Communication, Culture & Critique

Abolitionist sanctuary under Trump 2.0 Abstract. This article examines the importance of sanctuary movements under rising fascism in the US under the second presidential administration of Donald

As part of our forum on Media & Fascism, @naomipaik.bsky.social explores the vital role of sanctuary movements in resisting Trump's authoritarianism. Check it out!

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Kamala is for they/them: liberalism, fascism, and nonsense Abstract. The slogan that the Trump campaign used in the 2024 US presidential election to tie rival Kamala Harris to trans activists in its television ads—

Awesome! You may also be interested in this piece too, from the same forum (and open access): doi.org/10.1093/ccc/...

Transing Trump’s moral crusade against transgender people Abstract. The beginning of Trump’s second presidency finds us immersed in a moral crusade with the expressed intent of complete annihilation of transness f

As part of our forum on Media & Fascism, @lorelemaster.bsky.social and @marykathinks.bsky.social unpack Trump's moral crusade against trans people. Check it out!

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“With friends like this, who needs enemies?”: on the global rise of Christian Zionism Abstract. This article argues for greater media and critical emphasis on Christian Zionism, a deeply antisemitic and Islamophobic ideology, whose supporter

As part of our forum on Media & Fascism, Gil Hochberg argues for greater critical focus on the global rise of Christian Zionism. Check it out!

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The roots of reactionary tech oligarchy and the need for radical democratic alternatives Abstract. The aim for this commentary is two-fold: first, we seek to outline how decades of liberal “post-democratic” hegemony—prevalent across liberal dem

As part of this month's forum on Media & Fascism, @jfarkas.bsky.social and @aurelmondon.bsky.social explore the rise of reactionary tech oligarchy and why liberalism, journalism, and the Internet aren't the bulwarks they might seem. Check it out!

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More than money and algorithms: the cultural roots of Trump’s alt-media strategy Abstract. This article examines Trump’s masculinist “alt-media strategy” in the 2024 election to explore the right’s dominance in the online media landscap

As part of this month's forum on Media & Fascism, @reecepeck.bsky.social explores Trump's alt-media strategy and shows why we need more historically engaged analyses of political communication strategy and tactics. Check it out!

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Media reconstruction and reparative media Abstract. Drawing from the work of scholar-activist W.E.B. Du Bois and insights from co-creating a community-based media platform, this article demonstrate

As part of this month's forum on Media & Fascism, @ajescoffery.bsky.social explores how experimental, community-based media practices can help us revitalize and reconstruct democracy. Check it out!

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Mis/Disinformation Studies folks!

This is an excellent meditation on the political limitations of debunking and on how we might respond otherwise. Even if you're not a queer/trans studies person, this piece is well worth the read!

Kamala is for they/them: liberalism, fascism, and nonsense Abstract. The slogan that the Trump campaign used in the 2024 US presidential election to tie rival Kamala Harris to trans activists in its television ads—

🚨OPEN ACCESS🚨

As part of our new forum on "Media and Fascism," @cassiusa.bsky.social writes about how trans cultural production might best answer the ascendant fascist aesthetics of nonsense and sensation.

There's no paywall, check it out!

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Cruel capitalism: a forum on media and fascism Abstract. This article introduces a forum on “Media and Fascism” by reading tech oligarch and right-wing political operative Elon Musk as a nexus of intern

Our June issue is now live! It kicks off with a forum on Media and Fascism, featuring a star-studded list of contributors.

Get started with this introduction by forum editors @paulachak.bsky.social and @ajbauer.bsky.social!

academic.oup.com/ccc/article-...

Cruel capitalism: a forum on media and fascism Abstract. This article introduces a forum on “Media and Fascism” by reading tech oligarch and right-wing political operative Elon Musk as a nexus of intern

Check out CCC’s latest forum on “Cruel Capitalism: Media and Fascism” co-edited with @ajbauer.bsky.social in
@ccc-journal.bsky.social!
Essays on trans culture, the central role of Christian Zionism, masculinity and alt media, reparative and abolitionist futures, and more!

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Must read from colleagues in the latest issue of Communication, Culture and Critique.

This was so fun to write! Using Du Bois and reconstruction to talk about how media could help us survive authoritarianism.

Cruel Capitalism: a forum on media and fascism by AJ Bauer and Paula Chakravartty in Communication, Culture and Critique: This article introduces a forum on "media and fascism" by reading tech oligarch and right-wing political operative Elon Musk as a nexus of international fascist tendencies. It notes contradictions in the affective promises of capitalism vis a vis the elimination of racialized and gendered state regulatory and social welfare functions and describes the role of violent repression in sustaining right-authoritarian political formations in the US and around the globe.

