Extensive research has found hostility between the political parties in the United States. While it is generally accepted that the parties perceive threats from each other, there is little empirical research investigating whether these perceived threats exist among the public. This article utilizes social identity theory and intergroup threat theory to examine relationships between partisan media use and perceived symbolic and realistic threats from the opposing political party. Using cross-sectional data from the Cooperative Congressional Election Study, we ran mediation models. We found that the use of in-group media is associated with higher levels of both the symbolic and realistic threats that emanate from the opposing political party. We also examine whether these two types of threats are related to political engagement in the form of political participation. Our results reveal that symbolic threats are associated with engagement, while realistic threats are not. Finally, we examined a full moderated mediated model where media use predicts engagement through our two types of threats. Implications and areas for future research are discussed.

Web-based groups can be observed as social systems emerging from computer-mediated communication underpinned by the technological infrastructures of Web 2.0. The usage of social network platforms has been investigated from a wide array of sociological perspectives. Among many others, prominent fields of research concern the practices of presentation of the self, the emergence of social formations, the construction of knowledge, the relationships between technology and business models underpinning social networking platforms and social participation of the users. This article proposes a complementary approach advancing innovative theoretical reflections, in a commitment to answer Fuchs’ plea for new approaches to media systems and media organisation analysis. In particular, this articles discusses web-based groups as the catalyst for theoretical reflections concerning the co-evolution between the digital medium of communication and the societal capacity to handle complexity in the material dimension, temporal dimension, and social dimension. The article builds the foundation of its theoretical innovations in the first part, through an interdisciplinary combination of the theory of forms, second-order cybernetics, and autopoietic system theory. The second part of the article presents the main body of theoretical innovation by introducing web-based systems as a specific type of social group, emerging from the digital medium of communication. The ambition of the article is to offer an opportunity to contextualise sociological research on communication processes supported by social networking platforms within an ontology of web-based groups as social systems that emerge from digital media of communication.

Drawing on a survey of 1,386 South Korean young adults, this study finds that news curation mediates the association between social media news use and political efficacy and participation. Analysis also reveals that political interest moderates the relationship between news curation and political efficacy and participation, with politically less interested people being more influenced by news curation than politically more interested people. The finding has significant implications as to how to rekindle young adults’ political involvement. This study contributes to the existing literature about social media’s impact on news consumption, by conceptualizing “news curation” as a unique method of engaging with social media and by illuminating its effects on democratic engagement.

This case study analyzes protest signs displayed during the period of January to August 2023 by civil society demonstrators opposing the proposed judicial reform in Israel. Through the social identity theory theoretical framework, we explored how these signs serve as a collective tool for enhancing in-group identification. In total, 437 signs collected through various means were qualitatively analyzed via inductive and deductive thematic analysis. The results elucidated how the direct or implied referencing “us” and/or “them” in protest signs functioned as a mechanism to enhance in-group identification: (a) forging group identity and virtuous attributes, (b) delineating group desires and aversions, (c) building group resilience via ethos and history, and (d) strengthening group coherence. We conclude that the act of bearing protest signs and the content therein not only represent social empowerment but also powerfully symbolize the inherent collective strength of an emerging, resilient, and steadfast civil society committed to liberal democratic ideals.

From its emergence in 1992, Nollywood—the cinema of Nigeria—has burgeoned into a dominant form of cultural production in Africa and its films offer a most powerful, enduring, and intelligible expression of Nigerian popular culture today. These films have continued to influence and be influenced by conceptions and practices of popular religion in Nigeria. No expression better captures this interplay between Nollywood and popular religion in Nigeria than the “to God be the glory” doxology that often precedes credit rolls in many Nollywood films and reemphasizes a dénouement of the authority of the Christian God over Satan and the power of darkness. Using critical discourse analysis and drawing from two Nollywood films, Billionaires’ Kingdom and Church Business , this article interrogates Nollywood’s deployment of films to present a unique African perspective of engaging popular religion in Nigeria. It begins by delineating the theoretical framework and the context for its analysis, employing the Divine Command Theory. Then, this article explores Nollywood’s constructions of a social moral compass with the Pentecostal-charismatic Christian endings of its films. Afterwards, it examines the specific engagement of “alleluia movies” and the proselytization history it bears for Nigeria’s Pentecostal-charismatic churches. Finally, it highlights the interplay between Nollywood and popular religion and argues that Nollywood films demonstrate how their representations of popular religion in the particular context of southern Nigeria have not only shaped that society but have equally been influenced and transformed by religion’s engagement of film.

