Researchers used textual analysis to examine news coverage of Caitlin Clark’s and Angel Reese’s rookie seasons in the Women’s National Basketball Association. Researchers examined local reporting from the Indianapolis Star and Chicago Sun-Times—Clark’s and Reese’s respective home-city newspapers—as well as national coverage from ESPN.com. In contrast to earlier studies on sports media representation, race and gender were not central themes in the articles analyzed. Instead, coverage primarily focused on standard sports journalism stories such as game summaries, analysis, and feature profiles. Both Clark and Reese were framed as professional competitors, signaling a shift toward more equitable sports reporting. The study offers two potential explanations for this “normalization” of coverage. First, female athletes—especially Clark and Reese because of their longstanding basketball rivalry—are increasingly visible in team sport coverage, indicating a growing acceptance and popularity of women’s basketball. Second, much of the coverage was authored by female sports journalists, who previous researchers have found write in a different tone, talk to different sources, and frame stories differently than their male counterparts. These findings suggest that both increased visibility of female athletes and diverse newsroom representation may be contributing to a more balanced portrayal of women in sports media.

Social media plays a critical role in human rights advocacy and awareness. This study examines how human rights activists in Zimbabwe used hashtags to mobilize support for human rights issues. The study investigates the correlation between human rights activism and hashtags, utilizing digital and alternative public sphere theories. Methodologically, the study employs a qualitative approach, utilizing digital archives for data collection and Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) for analysis. The findings show that activists used hashtags to mobilize support for Job Sikhala and justice for the murder of Moreblessing Ali. Hashtags such as #FreeWiwa, #StandWithWiwa, and #JusticeForMoreblessingAli raised awareness of the violations against Sikhala and Ali. The results confirm that hashtags enable discussions, advocacy, and lobbying for human rights. Additionally, activists invoked religious beliefs in these campaigns.

I interrogate the Association of Catholic Information in Africa’s (ACI Africa) mediated coverage of same-sex marriage blessings, following Fiducia Supplicans’s publication, to expose how religious discourse enacts “de-queering” by erasing, pathologizing, and delegitimizing queer African identities. Through discursive strategies of nomination, predication, argumentation, mitigation and intensification, and perspectivation, ACI Africa reproduces colonial heteronormative logics that cast queerness as an alien, immoral threat to “an authentic African subjectivity.” This essentializing rhetoric invokes tradition, morality, and cultural sovereignty to uphold a monolithic, heteropatriarchal Africanness while rendering queer existences invisible and deviant under a veneer of pastoral compassion. Drawing from postcolonial queer theory, I argue that such religious news media not only silence queer voices but also reinscribe colonial epistemologies that police sexual and gender diversity. By theorizing “de-queering” as a critical intervention, I challenge normative sexual exclusions, advance intersectional, decolonial praxis that center queer African epistemologies, resists heteronormative violence, and imagines transformative queer futures in Africa.

This study investigated how Human Resource Managers (HRMs) evaluate the employability skills of recent graduates during job interviews. Employing a qualitative approach, ten experienced HRMs from diverse sectors in Kuala Lumpur were interviewed via WhatsApp due to pandemic-related constraints. Transcribed data were analyzed using NVivo software, guided by Human Capital Theory. Findings indicated that successful candidates demonstrated strong presentation and interpersonal skills, whereas those classified as “Keep in View” (KIV) exhibited personality strengths but struggled to articulate them effectively. Unselected candidates often lacked self-awareness, limiting their ability to communicate competencies. English proficiency emerged as a critical factor, with reliance on Malay expressions sometimes disadvantaging candidates. Problem-solving, collaboration, and organizational skills were also key evaluation criteria. The study highlights the increasing emphasis on these competencies over formal academic qualifications, particularly within the Industry 4.0 context. Implications include the need for universities to integrate employability skills into curricula and for educators to support holistic student development. HRMs further emphasized the importance of enhanced academia-industry collaboration to better prepare graduates for the competitive and rapidly evolving labor market.

This study is a multimodal critical discourse analysis that examines the work of Bad Bunny (two interviews and two music videos – “Caro” and “Yo Perreo Sola”) to analyze it as a site of counter-hegemonic discourse for gender norms in masculine music genres/fields. It applies Faiclough’s three dimensional framework to analyze the interviews and Kress and van Leeuwen’s visual grammar theory to analyze the music videos. The analysis found that the counter-hegemonic discourse of gender norms in Bad Bunny’s work generated themes of fluidity of gender expression, the genderless-ness of things, and the erasure of the Black Body.

