{"title":"The path from participatory culture to participatory politics: A critical investigation—An interview with Henry Jenkins","authors":"Henry Jenkins, You Jie","doi":"10.1177/20570473231224816","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/20570473231224816","url":null,"abstract":"In this interview, Henry Jenkins critically reviews his theorization of the logical and practical connection between participatory culture and participatory politics, which is enabled and facilitated by the civic imagination of various social groups strategically and affectively deploying popular culture resources for different political purposes. Henry Jenkins emphatically discusses the democratic potential of participatory culture in autocratic societies and the mechanisms to promote the progressiveness of participatory politics, and carefully yet enthusiastically defends the significance of fandom’s affective and appropriative practices for bridging participatory culture and participatory politics. In the end of this interview, Henry Jenkins also reflects on the genealogical relations of his thinking on participatory democracy with John Fiske’s political understanding of popular culture and evaluates his own theoretical contributions to the political philosophy of participatory democracy.","PeriodicalId":44233,"journal":{"name":"Communication and the Public","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.6,"publicationDate":"2024-02-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139839475","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"From City Hall to Twitter: Navigating political context in US mayors’ online engagement","authors":"Minshuai Ding","doi":"10.1177/20570473231224819","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/20570473231224819","url":null,"abstract":"Twitter has become an indispensable tool for politicians and officials, including US mayors as heads of local governments, to engage with constituents in real time and convey their political agendas. However, there is limited research on the relationship between the political context associated with the role of mayor and their ways of communication on Twitter. This study explores the Twitter usage patterns of mayors of the 100 largest US cities in the light of two unique political contexts: partisan affiliation and form of municipal government. By conducting a twofold statistical analysis, this study found significant differences in Twitter usage patterns between mayor groups based on political context factors. However, regression analysis revealed that these differences were not caused by political party or form of government, but rather were more related to the city’s size in population. Differences in political context factors were not found strong predictors of the variation of Twitter usage patterns of mayors. The Communication Theory of Identity directs this twist to another potential scenario: identity gaps might exist within the mayors’ layers of identity construct. In addition, factors intrinsic to the city, such as its population size, have a substantial impact on the way mayors communicate on Twitter.","PeriodicalId":44233,"journal":{"name":"Communication and the Public","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.6,"publicationDate":"2024-02-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139796204","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"From City Hall to Twitter: Navigating political context in US mayors’ online engagement","authors":"Minshuai Ding","doi":"10.1177/20570473231224819","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/20570473231224819","url":null,"abstract":"Twitter has become an indispensable tool for politicians and officials, including US mayors as heads of local governments, to engage with constituents in real time and convey their political agendas. However, there is limited research on the relationship between the political context associated with the role of mayor and their ways of communication on Twitter. This study explores the Twitter usage patterns of mayors of the 100 largest US cities in the light of two unique political contexts: partisan affiliation and form of municipal government. By conducting a twofold statistical analysis, this study found significant differences in Twitter usage patterns between mayor groups based on political context factors. However, regression analysis revealed that these differences were not caused by political party or form of government, but rather were more related to the city’s size in population. Differences in political context factors were not found strong predictors of the variation of Twitter usage patterns of mayors. The Communication Theory of Identity directs this twist to another potential scenario: identity gaps might exist within the mayors’ layers of identity construct. In addition, factors intrinsic to the city, such as its population size, have a substantial impact on the way mayors communicate on Twitter.","PeriodicalId":44233,"journal":{"name":"Communication and the Public","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.6,"publicationDate":"2024-02-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139856029","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Message (in)congruence: Tweeting while competing for donations","authors":"Jamie Levine Daniel, Cali Curley, Marlene Walk","doi":"10.1177/20570473231224822","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/20570473231224822","url":null,"abstract":"Nonprofit organizations rely on social media to build relationships with their stakeholders and solicit the resources they need to provide their programs and services. This online activity takes place in an increasingly competitive environment. We draw on the situational theory of publics, stakeholder theory, giving motivation, and gamification to examine this question: When organizations engage in competitive philanthropy, what framing is more effective at generating donations on an online platform? We confirm the relationship between tweeting and donation solicitation and shed light on some specific types of messaging associated with increased donations.","PeriodicalId":44233,"journal":{"name":"Communication and the Public","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.6,"publicationDate":"2024-01-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139954030","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Republic of Kakao goes on hiatus: The public cost of platform monopolies in South Korea","authors":"Siho Nam","doi":"10.1177/20570473231224818","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/20570473231224818","url":null,"abstract":"In the wake of the recent nationwide service outage of Kakao, this article questions the cost that the Korean public may have to bear when private platform monopolies imbue all facets of public lives. Using cultural political economy as both a theoretical framework and a mode of inquiry, it seeks to unravel the ways in which platform monopolies are legitimized and defended by a mix of institutional, regulatory, and discursive forces. Findings reveal that Kakao’s proprietary digital platforms and their services are not only justified by dominant political–economic forces, but also discursively appropriated by themselves and the government for the purposes of driving innovation, elevating national competitiveness, and promoting economic growth, yet at the expense of public scrutiny and accountability. The article concludes by briefly evaluating the implications