As the world undergoes profound geopolitical and cultural transformations, the Global South is emerging as a pivotal force in reshaping the international communication order and cultural narratives. Against this background, on 25 March 2025, Yuezhi Zhao invited Vijay Prashad to the School of Journalism and Communication at Tsinghua University, for a wide-ranging dialogue with doctoral students and post-doctoral researchers on the potentials and challenges for communication and cultural awakening in the Global South. The following text is an edited version of the seminar and it consists of four parts. In Part 1 and Part 2, Yuezhi Zhao and Vijay Prashad overviewed the current state of communication in the Global South, critiqued its colonial cultural heritage, emphasized the continuing importance of decolonization in Global South communication. In Part 3, Vijay Prashad responded to a list of questions from the participants. In the conclusive discussion of Part 4, cultural awaking of the Global South is hoped to reconstruct the international communication order and world structure.

In this dialogue, Julia Sonnevend argues that charm is a defining feature of contemporary politics and introduces five techniques of charm that shape political leadership. By examining the patterns of political performance, she emphasizes the regional variations in charm and explores how the typology of charm shifts throughout a politician’s career. Sonnevend further elaborates on her methodological approach, detailing the process through which these categories were developed and refined. Applying her charm theory to the case of Donald Trump, she analyzes how Trump’s political persona blends elements of charisma and charm across different contexts. In addition, Sonnevend offers insights into further research directions in political communication and provides advice on navigating an academic career.

Firms are investing in social media (SM) to encourage internal information-sharing behaviour (ISB) for efficient teamwork and the organization’s success. However, literature that examines the determinants of ISB on organizational SM remains scarce; thus, this study intends to investigate several factors that influence and hinder workers’ ISB on a firm’s SM platform. It hypothesizes whether individual, technological and organizational factors are related to ISB on a firm’s SM. It analyses empirical data to provide a complete depiction of the variables influencing workers’ choices and whether they are willing to share information on organizational SM. This study uses a qualitative method to gather data from organizational SM reviews and semi-structured interviews at Kompas Gramedia, a major Indonesian broadcasting company with over 22,000 employees. The study uses the iterative analysis tenets of systematic repetition and recursive switching between various phases. The qualitative data analysis software ATLAS.ti was used for the qualitative encoding. The findings confirm that the three factors – individual, technological and organizational – are influential drivers and barriers to workers’ willingness to perform ISB on the firm’s SM. Subsequently, this willingness to perform internal ISB affects workers’ external ISB, that is, their willingness to voluntarily communicate and share information about the positive aspects of firms to the broader public.

With the prevalence of photo-editing apps, young women nowadays often present ideal but unnatural beauty images in their selfies posted on social networking sites. In view of the possible impact that exposure to the enhanced selfies might have on women’s beauty image concerns, there are campaigns like #Filterdrop and #Nomakeup advocating presenting natural appearance in selfies and promoting acceptance of natural beauty. This study aims to investigate the impact of viewing enhanced (i.e. idealized) selfies, natural (i.e. unaltered, makeup-free, and enhancement-free) selfies, and a mixed set of both (i.e. idealized selfies and natural selfies appear alternately) on young women’s beauty standards and their intentions to alter their appearance. The research involved a between-subjects experiment conducted among 428 young women in the United States. The findings indicate that the more enhanced selfies young women saw, the more they believed others endorsed the cultural beauty ideals. The perceived beauty standards were associated with the young women’s personal beauty standards and their intention to take cosmetic surgery in real life.

This article examines the phenomenon of fandom within political communities. As both politician and celebrity, Donald Trump sits at the intersection of these two spheres. The way some of Trump’s supporters follow and discuss him on social media bears remarkable similarities with fan behavior, and thus fan studies offers a helpful lens through which to discuss this phenomenon. This article contributes to both political communication and fan studies by analyzing a pro-Trump Facebook Group through the lens of Jenkins’ five levels of fan activity. The members of the Facebook Group interpret political news items within a large, scary, and mostly fictional meta-narrative full of narrative bias, sexism, racism, and religion. The implications this alternative reality built around of a real-world political fan object are discussed in relation to American democracy.