Media Ecology Research Articles

МУЛЬТИДИСЦИПЛІНАРНЕ ЗАБЕЗПЕЧЕННЯ МЕДІАОСВІТНЬОЇ КОМПЕТЕНТНОСТІ ТА НАВИЧОК МЕДІАГРАМОТНОСТІ

<p><strong><em>The purpose </em></strong><em>of the research<strong> </strong>is to outline a multidisciplinary complex that can effectively provide media education and, accordingly, meet the program results of such competence as media literacy. </em></p><p><strong><em>Research methodology</em></strong><em>. Processing the the background materials for this paper, we applied a set of theoretical and empirical methods, including analytical-synthetic method, which allowed us to systematize scientific, educational, pedagogical and journalistic literature on the subject. Also, using the descriptive method helped structure the necessary material to obtain an effective result, in our opinion. Thus, the inductive generalization of the subject field of media education and media literacy allowed us to develop a comprehensive approach to the formation of critical thinking, adherence to media ecology and relevant functioning for both individuals and society as a whole in the media landscape.</em></p><p><strong><em>Results</em></strong><em>. A structural approach to mastering the information broadcast in both traditional and modern media has been developed. It also has been proved that it is the multidisciplinary approach to media education that allows one to acquire self-reflection skills, critical analysis, and the development of socio-cultural consciousness, which are the basis of the information security strategy, reflected, to some extent, in the Law of Ukraine «On Media».</em></p><p><strong><em>Novelty</em></strong><em>. As a result of the study, the basic provision of media education, in particular through psychology, cultural studies, computer science, etc. is proposed, which allows all segments of the population to acquire media literacy skills, besides psycholinguistics and semiotics being considered as professional approaches to developing media education competence.</em></p><p><strong><em>Practical significance</em></strong><em>. The results of this work may be applied mainly for structuring educational and methodological complexes in higher education institutions providing such a discipline as media literacy, as well as by representatives of the media community for improving their own media competence.</em></p><p><strong><em>Key words</em></strong><em>: media education, media literacy, media culture, psycholinguistics, communication, manipulation, critical thinking.</em></p>

Effective regulatory frameworks for constructive journalism: a study of China’s media systems

Journalism practice in China is unique and different from the rest of the other countries in the world. Many scholars have attributed this to the effective regulatory systems and the structure of the media system thus the six forces controlling media space in China. This study adopted a qualitative condensed thematic analysis technique through in-depth interviews to examine how the regulatory framework in China affects the media ecosystem and constructive journalism practice. Through the snowball technique of sampling, the researchers collected data from fifteen (N=15) senior media professionals working within private and state-owned news outlets in China, to find answers to the nature of the media system in China and how this system has influenced and shaped constructive journalism practice during the COVID-19 pandemic between November and December 2021. One of the key findings of this study indicates that the robust media regulatory system practice in China has resulted in effective interactions among stakeholders, media houses, and journalists within the Chinese media system, which has significantly contributed to attaining effective constructive journalism practices. Again, our findings suggest that the effectiveness and constant interactions of the six forces of the Chinese media system have also helped enforce professionalism, dedication to duty, and patriotism among journalists and different media outlets in China. Finally, our study reveals that the Chinese Media giants such as China Global Television Network (CGTN), China Central Television (CCTV), and China Radio International (CRI) which serve millions of global audiences are very factual in their reportage. To avoid fake news in their reportage, CGTN and China Radio International, for instance, have designed specialized fact-checking programs for their news stories before airing them for public consumption.

No People, No News: News Deserts and Areas at Risk in Spain

In recent decades Spain has suffered a gradual process of depopulation and exodus from rural areas to large capitals. The España Vaciada political and social movement denounces the country’s territorial inequality, while the government is working on a strategic plan to address the demographic challenge. At the media level, there is concern about citizens’ access to a local and quality journalistic service, key to the strengthening of communities and their democratic functioning. The main objective of this research is to explore the phenomenon of news deserts in Spain, identifying the areas that can be considered news deserts and those that are at risk of becoming so, based on the mapping of digital media in the country. The characteristics of the digital media of the autonomous communities with the highest presence of news deserts are studied to ascertain whether the risk factors of population or richness index are connected to their appearance. The results reveal that 6,304 (77.53%) Spanish municipalities can be considered news deserts, inhabited by 11.6 million people, 24.51% of the country’s total population. In addition, another 523 municipalities are at risk of becoming news deserts. In the regions with the largest number of news deserts, there is a clear concentration of media in the main capitals and a weak ecosystem of local and hyperlocal media. Depopulation is the main risk factor in the loss of media and news coverage in local communities.

