this engaged communication research approach. Guest-editors Kevin M. Carragee and Lawrence R. Frey first explain CAR and how it differs from other engaged scholarship, and then discuss challenges confronting CAR. Three prominent scholars then evaluate CAR critically from communication traditions that emphasize engaged research: J. Kevin Barge (applied communication), Robert W. McChesney (media research) and Michelle Rodino-Colocino (critical-cultural studies). This Special Section concludes with Frey and Carragee’s response to these essays.

Collectively, these essays in the International Journal of Communication offer an informed debate about how this new form of engaged communication research can be employed, including by engaged scholars working from other communication research traditions, to change systemic injustices.

We invite you to read these articles on communication activism research that were published August 15, 2016.  Ctrl + click on the title for access.

Communication Activism Research: Engaged Communication Scholarship for Social Justice — Introduction
Kevin M. Carragee, Lawrence R. Frey

Crossing Boundaries between Communication Activism Research and Applied Communication Research Discourses
Kevin Barge

Missing in Action: Engaged U.S. Communication Research in the Context of Democratic Decline and the Digital Revolution
Robert W. McChesney

Critical-Cultural Communication Activism Research Calls for Academic Solidarity
Michelle Rodino-Colocino

Seizing the Social Justice Opportunity: Communication Activism Research at a Politically Critical Juncture — Epilogue
Lawrence R. Frey, Kevin M. Carragee