that these unwelcoming trends have for the Korean public.","PeriodicalId":44233,"journal":{"name":"Communication and the Public","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.6,"publicationDate":"2024-01-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139954006","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Mediatized politics in Palestine: Online platforms’ influence on framing of politicians’ messages","authors":"Shadi Abu-Ayyash","doi":"10.1177/20570473231224820","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/20570473231224820","url":null,"abstract":"Based on a theoretical framework of mediatization and framing, this article examines the communication behaviors of leaders from the prominent Palestinian party, Fatah, on social media, with a specific focus on the general election decree of 2021. It involves interviews with journalists and an analysis of social media content to explain how politicians’ online behavior is influenced by the formats of social media content. It shows that Palestinian politicians often use identical content on both Facebook and X (previously Twitter), with a higher frequency of written material over visual content. Politicians use their social media accounts to express their positions on internal and international political affairs. Journalists consider these accounts a source of information, thus reaffirming that political social media is newsworthy for journalists. This article contributes to the study of mediatization that is largely conducted in Western contexts, challenging the notion that mediatization only occurs in highly digitized societies.","PeriodicalId":44233,"journal":{"name":"Communication and the Public","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.6,"publicationDate":"2024-01-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139954166","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The platformation and transformation of the digital public sphere: An introduction","authors":"Ming Xie","doi":"10.1177/20570473241228627","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/20570473241228627","url":null,"abstract":"This article introduces the complex landscape of social media platforms and their evolving integration within social and political contexts. Focusing on the concept of platform society, this article discusses the emergence and growth of new platforms as well as the localization trends of mobile communication. This article examines the interplay between technological structures and social, cultural, and political dimensions of mobile communication, focusing on issues such as privacy policies, data protection, and profit-seeking motives of platform owner companies. In addition, this article introduces the six papers chosen for this special issue. The diverse viewpoints presented in this special issue contribute to a deeper understanding of digital communication’s role in advancing democracy, encouraging citizen participation, and transforming public spheres.","PeriodicalId":44233,"journal":{"name":"Communication and the Public","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.6,"publicationDate":"2024-01-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139954027","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Reconstituting digital counterpublics in times of crisis: The case of the United States and the Republic of Georgia","authors":"Byron B Craig, Stephen E. Rahko, Nathan Carpenter","doi":"10.1177/20570473231217122","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/20570473231217122","url":null,"abstract":"Since the advent of social media at the turn of the 21st century, scholars of communication, cultural studies, and media studies have long been invested in the question of the relationship between social media platforms and the discursive formation of counterpublics for social movement mobilization. In this article, we seek to pose a new question for scholarly inquiry: How do citizens leverage the tools of social media platforms to reconstitute counterpublics in times of crisis? Toward this end, we conduct a comparative case study of the way citizens leverage platforms for counterpublic formation in the Republic of Georgia and the United States. Both cases represent two ends of the Janus-face of the 21st-century Internet: The Internet as a tool for public will formation that can enrich the flowering of democracy across digital spaces, and the Internet as a tool capable of undermining traditional norms of public will formation predicated on shared understanding across the public sphere(s).","PeriodicalId":44233,"journal":{"name":"Communication and the Public","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.6,"publicationDate":"2023-12-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138589812","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Where are we when the community looks for us? A social network analysis of the self-organized network #TwitterFoodBank","authors":"T. T. Hoang","doi":"10.1177/20570473231213675","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/20570473231213675","url":null,"abstract":"Traditional crisis management approaches have often overlooked the role of community and nonprofit organizations. In this study, we investigated how nonprofits and communities contributed to problem-solving during crises through self-organization on social media. We applied social network analysis to 17,732 interactions using #TwitterFoodBank, a self-organized network emerged during the early stage of COVID-19 to address food insecurity. Our results highlighted the significant role of nonprofits in coordinating the community’s self-organized network. However, they also revealed a lack of coordination among these organizations in maintaining a viable network. These findings have valuable implications for nonprofits seeking to leverage the potential of online self-organized communities in crisis management.","PeriodicalId":44233,"journal":{"name":"Communication and the Public","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.6,"publicationDate":"2023-12-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138606762","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Understanding gendered transnational education mobility: Interview with Fran Martin","authors":"Fran Martin, Lin Song","doi":"10.1177/20570473231209378","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/20570473231209378","url":null,"abstract":"In this interview, Fran Martin discusses gendered transnational education mobility in relation to research methodology, the contradictions of neoliberal ideology, and the social implications of ethnographic research. Challenging stereotypical and often biased portrayals of Chinese international students in the Anglosphere, Martin argues for the importance of attending to the irreducible details of individual life experiences and explains how to employ affective methods to convey these details to readers. Calling for attention to gender as a key perspective in understanding education mobility, she discusses how the global neoliberal discourse underpinning this form of mobility can be restricting and empowering at the same time. She also reflects on the ways in which researchers could engage with social and policy realities and contribute to improving international students’ well-being.","PeriodicalId":44233,"journal":{"name":"Communication and the Public","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136347162","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}