media-studies

By Tanya Sakzewski  Today marks 25 years since 9/11, the deadliest terror attacks in the US, which claimed almost 3,000 … The post 9/11: a legacy of conspiracy theories and Islamophobia first appeared on Media Diversity Institute . The post 9/11: a legacy of conspiracy theories and Islamophobia appeared first on Media Diversity Institute .

Disney has walked a tightrope in its public relationship to “wokeness,” amplifying and scaling back commitments to diversity and inclusion, most recently through the removal of its “Reimagine Tomorrow” program.

On Election Day in 2024, as voters cast their ballots, Elon Musk posted a campaign music video supporting Donald Trump’s bid for president.

_E-Logos_ 33 (1):41-56. 2026Contemporary society is experiencing an epistemic crisis, most notably evidenced by the pervasive presence of disinformation in the public sphere. To address this issue effectively, it is crucial to distinguish disinformation from other forms of false or unsubstantiated claims. Only after achieving this clarity can we begin to consider strategies for prevention and mit…

The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) has issued its yearly free-speech rankings of American colleges and universities, and I’m happy to say that, after a few years of hovering below the top rank, the University of Chicago is back at #1 among the 261 schools surveyed. We get an overall “green light” for … Continue reading The University of Chicago tops FIRE’s new free-speech …

By Raphael Tsavkko Garcia  When Folha de S.Paulo, Brazil’s largest newspaper, acknowledged that columnist Natalia Beauty had relied extensively on … The post Use of AI in newsrooms dividing Brazilian journalists first appeared on Media Diversity Institute . The post Use of AI in newsrooms dividing Brazilian journalists appeared first on Media Diversity Institute .

I think I hate the internet I’ve just finished reading Careless People by Sarah Wynn-Williams and was equally parts shocked and unsurprised by the events she witnessed at Facebook / Meta. It’s a terrifying, breathless, and gripping read, and pretty much eviscerates Meta and everything it has professed to stand for since about 2012. I’ve not had a Facebook account for years now, and it’s coming up…

This article examines how TikTok's recommendation features turn University of Alabama sorority recruitment into RushTok, an online trend that recurs each year.

Paramount Caught Using ‘Astroturf’ Group To Drum Up Fake Support For Merger from the desperate-measures dept We’ve well established how the $111 billion Paramount and Warner Brothers merger is terrible for labor, creatives, consumers, and markets. But the kind of behaviors Paramount leadership have been engaged in to sell the deal also give a pretty clear indication what kind of company we’re dea…

Big week! We just finished moving the Overwatch and Fortnite wikis off of Fandom. It’s still my favorite thing in the world to help wiki editors grab control of their projects and make them awesome (and not covered with a dozen auto-playing video ads!) Unlike most of the other wikis we host (runescape.wiki, minecraft.wiki, gta.wiki…), both Overwatch and Fortnite are launching at subdomains of wei…

A government statement said on Tuesday social media platforms would be required to send a notification to new and existing users offering them a choice over their default feed.

By Anthea Kasonga  When Jason Arday was appointed Professor of Sociology of Education at the University of Cambridge in 2023, … The post Did the Jason Arday story become a media pile-on with racial undertones? first appeared on Media Diversity Institute . The post Did the Jason Arday story become a media pile-on with racial undertones? appeared first on Media Diversity Institute .

Freedom of speech has never meant an unlimited freedom to say anything, anywhere, to anyone without consequence. Every communicative order establishes boundaries between permissible expression and utterances understood as threat, coercion, defamation, incitement or other forms of actionable conduct; paradoxically, however, freedom of speech becomes politically meaningful precisely because speech …

Why can prior achievement become a liability after wrongdoing? This conceptual article integrates research on tall-poppy effects, social comparison, schadenfreude, moral outrage, public shaming, news values, and criminal-record stigma into a theory of the Status-Punishment Paradox. Status ordinarily increases social valuation, yet after salient transgression it can increase the narrative, emotion…

How do extreme internet subcultures go viral? Recent research breaks down the spread of "looksmaxxing," showing how influencers use short-form clips, controversy, and "diagnostic masculinity" to turn young men's insecurities into mainstream attention and profit.

Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, Published online: 05 September 2026; doi:10.1057/s41599-026-08960-9 Health, image, and influence: how social media influencers shape consumer behavior in Hungary