Journal description
“Not only a key resource for keeping up to date in this fast-moving field, this journal is proving a vital resource for wide-ranging, insightful analyses of the social contexts and consequences of new information and communication technologies.” Sonia Livingstone
New Media & Society is an international journal that provides an interdisciplinary forum for the examination of the social dynamics of media and information change.
New Media & Society engages in critical discussions of the key issues arising from the scale and speed of new media development, drawing on a wide range of disciplinary perspectives and on both theoretical and empirical research.
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This journal is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).
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Journal Feed
- by Dan M KotliarUniversity of Haifa, IsraelNew Media & Society, Ahead of Print. While research has highlighted the ties between algorithms and culture, this article focuses on how cross-cultural encounters shape developers’ perceptions of their algorithmic work. I ask: How do cultural transitions and intercultural encounters …
- by Despina Chronaki, Debra Dudek, Giselle WoodleyNew Media & Society, Volume 27, Issue 5, Page 2457-2472, May 2025. Harm—and the ways in which it is interpreted, negotiated, discussed, and unpacked by adolescents themselves—is a key term in almost all debates about young people’s experiences with online pornography. This essay situates the topic of this special issue—…
- by Despina Chronaki, Liza Tsaliki, Debra Dudek, Elisabeth Staksrud, Giselle Woodley, Thi Bich Thuy DinhNew Media & Society, Volume 27, Issue 5, Page 2597-2619, May 2025. Young people’s experiences with sexual content online are a regularly featured popular topic in news media, feeding heated ongoing policy and academic debates. Concerns and calls for further regulation and youth’s self-regulation are exacerbated when …
- by Jessica Yarin Robinson, Khalid Ezat AzamNew Media & Society, Volume 27, Issue 5, Page 2575-2596, May 2025. This article investigates the presentation and public self-disclosure of sexual content by young people on YouTube’s #storytime genre. Applying Beck’s concept of the “risk biography,” we explore the way these digital narratives recount encounters with …
- by Harrison W See, Kjartan Ólafsson, Brian O’Neill, Lelia Green, Carmen Jacques, Kelly JaunzemsNew Media & Society, Volume 27, Issue 5, Page 2638-2656, May 2025. In 2010, the EU Kids Online project, and aligned AU Kids Online study, interviewed one parent and one child (9–16) from 25,542 families across 26 countries. Information gathered included parents’ awareness of their child’s experiences of sexual content …
- by Elisabeth Staksrud, Niamh Ní Bhroin, Nora Josefine B Englund, Jenny KrutzinnaNew Media & Society, Volume 27, Issue 5, Page 2473-2491, May 2025. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child ‘UNCRC’ provides that children should participate in research about matters that concern them. However, this is not always realised, particularly in the context of risky, sensitive and morally …
- by Robyn Vertongen, Clifford van Ommen, Kerry ChamberlainNew Media & Society, Volume 27, Issue 5, Page 2492-2512, May 2025. Pornography use is often considered harmful, but what constitutes such harm is frequently vague and driven by adult perspectives about risk. This study aimed to explore how adolescents themselves understood harm and risk from pornography use. Thirteen …
- by Maria-Jose Masanet, Laura Fernández, Sergio Villanueva BaselgaNew Media & Society, Volume 27, Issue 5, Page 2532-2551, May 2025. Porn studies have a long tradition of researching porn as a cultural artifact in relation to adult audiences. Recently, there has been increasing interest in young people’s uses and perceptions of porn since there is a general concern about its possible …
- by Michaela Šaradín Lebedíková, Rubén Olveira-Araujo, Kaveri Subrahmanyam, David ŠmahelNew Media & Society, Volume 27, Issue 5, Page 2552-2574, May 2025. Sexting is prevalent among adolescents, yet we lack an understanding of adolescents’ responses to its various forms and the factors that may drive those responses. This study adopts an integrative media effects framework and a nationally representative …
- by Cosimo Marco ScarcelliUniversity of Padova, ItalyNew Media & Society, Volume 27, Issue 5, Page 2513-2531, May 2025. The evolving technological and social landscape offers adolescents new avenues for engaging with digital content, particularly in the realm of intimate activities. Public discourse often oversimplifies the intricate relationship between adolescents and …
- by Catherine Page Jeffery, Alan McKee, Catharine LumbyNew Media & Society, Volume 27, Issue 5, Page 2620-2637, May 2025. Ongoing discussion between parents and their children, including listening to young people, is essential to enable young people to safely navigate the online sexual ecosystem. Research suggests, however, that parents and their children conceptualise and …
- by Shawn Suyong Yi Jones, Annie Harrisson, Sâmia Pedraça, Jessie Marchessault-Brown, Dmitri Williams, Mia ConsalvoNew Media & Society, Ahead of Print. This study revisits the original four research questions of Williams et al.’s “The Virtual Census: Representations of Gender, Race and Age in Video Games” to investigate if mainstream videogame representations have changed over time. In addition, this …
- by Dror Walter, Ayse D Lokmanoglu, Yotam Ophir, Eduard FabregatNew Media & Society, Ahead of Print. Wayfair, an American furniture and home goods retailer, garnered sudden attention across social media in 2020, particularly Twitter and Reddit, due to a conspiracy theory linking the company to child trafficking. The short-lived, well-delineated nature of …
- by Xinyu Zhang, Yifan WangNew Media & Society, Ahead of Print. Astrology on social media has emerged as an important influence in shaping personal self-concepts and relationships. Building on the sensemaking theory, this study employs semi-structured interviews to explore how individuals make sense of astrology short …
- by Tian Yang, Sandra González-BailónNew Media & Society, Ahead of Print. We gain exposure to news across a range of platforms and, within each platform, across a range of sources. How does a multi-platform media environment shape the news choices we make and the gaps that result from those choices? We address this question …
- by Melanie Saumer, Kevin Koban, Jörg MatthesNew Media & Society, Ahead of Print. Online hostility poses a growing societal challenge, yet quantitative evidence on how social media users respond to different kinds of hostility targeting different identities is limited, even though insights into bystander perceptions are detrimental to …
- by Jinghong Xu, Runze Qu, Jiankun Gong, Yuhang YuanNew Media & Society, Ahead of Print. This article draws on the theoretical framework of contentious publicness, integrated with the concept of legal standing, to track the movement of environmental public interest litigation (EPIL) initiated by the Chinese non-governmental organization (NGO),…
- by Alexis Haskell, Logan MolyneuxNew Media & Society, Ahead of Print. Journalists’ social media use is a recent example of long-standing gaps between journalistic discourse and journalistic practice. This manuscript applies the sociological concept of rationalization to explain the persistence of this gap, theorizing that …
- by Yanlin Li, Zicheng Cheng, Homero Gil de ZúñigaNew Media & Society, Ahead of Print. Using a comprehensive dataset of over 160,000 public TikTok accounts and more than 16 million videos, this study indicates a notable increase in political TikTok video content from 2019 to 2023, with a peak around the 2020 US presidential election. The …
- by Esteban Morales, Jaigris Hodson, Victoria O’Meara, Anatoliy Gruzd, Philip MaiNew Media & Society, Ahead of Print. While digital platforms foster a sense of community and identity, they also facilitate harmful exclusionary practices. In this context, toxic and hateful speech are key mechanisms not only for harming others but also marking processes of othering and …