{"title":"Stress and self-efficacy under artificial intelligence disruption: A mixed-methods study on the usage of artificial intelligence among Finnish workers","authors":"Atte Oksanen, Teo Keipi, Moona Heiskari, Iina Savolainen","doi":"10.1177/14614448261488700","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448261488700","url":null,"abstract":"Rapid workplace integration of artificial intelligence (AI) is reshaping work practices and challenging employees’ self-efficacy and well-being. This mixed-methods study examines these experiences using national survey data ( <jats:italic toggle=\"yes\">N</jats:italic> = 2109) and qualitative interviews ( <jats:italic toggle=\"yes\">N</jats:italic> = 54) with Finnish workers. Frequent AI use, AI-induced identity threat, and organizational AI deployment are associated with higher AI strain, whereas AI self-efficacy relates to frequent use, positive AI attitudes, and subjective well-being. Identity threat moderated several of these associations, highlighting the role of professional identity in AI-related experiences. Analysis drawing on Greimas’ semiotic modalities (must, can, know, and want) explains how these patterns are interpreted and negotiated in practice, revealing tensions between perceived self-efficacy and pressures to integrate AI. AI use was often described as voluntary. However, participants anticipated increasing competence demands and responsibility. The findings emphasize the need for organizational strategies that address identity-related challenges and support employee well-being in AI-driven work transformations.","PeriodicalId":19149,"journal":{"name":"New Media & Society","volume":"292 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.0,"publicationDate":"2026-10-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149199008","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Praise, rent, and the platform: Substack and the enclosure of blog culture","authors":"Will Riley","doi":"10.1177/14614448261488694","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448261488694","url":null,"abstract":"This article situates Substack within the platformisation of blogging and the enclosure of cultural production within proprietary infrastructures. Tracing the genealogy of blogging as a decentralised practice that carried within it the seeds of citizen journalism and informal intellectual life, I argue that Substack does not restore an apparently lost cultural practice but renegotiates and interpolates blogging into a platformised logic. Framed as a return to independent, writer-led publishing, Substack instead, as I argue, renders free-labour interaction as a source of rent. I analyse the rhetoric and revolving discourse around Substack’s internal curatorial project, ‘The Substack Post’. Drawing on Jodi Dean’s account of blogs as displaced mediators alongside theories of digital labour and platform capitalism, and approaching Substack as a simultaneously platformised and infrastructuralised formation, I argue that praise operates as a platform-specific form of commodity fetishism, animating the platform while obscuring the labour relations that sustain it.","PeriodicalId":19149,"journal":{"name":"New Media & Society","volume":"13 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.0,"publicationDate":"2026-10-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149130338","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Platformed affective withdrawal: Quiet quitting and the refusal of gendered emotional labour on TikTok","authors":"Aybüke Büyükkağnıcı","doi":"10.1177/14614448261488701","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448261488701","url":null,"abstract":"This article examines #quietquitting on TikTok as a platform-mediated articulation of gendered affective withdrawal. While organisational research interprets quiet quitting as reduced discretionary effort or declining work engagement, this study examines how quiet quitting is articulated as a digitally circulated refusal of feminised emotional labour. Drawing on feminist theories of affective labour and critical platform studies, the analysis explores how workers renegotiate expectations of emotional availability within algorithmically structured visibility regimes. The study is based on a qualitative-dominant mixed-methods analysis of 586 TikTok videos shared under #quietquitting between 2020 and 2026. Combining thematic discourse analysis with descriptive engagement indicators, the findings show that creators frequently frame quiet quitting as a refusal of unpaid relational mediation, emotional management, and workplace care. The article introduces the concept of platformed affective withdrawal to explain how narratives of workplace disengagement circulate through algorithmic visibility systems that amplify and individualise gendered labour inequalities.","PeriodicalId":19149,"journal":{"name":"New Media & Society","volume":"39 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.0,"publicationDate":"2026-10-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149130337","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Carlos Entrena-Serrano, Trisha Meyer, Emilia Gómez, Jo Pierson