Minding Children’s Media Morals: Parents’ Moral Foundation Salience Differentially Relates to Attitudes and Motivations Toward Children’s Educational Media

ABSTRACT Guided by Moral Foundations Theory and the Model of Intuitive Morality and Exemplars (MIME), we examined the relationships between parents’ moral foundation salience and their attitudes and motivations toward using educational media with their young children (N = 449; child ages 4–7 years). Although research has shown that individuals’ moral foundation salience predicts their own liking and selection of media, research has not considered these processes across parents and their children. Results showed distinct patterns of relationships between parents’ different moral foundation saliences and their attitudes and motivations toward using educational media with their young children. Specifically, care and fairness were positively related to attitudes toward children’s educational media. Additionally, care, fairness, and authority were each positively related to parents’ motivations to use media with their children for educational benefits. Finally, care was related to more positive attitudes toward educational media, relative to entertainment media, whereas loyalty and authority were related to more positive attitudes toward entertainment media, relative to educational media. In this way, we extend the MIME by showing that parents’ moral saliences can relate to how parents think about the media use of their children, with practical implications for the media ecology of the home.

Paratexts as Portals

In an understudied cluster of films from the 1920s in Spain that feature the tumultuous lives of female music-hall entertainers, posters, postcards, and magazines not only mirror the shape of windows, doors and thresholds, but also direct the flow of circulating images of women. These portable, paper media immobilize or propel women’s bodies into motion, constituting portals that enable or disrupt fame, security and “happiness.” Rectangular artifacts both don the walls, windows, and cabinets in these films' mise-en-scène, and drive the story, character development, and the production of gender and racial identity. These films show characters interacting with posters, postcards, and magazines in a way that becomes as determining as the gripping plots, enabling women to pivot between stark, atavistic, or impoverished rurality and electrifying urban spaces. In this article, I examine the governing status of paratexts and the female star image in early Spanish film culture by tracing the history of La gitana blanca, a film directed by Ricardo de Baños initially released in 1919 and then reedited and redistributed internationally in 1923. In its opening moments, La gitana blanca offers us a view into how paratexts not only saturated the media ecology of the 1920s but also were “responsible for popular culture’s encounters with countless story worlds.” In the context of Spanish film historiography’s master narratives, in which cultural hierarchies remain tightly enmeshed with gendered and racialized logics, a cross-media perspective proves instrumental in revealing the extent to which film culture mediated the real and fictive lives of women.

Remixing Multimovement Works, Classical Music Concept Albums, and Twenty-First-Century Pianists’ Interpretations of the Canon

Nineteenth-century pianists routinely treated multimovement works—sonatas, suites, and character-piece sets—not as integral cycles but as sources of movements to excerpt, interpolate, and recombine. Exploring how five twenty-first-century pianists have adapted this practice illuminates the broader history of piano performance and the creative agency of performers invested in canonic works and ideals of Werktreue. Víkingur Ólafsson, Inon Barnatan, Alice Sara Ott, Khatia Buniatishvili, and Hélène Grimaud recombine multimovement works within the context of the concept album genre, a fixture of popular music largely unexplored within classical music. Within their opus-mixing concept albums, these pianists reinterpret the effect in performance and imagined cultural meaning of canonic repertoire. By determining an album’s track-to-track unfolding, they create original tonal, motivic, textural, and topical interrelationships and trajectories. The pianists, liner-note writers, and promoters also frame these albums with rich verbal discourses in which they assert this repertoire’s relevance and even contemporaneity for twenty-first-century listeners. Exploring these albums offers a glimpse of how performers of the classical canon navigate a twenty-first-century, digitally mediated media ecosystem. More broadly, it turns our attention to how this largely unexplored aspect of classical performance and recording shapes the way audiences encounter musical works and performers create public personae.

Immersive media and social change: The ‘empathy machine’ is dead, long live ‘emotional geography’!

