Rob McMahon, Oluwatoyin Ogunbela, Michaela David, Brenda Norris, Katłı̨̀ą (Catherine Lafferty)
{"title":"Too much of a good thing? Emergent online harms during early adoption of low-earth orbital satellite systems in remote northern communities","authors":"Rob McMahon, Oluwatoyin Ogunbela, Michaela David, Brenda Norris, Katłı̨̀ą (Catherine Lafferty)","doi":"10.1177/14614448261452616","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448261452616","url":null,"abstract":"The rapid deployment and adoption of Low-Earth Orbital (LEO) satellite systems present new opportunities – and challenges – for rural/remote communities, which have until recently lacked access to high-speed, reliable Internet services. Such impacts are pronounced in small-population Indigenous communities seeking to balance cultural and language resurgence while navigating engagement with settler states and extractivist economies. However, there are limited primary data available regarding the cultural and socioeconomic implications of LEO services in these unique communities, or assessing how end-users experience Internet speed, affordability, and reliability. In this context, we present the outcomes of community-engaged, longitudinal research investigating the adoption of LEO services by Indigenous residents of a remote, fly-in community in Nunatsiaq/Denendeh (commonly known as the Northwest Territories/NWT, Canada). Our findings illustrate emerging tensions regarding perceived positive and negative outcomes: while LEO systems have resolved technical access, respondents simultaneously report growing concerns associated with online harms. These findings contribute to digital divide theory and practice, necessitating increased attention to third-level divides related to patterns and outcomes of use.","PeriodicalId":19149,"journal":{"name":"New Media & Society","volume":"31 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.0,"publicationDate":"2026-06-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148299401","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":"‘They have my kundli ’: Understanding urban upper-middle-class Indians’ beliefs about social media algorithms","authors":"Pranav Malhotra","doi":"10.1177/14614448261453943","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448261453943","url":null,"abstract":"This study examines urban upper-middle-class Indian social media users’ knowledge of, attitudes toward, and practices with social media algorithms. Interviews ( <jats:italic toggle=\"yes\">N</jats:italic> = 30) reveal they primarily use Instagram and have a basic understanding of algorithms, with algorithmic awareness and knowledge functioning as forms of cultural capital. They also articulate folk theories about how algorithms operate, some of which reflect a relational rather than individually-centered view of algorithmic personalization. Furthermore, they express mixed attitudes toward algorithms, including a positive view of algorithms as smart technologies they can control to view global trends, and a critical view of algorithms as manifestations of platform power associated with surveillance and advertising. These views are informed by long-standing cultural beliefs equating technology with globalization and aspiration, contemporary concerns about social media’s effects, and participants’ social status. This study therefore expands our understanding of how context shapes algorithmic sensemaking, presenting insights from a critical Global South setting.","PeriodicalId":19149,"journal":{"name":"New Media & Society","volume":"14 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.0,"publicationDate":"2026-06-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148385899","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 celebration of exploitation: A case study in platform promotion of users’ data","authors":"Isabelle Higgins, Graham Meikle","doi":"10.1177/14614448261453296","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448261453296","url":null,"abstract":"This article explores how a large digital platform exploits its user data to legitimise itself through the tone, form and content of its public-facing outputs. Our case study is the annual <jats:italic toggle=\"yes\">Insights</jats:italic> (Year in Review) reports released by the pornographic platform Pornhub between 2013 and 2024, which we engage with as cultural artefacts and upon which we conduct detailed content and discourse analysis. These reports, Pornhub claims, are based on the extensive data captured about every unique visitor who accesses the site each year. We show that, in the reports, Pornhub works actively to legitimise and celebrate a multifaceted range of practices which exploit the data gathered, often unknowingly, from users. These practices rely upon the company’s platform infrastructure and use of social media logics. The <jats:italic toggle=\"yes\">Insights</jats:italic> reports serve as a stark reminder of the power platforms have to exploit their users’ data to create celebratory narratives which elide complex ethical questions.","PeriodicalId":19149,"journal":{"name":"New Media & Society","volume":"28 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.0,"publicationDate":"2026-06-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148286487","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 interactive synopticon: Participatory visibility and public disruption in IRL live streaming","authors":"Harmata Aboubakar","doi":"10.1177/14614448261453299","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448261453299","url":null,"abstract":"IRL (“in-real-life”) live streaming turns public space into an interactive broadcast structured by live chat, monetization tools, and real-time engagement metrics. At its extreme, “deviant IRL” involves streamers staging public provocation as content. This article asks under what conditions participatory visibility converts being watched from a mechanism of discipline into an incentive for public norm violation. Examining two critical cases (Vitaly Zdorovetskiy and “Johnny Somali”) through live stream content analysis of archived video, chat logs, news coverage, and institutional records, I develop the concept of the interactive synopticon, in which the many not only watch the few, but intermittently steer them through live prompts, paid text-to-speech, and metrified feedback. I identify three interlocking mechanisms—live audience steering, a reinforcement-amplification loop, and lagged accountability—that explain how participatory visibility generates short-run escalation while producing durable records enabling institutional sanction, with implications for platform governance and the uneven distribution of sanction across race, nationality, and gender.","PeriodicalId":19149,"journal":{"name":"New Media & Society","volume":"123 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.0,"publicationDate":"2026-06-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148286491","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}
Sanne Kruikemeier, Svenja Schäfer, Alice Hamilton, Puck Guldemond, Jade Vrielink, Carmen Dymanus, Annelien van Remoortere, Sanne Tamboer, Rens Vliegenthart, Susan Vermeer, Sophie C. Boerman
