Journal Description
Media, Culture & Society provides a major international forum for the presentation of research and discussion concerning the media, including the newer information and communication technologies, within their political, economic, cultural and historical contexts.
The journal is interdisciplinary, regularly engaging with a wider range of issues in cultural and social analysis. Its focus is on substantive topics and on critique and innovation in theory and method.
All issues of Media, Culture & Society are available to browse on SAGE Journals.
Journal Feed
- by D. Bondy Valdovinos KayeUniversity of Leeds, UKMedia, Culture & Society, Ahead of Print. This study presents a critique of assetization in the music industry through a case study of royalty shares and their effect on musicians. A royalty share is a form of securitized music copyright that is packaged and sold as an investment asset to buyers …
- by Laura H Marshall, Steve Bien-AiméMedia, Culture & Society, Ahead of Print. Recent book bans in America and the UK grew to record numbers in 2023, with most of the banned books focusing on LGBTQ issues and characters. Conservative groups have worked to frame their efforts as “parents’ rights,” common-sense restrictions on ideas …
- by Zhiqiu Benson Zhou, Yang LiuMedia, Culture & Society, Ahead of Print. This article examines representations and discussions of Eileen Gu, a biracial athlete who represented China in the 2022 Winter Olympics and won two gold medals and one silver medal, on Chinese state-owned and social media. Despite Gu’s unprecedented …
- by Payal Arora, Simone NataleMedia, Culture & Society, Ahead of Print. Discussions on AI ethics and policies often focus on metaphysical questions and normalizing insights, such as the difference between humans and machines and the changing meanings of human intelligence. Since AI is always situated in specific cultural and …
- “I remember, I saw, I knew”: Journalists’ use of first-person storytelling in award-winning podcastsby Jessica PettengillMichigan State University, USAMedia, Culture & Society, Ahead of Print. This study focuses on first-person storytelling in six United States, award-winning podcast series. Using grounded theory, first-person language is explored as a unique journalism practice in podcasting, its utility as both a journalistic and storytelling …
- by Peter Arne JohnsonThe University of Texas at Austin, Moody College of Communication, USAMedia, Culture & Society, Ahead of Print. Private equity firms and institutional stakeholders increased their investments in television production amid the streaming boom of the late 2010s and early 2020s. Taking advantage of new regulations and demand from streaming services for localized …
- by Fan LiangDuke Kunshan University, ChinaMedia, Culture & Society, Ahead of Print. This study examines the relationship between content creators and multi-channel networks (MCNs) in China’s platform economy through the lens of labor coercion. While previous literature has mainly addressed the flexibility and precarity of creators, …
- by Raluca CreangăUniversity of Bucharest, RomaniaMedia, Culture & Society, Ahead of Print. My research delves into the intricacies of smart speakers technology and its adoption by Romanian users, despite the absence of direct sales and Romanian language support. Interest in smart devices, particularly smart speakers, has been evident in Romania …
- by Jane Freeland, Alice Baroni, Melissa JogieMedia, Culture & Society, Ahead of Print. The 1995 Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action developed at the Fourth United Nations World Conference on Women acknowledged the media as a vital arena for the advancement of women’s equality. Now, thirty years after the Beijing Declaration, it is …
- by Liang Ge, Tingting HuMedia, Culture & Society, Ahead of Print. This article examines the gamification of intimacy with AI, through China’s XingYe, a multimodal AI companion platform that integrates role-playing game (RPG) mechanics, algorithmic responsiveness and user-generated markets to reconfigure human-virtual …
- by Sreedhar NemmaniTemple University, USAMedia, Culture & Society, Volume 47, Issue 4, Page 824-834, May 2025. Drawing from my ethnographic fieldwork among the Buddhist communities residing in the Himalayas, the article proposes an ancient Buddhist philosophical conceptualization as a novel theoretical framework to conceive human communication not as a linear …
- by Nessa KeddoKing’s College London, UKMedia, Culture & Society, Ahead of Print. This article explores the experience of racism amongst practitioners of colour in the advertising industries in the UK and US, home to some of the world’s largest, flagship agencies and supposed leaders in equality, diversity and inclusion. The research …
- by Steven Livingston, Babak BahadorMedia, Culture & Society, Ahead of Print. The goal of this paper is to deepen the clarity of Benkler, Farris, and Robert’s “propaganda feedback loop” concept. It argues that a sizeable portion of the information ecosystem in the United States is characterized by a media logic that demands …
- by Victoria Adams, Edward KingMedia, Culture & Society, Ahead of Print. This article considers how community-led organisations in Brazil are reformulating debates surrounding digital inclusion in the face of the consolidation of platform capitalism. It does this through exploration of how two NGOs cultivate spaces for …
- by Rebecca Monteleone, Beena Raghav, Amy Silverman, Darius Cunningham, Phillis Schmidbauer, Marissa KuehnMedia, Culture & Society, Ahead of Print. There has been limited attention to the role of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities (I/DD) as contributors and consumers of news media. In a series of focus groups conducted with people with I/DD about news media, we found respondents …
- by Meri Frig, Visa PenttiläMedia, Culture & Society, Ahead of Print. Many of the causes and impacts of environmental and social issues may seem invisible, while others are apparent yet overlooked. Journalists act as focal agents shaping how society addresses these issues, including climate change and social inequality. In …
- by Simone Natale, Federico Biggio, Andrea L Guzman, Paola Ricaurte, John Downey, Riccardo Fassone, Emily Keightley, Deqiang JiMedia, Culture & Society, Ahead of Print. One of the paradoxes of AI is that it is a global phenomenon, but it is always situated in specific local contexts and cultures. While approaches that aim to study local cultures of AI are important, there is the risk of neglecting their insertion within …
- by Gillian Doyle, Kenny Barr, Raymond BoyleMedia, Culture & Society, Ahead of Print. PSM organisations across the globe have been disrupted by a generalised switch in media consumption towards online and the rise of big tech platforms. This article argues that because, in the digital environment, the role that PSM plays in underpinning …
- by Vincent ObiaUniversity of Sheffield, UKMedia, Culture & Society, Ahead of Print. The paper considers the question of location in the development and governance of artificial intelligence in Africa. The discussion draws from ideas on locational advantage and the mix of factors that affect inequalities in AI development and how this …
- by Karla Zavala Barreda, Stefania MilanMedia, Culture & Society, Ahead of Print. This article examines how app stores construct children’s software audiences through platform governance strategies and industry practices. Drawing on platform studies, critical childhood studies, and the concept of audience commodity, we use the critical …