{"title":"“ In a way, I want TikTok to tell me what I want. . . ” Users’ experience of TikTok as a televisual algorithmic flow","authors":"Carlos Entrena-Serrano, Trisha Meyer, Emilia Gómez, Jo Pierson","doi":"10.1177/14614448261477680","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448261477680","url":null,"abstract":"This article revisits Williams’s concept of flow, Firth’s notion of algorithmic flow, and Picone et al.’s concept of Small Acts of Engagement (SAOE) to examine how users experience TikTok’s algorithmic flow. SAOE are understood as low-effort, everyday acts through which users negotiate their identities and shape their digital consumption. While SAOE have been a valuable lens for understanding user agency on earlier social media platforms, we argue that TikTok’s interface design and cultural framing introduce new challenges. The platform’s design, together with users’ perception of TikTok’s algorithmic flow as a televisual experience, reduces their SAOE to a minimal expression: a rhythm of <jats:italic toggle=\"yes\">watch, scroll, repeat</jats:italic> , discouraging other forms of intentional, identity-driven engagement. Through a mixed-methods study combining interviews and analysis of participants’ donated TikTok data, we show how our participants experience TikTok as a place for effortless entertainment and continuous consumption, closely resembling the experience of traditional television flow.","PeriodicalId":19149,"journal":{"name":"New Media & Society","volume":"19 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.0,"publicationDate":"2026-09-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148946800","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Josephine Lukito, Yini Zhang, Bin Chen, Stephen Prochaska, Meredith L. Pruden, Yunkang Yang, Wei Zhong, Megan A. Brown, Ross Dahlke, Jason Greenfield, Jiyoun Suk, Porismita Borah
{"title":"Cross-platformization: How U.S. right-leaning media curate their posts on Twitter and Truth Social","authors":"Josephine Lukito, Yini Zhang, Bin Chen, Stephen Prochaska, Meredith L. Pruden, Yunkang Yang, Wei Zhong, Megan A. Brown, Ross Dahlke, Jason Greenfield, Jiyoun Suk, Porismita Borah","doi":"10.1177/14614448261470889","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448261470889","url":null,"abstract":"This study examines how seven right-leaning media organizations utilize cross-platformization strategies to reach audiences across multiple platforms; in this case, Twitter and Truth Social. Focusing on both content volume and story packaging, we collect right-leaning media organizations’ social media posts and content from the 2022 U.S. midterm election. Combining computational and qualitative methods, we find that outlets posted only a small share of total stories across the two platforms and were selective in their content, often posting only on Twitter or Truth Social. For content posted on both platforms, the outlets posted content that ideologically aligned with the users of that platform. More specifically, right-leaning outlets on Truth Social tailored their posts to ideologically aligned users.","PeriodicalId":19149,"journal":{"name":"New Media & Society","volume":"34 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.0,"publicationDate":"2026-09-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148899427","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Lisette Yip, Emma F. Thomas, Hawa Muhammad Farid, M. Noor Tahir
{"title":"Are they virtue-signalling or sincere? The impact of perceived motives on the effectiveness of online collective action","authors":"Lisette Yip, Emma F. Thomas, Hawa Muhammad Farid, M. Noor Tahir","doi":"10.1177/14614448261475059","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448261475059","url":null,"abstract":"Social media is an important tool used by supporters of modern social movements to persuade others to participate. However, people who engage in online collective action often face speculation about their motives and may be perceived as acting for self-serving reasons. How do these perceptions impact the effectiveness of collective action? In three experiments ( <jats:italic toggle=\"yes\">N</jats:italic> = 916), participants viewed posts (Study 1) or an immersive social media feed (Studies 2–3) where a user encouraged them to take action for a political cause. They stated that they acted out of genuine concern (autonomous motivation), to avoid guilt and social disapproval (controlled motivation), or did not specify (baseline). Participants who viewed controlled-motivated posts perceived the user as less autonomously motivated and were therefore less likely to socially identify as supporters or take collective action. Thus, movements will be more effective at mobilising (online) support when they are seen to arise from autonomous motives.","PeriodicalId":19149,"journal":{"name":"New Media & Society","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.0,"publicationDate":"2026-09-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148899426","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The year is a dropdown menu: Platformed provenance and the viral afterlives of AI-generated retro music","authors":"Matilde Catanese","doi":"10.1177/14614448261476830","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448261476830","url":null,"abstract":"This article examines how generative AI media becomes believable and shareable when it is packaged as a rediscovered archive and distributed through commercial platforms. Drawing on multi-sited digital ethnography, targeted platform walkthroughs, and cross-platform trace analysis of a viral “lost song” circulating in Italy in 2025, I show how listeners in this case mobilized sonic cues and platform metadata, including release dates and credits, as practical evidence. I use metadata realism to describe everyday reliance on database fields as documentary