{"title":"AI meets politics: Examining the effects of different targeting strategies across 15 countries","authors":"Sanne Kruikemeier, Svenja Schäfer, Alice Hamilton, Puck Guldemond, Jade Vrielink, Carmen Dymanus, Annelien van Remoortere, Sanne Tamboer, Rens Vliegenthart, Susan Vermeer, Sophie C. Boerman","doi":"10.1177/14614448261445063","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448261445063","url":null,"abstract":"This study investigates the persuasive effects of messages generated with artificial intelligence in online political targeting, focusing on three distinct strategies: targeting based on political orientation, age, and personality traits. Through an experimental design conducted across 15 countries ( <jats:italic toggle=\"yes\">N</jats:italic> = 7118), we uncovered that political targeting based on voters’ pre-existing political orientation, receiving messages from a party that is already favored by the receiver, had a persuasive impact on voters. These effects included higher likability of the ad and heightened issue importance. Contrary to popular belief, targeting based on age or a combination of multiple categories does not affect persuasive outcomes. Taken together, by building upon a cross-national analysis, this research provided a robust analysis of how multiple targeting strategies influence the electorate in an EU election context.","PeriodicalId":19149,"journal":{"name":"New Media & Society","volume":"283 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.0,"publicationDate":"2026-06-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148286494","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":"Mass shooting narratives on social media: Content moderation and participatory discourse","authors":"Huan Chen, Ye Wang, Seth Fallik, Jasmine McNealy, Yuan Nan, Qingyuan Yang, Emily Perpich","doi":"10.1177/14614448261449813","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448261449813","url":null,"abstract":"This study examines how mass shooting narratives emerge on social media through the interaction of platform governance and participatory discourse. Using a two-study design, we first compare moderation policies and enforcement approaches across major platforms, then analyze discourse surrounding five mass shooting events on X as visible outcomes of platform governance. For the two highest-volume events, 24,748 X posts from the Chiefs Parade shooting and 2043 X posts from the Hookah Bar shooting, we employ a retrieval-augmented generation (RAG)-based thematic analysis combining human-guided theme development with embedding-based semantic retrieval. Three lower volume events are examined through human thematic analysis, and 267 Reddit posts from the Chiefs Parade case serve as a qualitative comparative reference. Findings show that users shared breaking news, expressed grief, debated gun violence and media coverage, and interpreted events publicly. Platform governance appears associated with differences in discourse visibility, tone, and persistence.","PeriodicalId":19149,"journal":{"name":"New Media & Society","volume":"47 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.0,"publicationDate":"2026-06-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148286498","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":"Corrigendum to “Contextualizing the ethics of algorithms: A socio-professional approach”","authors":"","doi":"10.1177/14614448261458014","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448261458014","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":19149,"journal":{"name":"New Media & Society","volume":"56 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.0,"publicationDate":"2026-06-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148286501","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 politics of artificial intelligence alignment: Public reactions to AI moderation in the case of Google’s Gemini","authors":"Adrian Rauchfleisch, Andreas Jungherr","doi":"10.1177/14614448261449271","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448261449271","url":null,"abstract":"This study tests how a prominent artificial intelligence (AI) product failure influences public attitudes, focusing on Google Gemini’s generation of controversial images. Drawing on the AI alignment literature, we distinguish three moderation goals that differ in how far they depart from data-driven outputs: safety, bias mitigation, and aspirational imaginaries. We use focusing events research to explain how controversies make governance questions salient. In a preregistered experiment with 1756 participants, we tested responses to two image sets: American Founding Fathers (T1) and German soldiers from 1943 (T2). T1 significantly reduced support for bias-related and aspirational moderation and lowered trust in the company, but did not affect safety-based justifications or perceived political alignment. T2 showed the same directional pattern but did not reach significance; pooled results confirmed the main pattern. These findings show that visible product failures can affect public views on AI governance along dimensions most directly implicated by the controversy.","PeriodicalId":19149,"journal":{"name":"New Media & Society","volume":"28 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.0,"publicationDate":"2026-06-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148286522","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":"Mapping the disinformation industry in Russia","authors":"Serge Poliakoff, Julia Kling","doi":"10.1177/14614448261452207","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448261452207","url":null,"abstract":"This article examines disinformation production as a form of media labour and production infrastructure, introducing a novel methodological approach based on large-scale open-source labour data. By systematically analysing the CVs of employees of disinformation production organisations, it demonstrates how CV data can be used to reconstruct organisational structures, technological toolkits, recruitment dynamics, and labour-market embeddedness in contexts where direct fieldwork is constrained or impossible. Drawing on Actor–Network Theory as an analytical lens, the analysis treats CVs as material traces of digital labour infrastructures and organisational alignment. Using case studies of major Russian disinformation organisations, the article shows how workforce dynamics track key political developments, how toolkits reflect shifting organisational priorities, and how disinformation labour has become embedded within state-aligned labour markets. It concludes by outlining the methodological implications of this approach for studying covert or inaccessible organisations and by reflecting on its limitations and further research directions.","PeriodicalId":19149,"journal":{"name":"New Media & Society","volume":"6 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.0,"publicationDate":"2026-05-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148286524","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":"Logging off (but leaving the tabs open)","authors":"Steve Jones","doi":"10.1177/14614448261451618","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448261451618","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":19149,"journal":{"name":"New Media & Society","volume":"30 1","pages":"2337-2340"},"PeriodicalIF":5.0,"publicationDate":"2026-05-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148286526","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}