Since 2014, immersive media storytelling has gained significant attention, with technologies such as 360° video providing unique first-person experiences, leading to the emergence of immersive journalism and documentaries. Some view immersive media as an “empathy machine” for fostering social change by creating strong connections between the audience and the issues portrayed. This paper critically examines this claim through a practice-based research approach, exploring five socially-driven immersive media projects from 2018-2020 in various countries, and interviewing 21 experts, both scholars and practitioners. The insights derived from this research provide an innovative conceptual framework that encompasses socially-driven immersive media productions, moving from initial empathy towards a more comprehensive concept and phenomenon native to the medium, referred to as “emotional geography”. This framework aims to shed light on the affective dynamics of immersive media in relation to social change, and offers valuable insights for future research, productions and critical discussions on the growing, emotionally-charged digital media ecosystem driven by advancing technologies.

Media Concentration Law: Gaps and Promises in the Digital Age

Power concentrations are increasing in today’s media landscape. Reasons for this include increasing structural and technological dependences on digital platform companies, as well as shifts in opinion power and control over news production, distribution, and consumption. Digital opinion power and platformised media markets have prompted the need for a re-evaluation of the current approach. This article critically revisits and analyses media concentration rules. To this end, I employ a normative conceptual framework that examines ”opinion power in the platform world” at three distinct levels (individual citizen, institutional newsroom, and media ecosystem). At each level, I identify the existing legal tools and gaps in controlling power and concentration in the digital age. Based on that, I offer a unifying theoretical framework for a “digital media concentration law,” along with core concepts and guiding principles. I highlight policy goals and fields that are outside the traditional scope yet are relevant for addressing issues relating to the digital age. Additionally, the emerging European Union regulatory framework—specifically the Digital Services Act, the Digital Markets Act, and the European Media Freedom Act—reflects an evolving approach regarding platforms and media concentration. On a final note, the analysis draws from the mapping and evaluation results of a Europe-wide study on media pluralism and diversity online, which examined (national) media concentration rules.

GLOBAL PLATFORMS, LOCAL MARKETS: THE PLATFORMIZATION OF MEDIA AND PUBLISHING IN THE PHILIPPINES

The cultural industries have transformed due to processes of platformization (Poell et al., 2021). This paper examines the platformization of media and publishing in the Philippines, using Wattpad a case study. Wattpad has embedded itself in the Filipino media and publishing industries by developing partnerships with book publishers and television studios, and is transforming and adapting the local media industries. What opportunities exist for decolonization of media content in the platformization of the cultural industries in the Philippines? What are the conditions of the Filipino media landscape that contribute to the success of Wattpad’s pan-entertainment strategy in this territory? This paper brings together publishing studies, platform studies and media ecology and draws on interviews with Wattpad authors in the Philippines. It argues that post-colonial tensions play out in the dominant languages of traditional and platformed cultural production, Wattpad is creating opportunities for greater diversity and inclusion in Filipino book and media culture, and media products developed from Wattpad benefit from distinctly Filipino modes of reception.

Performative translation, and the impossibility of Romantic mediation in Thomas Carlyle's Sartor Resartus (1834)

AbstractWhilst Thomas Carlyle's Sartor Resartus has sparked a variety of critical interpretations since its publication, it has never been read as a pseudotranslation. Building upon recent research in this field, this article proposes that through its pseudotranslational imitation of late‐Romantic periodical translations, Sartor critiques the highly self‐aware performativity on which this writing is founded. Through media‐theoretical analysis, this article argues that translation as it appeared within late‐Romantic periodicals constructs elaborate textual performances of its own mediation, through references to the media ecology within which it operates. The article demonstrates that Sartor mounts two parallel critiques of this mode of translation through its reproduction of its performative strategies: first, through the way in which these performances of mediation are portrayed as impeding mediation; second, through the philosophy of language itself being pseudotranslated. In this way, Carlyle stages a confrontation between two distinct modes of Romantic writing: its symbolic and immanent ideal contrasts with its performative and mediative reality.

Art and the science of generative AI

Understanding shifts in creative work will help guide AI’s impact on the media ecosystem

Disconnective action: Online activism against a corporate sponsorship at WorldPride 2021

Disconnective action, this article argues, is an important supplement to the logic of connective action, which enables social movements to organize informally online. Through the (threat of) disconnection, members may (re)assert their agency in relation to social movement organizations. In conducting a case study of LGBTI+ community members’ protests of a corporate sponsorship of WorldPride 2021, we establish disconnective action as a particular form of within-movement activism that relies both on social media affordances and the conditions of possibility of hybrid media ecologies. Thus, we explore how individual members of the LGBTI+ community were able to influence the formal organization of WorldPride 2021, as the threat of community members’ disconnection from the event led the organizers to terminate a corporate sponsorship. On this basis, we conceptualize disconnective action as a central means for individual activists to shape the movements of which they are part.