In Ghana, the prevalence of obstetric fistula (OF) remains a serious concern, worsened by a lack of social support systems. Support is essential for the recovery of women with OF, yet little is known about how support is sought and received. Drawing on social support and stress and coping theories, the study aimed to explore the lived experiences of women with OF, focusing on their patterns of seeking and receiving support from family, friends, and the broader community. Using an Interpretative Phenomenological Approach and thematic analysis, we interviewed 19 women with lived experiences of OF. We looked at the types of support women receive, such as emotional, financial, instrumental, and informational, as well as cases of limited or no support. The study also highlights the cultural barriers these women face in managing their condition. The findings provide culturally informed insights to help develop support programs. Ultimately, the study emphasizes the need to address barriers and strengthen support systems to improve the well-being of women living with OF in Ghana and similar settings.

This study analyses gender discrimination in the visual representation of athletes on the official Instagram accounts of three national sports federations in Indonesia: the Indonesian Football Association (PSSI), the Indonesian Volleyball Association (PBVSI), and the Indonesian Badminton Association (PBSI). Using quantitative content analysis of 1,025 visuals from 624 posts during the period June 2024–June 2025, this study traces patterns of gender-based representation through the categories of visual framing, activity context, and caption tone. Judith Butler’s theoretical framework on gender performativity was used to interpret how visual representations act as symbolic practices that reproduce constructions of masculinity and femininity in the digital sports sphere. The results show that 70.4% of visuals feature male athletes, with a predominance of competitive framing and achievement-based narratives. In contrast, female athletes are more often depicted in static poses, close-ups, and noncompetitive contexts that emphasize personal and emotional aspects. This pattern shows that sports federation social media not only represents the reality of sports, but also reinforces discursive structures that normalize gender differences. Thus, the federation’s Instagram acts as a performative arena where gender identities are constructed and repeated through visual representation practices that appear neutral but are ideological.

Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) have long served as culturally affirming institutions for Black students in the United States. However, there is limited research on how various communication practices, along with the unique influence of culture have on student engagement and behavioral outcomes within these institutions. This study investigates the relationships between organizational culture, organizational identification, structurational divergence, perceived immediacy, and organizational citizenship behaviors for students at HBCUs. Survey data from 250 HBCU students revealed that the teamwork and morale dimension of organizational culture positively predicted altruistic organizational citizenship behaviors for students, while negatively correlating with structurational divergence. Additionally, perceived immediacy demonstrated a positive relationship with the teamwork and morale dimension of organizational culture. Organizational identification demonstrated inverse relationships between altruistic organizational citizenship behaviors, structurational divergence, and perceived immediacy. This study stresses the role of HBCU senior leadership in creating supportive environments that align with student expectations, while also mitigating structural challenges. We offer actionable insights for leadership to effectively navigate the evolving landscape of HBCUs and their student populations, while preserving the cultural heritage and unique identity upon which these institutions were established.

This study examines how immigrant skin tone (light vs. dark) and political ideology (liberal vs. conservative) independently and interactively influence Americans’ perceptions of immigrants, focusing specifically on threat perception, stereotype activation, and broader immigration opinions. Drawing on colorism and visual priming theories, we conducted an online survey experiment among White American participants, manipulating immigrant skin tone in photographic stimuli. Results revealed that darker-skinned immigrants were unexpectedly perceived as significantly less threatening than lighter-skinned immigrants, particularly among liberal participants. Political ideology independently predicted stereotype activation and immigration opinions, with liberals holding more favorable views overall. Ideology moderated the relationship between skin tone and threat perceptions, demonstrating that visual racial cues activate cognitive schemas based on ideological orientation. These findings challenge traditional assumptions of colorism and highlight the critical role of visual framing and ideological predispositions in shaping public attitudes toward immigrants. Theoretical implications for colorism and visual priming, practical considerations for media representation of immigrants, and directions for future research are discussed.

This study applies the Appraisal Theory and a Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) to determine the coverage of the coffee culture in Shanghai by using the corpus of reports and articles published in the Chinese English version of the news. The findings show that appreciation stances prevail, which indicates that the Shanghai coffee culture is primarily constructed around the assessment of quality, value, and significance. The content that has been appraised is primarily dependent on festivals and events, where the narratives that connect coffee with cultural practices, the business environment, cafes, Haipai cultural words, and urban identity are featured. Evaluative stances are largely authorial but are reinforced by attributed voices (organizers, government officials, participants, and experts). Discursive strategies work to promote coffee culture as a form of cultural branding and soft power for Shanghai. This study highlights the ideological aspect of the news in shaping soft power narratives.