Check out my latest, with @paulachak.bsky.social, in @ccc-journal.bsky.social!

It introduces a forum we co-edited on "Media and Fascism," with a star-studded lineup! See the 🧵 below:

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Prison media mobilization: smuggled technologies and media practices in Lebanese carceral spaces

Read our latest article by @chaficnajem.bsky.social'on smuggled digital technologies and how incarcerated people in Lebanon make their voices heard. With lessons for those interested in abolition media everywhere! Now available from @ccc-journal.bsky.social!

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A statement on the ongoing genocide in Gaza Abstract. Communication, Culture and Critique has been the leading venue for critical approaches to communication and media studies. This issue marks the f

In know that there have been a few exceptions in the international community, most importantly the “statement on the ongoing genocide in Gaza” by the Editorial Collective of Communication, Culture and Critique (@ccc-journal.bsky.social): academic.oup.com/ccc/article-...

Prison media mobilization: smuggled technologies and media practices in Lebanese carceral spaces by Chafic Tony Najem in Communication, Culture and Critique, published 15 May, 2025

This article explores the use of smuggled digital technologies by prisoners in Lebanese carceral spaces. Since 2012, prisoners have smuggled cellphones to document and share their experiences and protests, despite efforts by authorities to restrict this access. The study adopts Martín-Barbero’s mediaciones and Mattoni’s activist media practices, to propose “prison media mobilization”—the strategic and illicit reconfiguration of digital technologies by prisoners to subvert constraints and amplify dissent. The analysis focuses on four approaches: representation, production, circulation, and material practices. By examining recordings and contextual information from significant events in Lebanese prisons, the research shows how contraband digital technologies catalyze mobilizations. These technologies document, incite, propagate, and aid prisoners perform acts of defiance against prison conditions. The study highlights the complexity and innovation in prisoners' media practices, calling for a comprehensive framework to understand media mobilizations in carceral spaces.

Check out @chaficnajem.bsky.social's latest on smuggled digital technologies used by incarcerated people in Lebanon, now available from @ccc-journal.bsky.social!

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If you are trying to figure out how to make sense of authoritarian turn, read this thoughtful review by @jfarkas.bsky.social and @bilgeyesil.bsky.social new book on Turkish mediated authoritarianism and how to contest its hold..

The urgency of producing Palestine Palestine has long been in the global conscience, especially for many, a beacon of a decolonial struggle for liberation. Today, there is a new urgency to u

See Ather Zia's review of "Producing Palestine: The Creative Production of Palestine Through Contemporary Media," edited by Dina Mater and Helga Tawil Souri (Bloomsbury, 2024) here:

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Talking back to the West: How Turkey uses counter-hegemony to reshape the global communication order by Bilge Yesil Digital media technologies were long heralded as tools of global deliberation, free speech, and democracy, marking the end of top-down control over public

See Johan Farkas' review of Bilge Yesil's "Talking Back to the West: How Turkey Uses Counter-Hegemony to Reshape the Global Communication Order" (University of Illinois Press, 2024) here:

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The urgency of producing Palestine, Ather Zia's review of "Producing Palestine: The Creative Production of Palestine Through Contemporary Media" edited by Dina Mater and Helga Tawil Souri (Bloomsbury Press, 2024), published in Communication, Culture and Critique

Johan Farkas' review of "Talking back to the West: How Turkey uses counter-hegemony to reshape the global communication order" (University of Illinois Press, 2024) by Bilge Yesil, published in Communication, Culture and Critique

The CCC Editorial Collective is excited to highlight our new and selective “Book Review” section, which features what we see as necessary and critical scholarship that we should all be reading.

Arm’s length or joined at the hip? Public service media’s coverage of Gaza Abstract. Critiquing normative articulations of a public versus commercial media binary, we explore the contradictory juxtaposition of democratic expectati

🚨 JUNE ISSUE PREVIEW 🚨Read latest article on the limits of US and UK public media coverage of the on-going genocide in Gaza, published thanks to our Editorial Collective from @ccc-journal.bsky.social

Congrats Authors @sydneyforde.bsky.social and @desfreedman.bsky.social

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Arm’s length or joined at the hip? Public service media’s coverage of Gaza Abstract. Critiquing normative articulations of a public versus commercial media binary, we explore the contradictory juxtaposition of democratic expectati

They find that, while public service media in the US and UK are often seen as "liberal," their coverage of the genocide in Gaza largely serves the prevailing geopolitical interests of their home countries in Israel-Palestine.