Rise of the Zombie Papers: Infecting Germany’s Local and Regional Public Media Ecosystem

Germany’s public broadcasters, along with local newspapers, have consistently ranked among the top three most trusted news sources in Germany. Yet growing criticism of mandatory fees and recent revelations about public broadcasters’ misuse of funds have put into question the health of Germany’s news and information infrastructure. In fact, a perfect storm appears to be brewing: precarious working conditions, exacerbated by cutbacks in the wake of Covid-19 and the emergence of so-called zombie papers. These papers, published without a local staff, reporters, or newsrooms, threaten to complicate audiences’ perceptions of news credibility and trust. This study explores Germany’s emerging news deserts by examining the rise of zombie newspapers in two states, one in the Western and one in the Eastern part of the country. Analyses of existing literature through the lens of institutional political economy and of interviews with key informants show that Germany, despite its strong federalized system, is following in US footsteps by creating journalist-free zones. A network of hard-to-follow corporate collaborations is endangering the foundations of post-war Germany’s media system: pluralism and media diversity.

Platformed listening in podcasting: An approach from material and scales potentials

This article proposes to investigate delineations of the audience in podcasting in streaming media ecology. To meet this objective, we highlight the scales between contents, circulation, and consumption of podcasts in platformization contexts. We observe these relationships from an intersectional approach that involves spaces between codes, contents and software to understand the dynamics of interrelationships between contents and its flows which are associated with the emergence of varied audiences, derived from listening practices, characterized by binge listening; fidelity strategies; hybrid recommendation practices, playlists and cross-device consumption in multiplatform architecture.

Interactive Nature of Social Media’s Comment Feature

Discussions through interactions between contending parties have been known to have minimised, if not completely resolved, many conflicts, and have nipped numerous others in the bud because people were able to express themselves for others to know their stands on issues. Likewise, new media technologies, ably hinged on the Internet, have further created avenues for more interactions among people in different media ecosystems. Given the variegated attributes of the Internet, most newspapers now have online versions which have provisions for readers to make comments at the end of each story or report. The comment feature of online newspapers and social media gives room for interaction among readers and users, hence, commenters are not only using it to comment on what they consume from the media, but they also use it to react and comment on the comments made by other commenters. This brings about a robust social interaction among the commenters, outside the medium that serves as the source of news or topic of discussion. In October 2020, youth in Nigeria embarked on a protest against police brutality tagged #EndSARS, SARS being the acronym for Special Anti-Robbery Squad of the Nigerian police. The youth mobilised themselves nationwide through social media and other Internet platforms to hold rallies and protests, with the major protest taking place at the Lekki Tollgate in Lagos. It is within this context that this paper looked at the social interaction that took place among commenters who commented in Sahara Reporters, Premium Times, and the online version of The Punch newspaper on the #EndSARS issue. The objectives were to find out how many comments were made in the comment sections of these selected online newspapers as they relate to their reports on #EndSARS; to ascertain how many of the comments were socially interactive, and to determine the extent the comments proffered solutions to police brutality in Nigeria. Grounded in the Social Network Theory, the study utilised content analysis and direct observation methods to gather data for evaluation while coding sheets and coding guide were used as data collection instruments. Findings revealed that commenters were engaged in interactive discussions among themselves when expressing their opinions about the #EndSARS protests. It was also discovered that some of the comments proffered solutions to the issue of police brutality, and how it can be addressed. The paper concluded that the comment feature of social media is another unique avenue for citizens to voice out their opinions, and to reach out to, and engage the “high and mighty” in the society, either within or outside government, they might not be privileged to reach through other means. Based on the findings, it was recommended, among others, that those in government, particularly in developing countries such as Nigeria should pay critical attention to the comment sections of various social media to have an idea of what the populace feel about their polices based on the report about them that citizens read in the media.

