@ccc-journal.bsky.social
An International Communication Association journal publishing critical/cultural research and commentary on media, culture and technology. https://linktr.ee/cccjournalica
Here's a link to the full call with submission instructions!
academic.oup.com/ccc/pages/jo...
Call for Papers Journalism in Ruins: Interrogating norms of ‘independent’ journalism Thematic Issue for Communication, Culture & Critique (2026/27) Abstract Deadline (500 words): December 15, 2025 Complete Manuscript Deadline (7,000-8,000 words): June 15, 2026 Co-editors: Natalie Fenton (Goldsmiths, University of London), Srirupa Roy (University of Göttingen)
Rationale This thematic issue critically interrogates the normative ideal of an independent journalism that drives contemporary laments for a “journalism in ruins.” Normative liberal understandings of news have often declared independent news production as the holy grail of media freedom. A free media is in turn associated with a healthy democracy. Independence of news organizations from government pressure or interference in news production is considered vital to democracy’s well-being. Independence of journalism from wealthy sponsors or corporate pressures is seen as key to its integrity. In turn, independent news media are hailed as the ultimate democratic horizon (Fenton, 2025). An entrenched belief of Anglo/Western liberal media systems, the norm of ‘independent journalism’ also exerts a powerful influence across much of the postcolonial South (Mustvairo et al., 2021). Yet, the mythology of a ‘free’ news media sustaining ‘liberal’ democracy has long since been exposed as exhausted at best, and as absolving of truths at worst. Corruption and compromise have come to the fore as political and commercial interests merge and expand. It is now beyond doubt that a media and tech system that may have many platforms and points of distribution but is dominated by a few, powerful voices and a news media increasingly run to secure financial reward or political influence is highly unlikely to foster greater democratic participation in political culture (Pickard, 2019). Indeed, journalism is arguably now more often subject to fear and favor than without it despite claims to the contrary. As liberal democracy flounders, as legal frameworks fail to deliver journalistic protections, as free expression becomes the preserve of the powerful, as good governance gives way to commercialism at all costs and mechanisms of accountability seek to preserve privilege rather than uphold standards, then the ideal of independent journalism flails too. So why do many scholars and journalist…
These concerns are even more pertinent as mainstream news organizations around the world face multiple challenges from both state and commercial forces, resulting in their closure and constriction and as attacks on journalists increase. As calls of fake news, mis/disinformation abound, so public trust in journalism has plummeted in many places. Yet in the face of such existential challenges, the mainstream journalistic vanguard reaches once more for a return to ‘core values’ aligned with liberalism’s promises to expose the truth with little regard for the systemic forces (of commercialism, marketisation, elite capture, and political entanglement) that have evaded such truth-making claims from being realized. As journalism retreats to its safe default space of hegemonic values and claimed conformity of standards such as ‘objectivity’, ‘impartiality’ and ‘independence’ so it fails to acknowledge the structures and practices that ensure these spaces are too often distorted by money, power and privilege and hence are also heavily classed, gendered and racialized. How has this ‘high modernism’ (Hallin, 2006) of journalism managed to prevail and largely ignore critiques of power relations and geopolitical context and what does it mean for a journalism in ruins? This Thematic Issue seeks to interrogate these concerns: Crucially, it asks, what if the pilgrimage for journalistic independence is treading the wrong path, directing us away from interrogating power relations that exist and blinkering our visions of what journalism could become? If news and journalism are always situated in relation to and interact with other organizations, institutions, professions and people, would we be better placed to interrogate the relations of power therein and establish the levels of interdependence that exist in order to determine how these interdependencies can be recognized, better understood and managed? How can journalism studies move beyond liberal conceptions of the public sphere…
Critical journalism studies folks!
We're looking for contributors to a new special issue: "Journalism in Ruins: Interrogating norms of ‘independent’ journalism." Editors: Natalie Fenton and Srirupa Roy.
Abstracts due Dec. 15, 2025.
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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Awesome! You may also be interested in this piece too, from the same forum (and open access): doi.org/10.1093/ccc/...
02.07.2025 15:24 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
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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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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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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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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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!
🚨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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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!
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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.
03.06.2025 19:09 — 👍 6 🔁 2 💬 1 📌 0This was so fun to write! Using Du Bois and reconstruction to talk about how media could help us survive authoritarianism.
03.06.2025 18:57 — 👍 25 🔁 9 💬 0 📌 0
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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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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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-...
03.06.2025 18:38 — 👍 3 🔁 1 💬 1 📌 0
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..
23.04.2025 16:35 — 👍 9 🔁 4 💬 0 📌 0
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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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.
23.04.2025 15:17 — 👍 7 🔁 3 💬 1 📌 0
🚨 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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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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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.
03.04.2025 13:57 — 👍 8 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0
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...
