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Communication, Culture & Critique @ccc-journal.bsky.social · 27/06/2026

Our latest issue is live! Featuring a new forum of essays reflecting on the US-Israel war on Iran and how transnational media environments help construct and circulate the myth that foreign military intervention can bring liberation. Check it out! academic.oup.com/ccc/issue

Journal Article
Strongman imperialism: media infrastructures and the war on Iran
Mehdi Semati
Communication, Culture and Critique, Volume 19, Issue 2, June 2026, Pages 95–98, https://doi.org/10.1093/ccc/tcag023
Published:
24 June 2026

Abstract

This article frames the forum as an urgent reflection on the present conjuncture, marked by the U.S.–Israeli war on Iran, the expansion of the conflict in the region, and the collapse of the international rules-based order. It briefly sketches the political economy of the Persian Gulf and America’s “energy security” logic, which explains the conditions of permanent instability in the region. After offering a brief history of how media have portrayed Iran, this article argues that media, communication technologies, information, and narratives must be understood as integral components of the infrastructure of empire, situating this claim within a historical and geopolitical framework informed by media representations of Iran. This framework provides a space in which the circulation of transnational media myth that foreign military intervention can liberate Iranians without harming civilians, as well as the problematic separation of the people from the state infrastructures that sustain them, can be interrogated.

Journal Article
Decapitation dreams: selling the fantasy of bloodless wars through networked propaganda Get access Arrow
Niki Akhavan
Communication, Culture and Critique, Volume 19, Issue 2, June 2026, Pages 99–102, https://doi.org/10.1093/ccc/tcag022
Published:
24 June 2026

Abstract

While not the majority, polls and demonstrations indicate that a notable portion of Iranians supported the 2026 war on Iran. Strikingly, support for a war of “liberation” was echoed even within Iran. How can we make sense of this? The Islamic Republic’s decades of repression explain the desire for change, but not the belief that liberation could come through war. This belief is especially notable given the recent histories of neighboring states promised similar outcomes. This article looks at the information environment that allowed for and sustained a myth of liberation through bombs—an environment shaped by dark money, digital campaigns, and diaspora media that flourished due to Iranian state’s tight control over domestic broadcasting.

Journal Article
The topos of “state as style”: War on form and the exigence of state theory Get access Arrow
Maryam Ahmadi
Communication, Culture and Critique, Volume 19, Issue 2, June 2026, Pages 103–106, https://doi.org/10.1093/ccc/tcag021
Published:
24 June 2026
Abstract

This article examines the discourse of imperialist aggression against the Global South state as an instantiation of the topos of “state as style,” defined as the reduction of the state to a rhetorical form that is distinct, and thereby detachable, from its true content, namely the oppressed people. This topos, I argue, articulates media, military, economic, and academic discourses, resulting in a discursive alliance that uncouples people from the state institutions and infrastructures that sustain them. Once the dis/articulation is achieved, wars may be waged on forms rather than peoples. Exploring the implications of this topos for critical scholarship, I argue that our valorization of the category of the oppressed at the expense of state theory is implicated in this ideological war machine.

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Communication, Culture & Critique @ccc-journal.bsky.social · 30/04/2026

Headed to the International Communication Association (ICA) conference in Cape Town in June? Join us for a pre-conference on June 4! Anti-Apartheid Legacies: Mediating Solidarities from South Africa to Palestine

ICA colleagues going to Cape Town in June ... We invited you to attend the pre-conference on Anti-Apartheid Legacies: Mediating Solidarities from South Africa to Palestine, June 4, 2026, 9AM to 5PM, Location: UCT Centre for African Studies, CAS Gallery Harry Oppenheimer Institute Building, Engineering Mall Road, Upper Campus; Addressing ICA's theme of inequalities in Context, this pre-conference will focus on the parallels between the mediated struggle against institutionalized segregation during South African apartheid and the ongoing global solidarity movement against Israeli occupation, segregation, and genocidal violence in Palestine; Register at https://www.icahdq.org/event/anti-apartheid

Program (June 4, 2026), 9AM-5PM, UTC Centre for African Studies (CAS Gallery)