"A Special Operation": A Quantitative Approach to Dissecting and Comparing Different Media Ecosystems’ Coverage of the Russo-Ukrainian War

The coverage of the Russian invasion of Ukraine has varied widely between Western, Russian, and Chinese media ecosystems with propaganda, disinformation, and narrative spins present in all three. By utilizing the normalized pointwise mutual information metric, differential sentiment analysis, word2vec models, and partially labeled Dirichlet allocation, we present a quantitative analysis of the differences in coverage amongst these three news ecosystems. We find that while the Western press outlets have focused on the military and humanitarian aspects of the war, Russian media have focused on the purported justifications for the “special military operation” such as the presence in Ukraine of “bio-weapons” and “neo-nazis”, and Chinese news media have concentrated on the conflict’s diplomatic and economic consequences. Detecting the presence of several Russian disinformation narratives in the articles of several Chinese media outlets, we finally measure the degree to which Russian media has influenced Chinese coverage across Chinese outlets’ news articles, Weibo accounts, and Twitter accounts. Our analysis indicates that since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Chinese state media outlets have increasingly cited Russian outlets as news sources and spread Russian disinformation narratives.

The Morbid Realities of Social Media: An Investigation into the Narratives Shared by the Deceased Victims of COVID-19

Social media platforms have had considerable impact on the real world especially during the Covid-19 pandemic. Problematic narratives related to Covid-19 might have caused significant impact on the population specifically due to its association with dangerous beliefs such as anti-vaccination and Covid denial. In this work, we study a unique dataset of Facebook posts by users who shared and believed in such narratives before succumbing to Covid-19 often resulting in death. We aim to characterize the dominant themes and sources present in the victim's posts along with identifying the role of the platform in handling deadly narratives. Our analysis reveals the overwhelming politicization of Covid-19 through the prevalence of anti-government themes propagated by right-wing political and media ecosystem. Furthermore, we highlight the efforts of Facebook's implementation of soft moderation actions intended to warn users of misinformation. Results from this study bring insights into the responsibility of political elites in shaping public discourse and the platform's role in dampening the reach of harmful narratives.

Followback Clusters, Satellite Audiences, and Bridge Nodes: Coengagement Networks for the 2020 US Election.

The 2020 United States (US) presidential election was - and has continued to be - the focus of pervasive and persistent mis- and disinformation spreading through our media ecosystems, including social media. This event has driven the collection and analysis of large, directed social network datasets, but such datasets can resist intuitive understanding. In such large datasets, the overwhelming number of nodes and edges present in typical representations create visual artifacts, such as densely overlapping edges and tightly-packed formations of low-degree nodes, which obscure many features of more practical interest. We apply a method, coengagement transformations, to convert such networks of social data into tractable images. Intuitively, this approach allows for parameterized network visualizations that make shared audiences of engaged viewers salient to viewers. Using the interpretative capabilities of this method, we perform an extensive case study of the 2020 United States presidential election on Twitter, contributing an empirical analysis of coengagement. By creating and contrasting different networks at different parameter sets, we define and characterize several structures in this discourse network, including bridging accounts, satellite audiences, and followback communities. We discuss the importance and implications of these empirical network features in this context. In addition, we release open-source code for creating coengagement networks from Twitter and other structured interaction data.

Revenue Destruction and Distribution Dependency: The Economic Impact of Digital Platforms on Newspapers and Magazines in Taiwan

<p>本論文探討媒體廣告營收模式失靈後，新聞人如何創業突圍。筆者研究五位新聞創業者的辦報動機、歷程和模式，結果發現：一、創業者不滿大眾媒體表現而創辦新媒體，對商業利益的重視有高有低，但同樣堅持專業自主；二、創業是快做快修的歷程，創業者因應媒體生態、團隊能量變化，不斷調整內容和營收模式；三、創業者根據媒體內容特色開發適配的商業模式，開創出小額捐款、社會企業、付費訂閱、創業投資、公益基金會等五種新媒體模式。</p> <p> </p><p>How journalists can create new media to survive and thrive when media advertising revenue plummets? The author studied the practical experience of five news entrepreneurs in Taiwan and revealed the following findings: 1. Entrepreneurs tend to start businesses because they are dissatisfied with the performance of the mass media. Some of them attach importance to commercial interests, and some do not; however, they all insist on independence and professional principles. 2. Entrepreneurship is a process of continual testing and modification. No one executes an original launch plan to completion; rather, in such a plan, the content and revenue model are continually adjusted in response to changes in the media ecology and team energy. 3. Entrepreneurs develop suitable business models according to media characteristics. Collectively, they have created five new media models: small donations, social enterprises, paid subscriptions, venture capital, and public welfare foundations.</p> <p> </p>

Editorial

This editorial previews the contents of this issue of Explorations in Media Ecology.