testimony, and provenance play for situated practices of verification and narration through which people negotiate synthetic pasts. After public debunking, circulation continued through humorous and artistic reframings, while verification itself became part of the artifact’s social life. The analysis foregrounds platformed provenance and considers what the case implies for synthetic media governance and content credentials.","PeriodicalId":19149,"journal":{"name":"New Media & Society","volume":"6 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.0,"publicationDate":"2026-08-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148842867","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Ambivalent algorithms, fragile connectedness: How algorithm awareness facets shape responsiveness and insensitivity on TikTok","authors":"Dragoș M. Obreja","doi":"10.1177/14614448261477892","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448261477892","url":null,"abstract":"This study examines how distinct facets of algorithm awareness are associated with perceived algorithm responsiveness (PAR), perceived algorithm insensitivity (PAI), and social connectedness on TikTok. I draw on the algorithm responsiveness process and also treat algorithm awareness as four distinct dimensions (content filtering, automated decision‑making, human–algorithm interplay (HAI), ethical concerns) to examine how each dimension is differentially associated with PAR and PAI and, in turn, with feelings of inclusion and belonging. Using survey data from 305 TikTok users and structural equation modeling, I show that user‑agency‑oriented dimensions, particularly filtering and HAI, are indirectly associated with connectedness via higher responsiveness and lower insensitivity. By contrast, automation operates as an ambivalent structure: it boosts responsiveness yet is negatively associated with connectedness, marking a boundary condition for personalization. Platforms should pair automation disclosures with clearer user recourse, traceable feedback, and human review in high-stakes contexts.","PeriodicalId":19149,"journal":{"name":"New Media & Society","volume":"56 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.0,"publicationDate":"2026-08-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148842868","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"News for connection, status and belonging: Exploring the social currency of local news","authors":"Jee Young Lee, Sora Park, Janet Fulton","doi":"10.1177/14614448261477944","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448261477944","url":null,"abstract":"This paper explores the perception of social currency as a distinct value within local news consumption among audiences. Social currency refers to the value individuals derive from engaging with and sharing news content within their social networks, allowing them to connect, express identity and signal awareness. Drawing on a large-scale mixed-methods study of local news audiences in Australia (survey: <jats:italic toggle=\"yes\">n</jats:italic> = 7919; interviews and focus groups: <jats:italic toggle=\"yes\">n</jats:italic> = 84), this study operationalised key dimensions of social currency using factor analysis. The findings confirm that social currency is a separate and measurable construct, distinct from traditional news motivations. It is significantly higher among younger people, men, urban residents and those from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds, reflecting how news consumption intersects with social interaction, identity expression and symbolic practices of everyday life.","PeriodicalId":19149,"journal":{"name":"New Media & Society","volume":"14 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.0,"publicationDate":"2026-08-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148842866","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Audible, Spotify, YouTube & Co.: The German Digital Audiobook Market in the Context of Platformization","authors":"Sven Stollfuß","doi":"10.1177/14614448261476588","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448261476588","url":null,"abstract":"This article examines the contemporary digital audiobook through the lens of platformization and develops a conceptual framework for understanding platformized audiobook culture. Drawing on an integrative review of interdisciplinary scholarship, supplemented by market reports, industry statistics, and audience studies, it uses the German audiobook market as an analytically illuminating example through which broader processes of platformization can be explored. The article situates audiobooks within wider transformations of everyday digital media practices, highlighting the shift from physical formats toward downloads and subscription-based streaming services. Conceptually, it distinguishes platformized audiobook culture from digital audiobook culture through two complementary analytical perspectives adapted from book studies, digital publishing, and media and communication studies: an integrative platform model and a data-environment model of streaming services. Building on this synthesis, the article proposes an ecosystem model of platformized audiobook culture to support future theoretical and empirical research.","PeriodicalId":19149,"journal":{"name":"New Media & Society","volume":"15 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.0,"publicationDate":"2026-08-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148821097","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}