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Arm’s length or joined at the hip? Public service media’s coverage of Gaza, by Sydney L. Forde and Des Freedman. Abstract: Critiquing normative articulations of a public versus commercial media binary, we explore the contradictory juxtaposition of democratic expectations assigned to public service media (PSM) broadly, alongside actual PSM reporting. We examine US and UK PSM coverage of two major events related to the bombardment of Gaza and subsequent humanitarian crisis in the months following the Hamas attacks on October 7, 2023. Contextualized within the UK, US and Israel’s historical and ongoing colonial violence within Palestine over the past 75 years, we assess coverage that stands in contradiction to the often fetishized notion of PSM’s role in serving a broadly conceived and normatively accepted “public,” and challenge the independence afforded to existing PSM structures via a critique of the notion that PSM organizations operate at “arm’s length” from government. Throughout our analysis, we find evidence of systematic failures and highlight PSM’s use as an instrument perpetuating state power and control.

🚨 JUNE ISSUE PREVIEW 🚨

Check out the latest from @sydneyforde.bsky.social and @desfreedman.bsky.social, on public service media's coverage of Gaza!

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“Make Iran great again”: Apolitical influencers and the revival of a romantic patriarchal nationalism Abstract. The Woman Life Freedom (WLF) Movement in Iran represents a longstanding struggle for social justice, gender equity, and civil rights. Our study d

Check out the latest in critical global feminist media studies from @ccc-journal.bsky.social, @hoornazkeshava.bsky.social and @nicolestewart.bsky.social, "Make Iran Great Again: Apolitical Influencers and the Revival of a Romantic Patriarchal Nationalism"!

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"Make Iran Great Again: Apolitical Influencers and the Revival of a Romantic Patriarchal Nationalism." By Hoornaz Keshavarzian and Nicole K. Stewart, Communication, Culture and Critique, March 2025 Abstract: The Woman Life Freedom (WLF) Movement in Iran represents a longstanding struggle for social justice, gender equity, and civil rights. Our study details how this grassroots feminist uprising faced an attempted co-optation by a monarchist Coalition’s rhetoric of unity for regime change. Through an analysis on X (formerly known as Twitter) and Instagram, we illustrate how apolitical influencers center Man, Homeland, Prosperity (MHP), a far-right mantra alongside WLF to perpetuate a patriarchal Persian nationalism. Given that language and hegemonic politics are closely intertwined, we argue that MHP is WLF’s ontological and epistemic opposite as it violates and oppresses the progressive ethos of a feminist movement. By invoking a sense of nostalgia for a glorious and imperial past (God, King, Homeland), Reza Pahlavi and his Coalition reproduce discourses of a populist, romantic, and patriarchal nationalism around the Persian identity. While WLF is committed to a pluralistic “solidarity,” MHP revolves around a monolithic “unity.”

Check out the latest from @hoornazkeshava.bsky.social and @nicolestewart.bsky.social, "Make Iran Great Again: Apolitical Influencers and the Revival of a Romantic Patriarchal Nationalism"!

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We are planning to honor Jonathan’s significant intellectual legacy in critical media and cultural studies in future CCC issues. More on that in the months ahead.

Photo of Jonathan Sterne, arms crossed, smiling, wearing a red shirt

We are deeply saddened by the loss of CCC Editorial Collective member Jonathan Sterne.

A major figure in media history, sound studies, disability studies, and the critical study of technology and culture, he will also be sorely missed for his kindness and generosity.

www.legacy.com/us/obituarie...

Cover of Communication, Culture & Critique, Vol. 18, Issue 1, March 2025 — the first under the leadership of a new editorial collective.

Editor Paula Chakravartty, New York University Editorial Collective A.J. Bauer, University of Alabama Miriyam Aouragh, University of Westminster Deborah Cowen, University of Toronto Ezekiel J. Dixon-Román’, Columbia University Gil Hochberg, Columbia University Karma R. Chávez, University of Texas, Austin Natalie Fenton, Goldsmiths, University of London Verónica Gago, University of Buenos Aires and the National University of San Martín Rachel Kuo, University of Wisconsin-Madison Dina Matar, SOAS Wunpini Fatimata Mohammed, Cornell University Fernanda Pinto de Almeida, University of the Western Cape Srirupa Roy, University of Göttingen Jonathan Sterne, McGill University

Communication, Culture & Critique is now under the direction of a new editor and editorial collective!

Check our first issue to learn more:

academic.oup.com/ccc/issue/18/1