9-9:30, Welcome and opening remarks
9:30-11, Academia and apartheid: complicity and dissent
11:30-1, Keynote Conversation: Resistance in the Shadow of Genocide: A reckoning
2-3:30, Media and Decolonial futures
3:30-4, coffee break
4-5, wrap-up discussions
All day feature: Virtual reality exhibit: The Phoenix of Gaza XR

Link to program: https://cdn.ymaws.com/www.icadhq.org/resource/resmgr/conference/2026/ICA26-PC-AntoApartheid-updat.pdf

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Communication, Culture & Critique @ccc-journal.bsky.social · 17/04/2026

How do we account for the normalization of bombing civilian infrastructures like hospitals in Gaza, Lebanon, and Iran? Read this urgent intervention by medical doctors and public health scholars on the culpability of medical journals. Free, open access article here: doi.org/10.1093/ccc/...

Article spotlight, Framing Gaza: Medical Journals and the destruction of Healthcare, by Osama Tanous, Yara Asi, Weeam Hammoudeh, David Mills, Bram Wispelwey, published in the Communication, Culture and Critique special issue "Palestine as Communicative Epistemology," edited by Paula Chakravartty, Karma R. Chavez, Dina Matar; Volume 19, Issue 1 (March 2026)

introduction: Since October 2023, people across the globe have witnessed daily images of Palestinians in Gaza facing unfathomable horrors including attacks on hospitals, patients, and healthcare workers. As the genocide has unfolded, several fronts have emerged far beyond the Gaza Strip such as attacks on freedom of expression and protest, international solidarity, journalistic integrity, and academic freedom. In the medical field, the focus of this study, multiple health workers have been fired or silenced for speaking up against the genocide. This article explores medical journals as a medium of generating knowledge about the health conditions, and the attacks on healthcare during the Gaza genocide.

Abstract: A main feature of the Israeli genocide in Gaza has been the systematic destruction of the healthcare system. The Israeli military has methodologically generated conditions that drive disease, disability, and death, while simultaneously dismantling the capability of the health system to respond. Despite a purported emphasis on issues such as health equity and social determinants of health, many influential medical bodies across the world have failed to condemn these attacks on healthcare, let alone take meaningful steps for advocacy and accountability.

Abstract continued: The authors analyze academic articles in medical journals to examine how anti-Palestinian racism dehumanizes Palestinian healthcare workers and hinders meaningful institutional solidarity. They find that violence against Palestinians is often obscured, overlooked, or justified, and argue that journal framing helps the continued targeting of healthcare infrastructure, effectively creating a 'permission structure' for mass atrocities.

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Communication, Culture & Critique @ccc-journal.bsky.social · 31/03/2026

The Communication, Culture & Critique editorial collective is proud to publish our first thematic issue: PALESTINE AS COMMUNICATIVE EPISTEMOLOGY academic.oup.com/ccc/issue/19/1

Communication, Culture & Critique is proud to publish its first thematic issue: "Palestine as Communicative Epistemology." Volume 19, Issue 1 (March 2026). Editors: Paula Chakravartty, Karma R. Chavez, Dina Matar. White letters on red background.

Communication Culture & Critique
An Official Journal of the International Communication Association
Volume 19, Number 1 March 2026
Special Issue: Palestine as Communicative Epistemology
Guest Editors: Paula Chakravartty, Karma R. Chavez, and Dina Matar
Forum
Why Palestine as communicative epistemology?
PAULA CHAKRAVARTTY, KARMA R. CHAAVEZ, AND DINA MATAR
The narrative struggle for Palestinian liberation
An interview with Prof. Noura Erakat
NABIL HASSEIN, MARIA PAZ ALMENARA, AND NADINE FATTALEH
Bitification and the Gaza genocide
HELGA TAWIL-SOURI
On Palestinians’ insistence that Palestinian journalism matters
AMAHL BISHARA
Fashioning the keffiyeh as a Palestinian anti-colonial medium
BERNARDITA M. YUNIS VARAS AND SARAH CATHRYN MAJED DWEIK
A breakup letter with media studies
NABIL ECHCHAIBI
Resonance, or sympathetic vibration: A Black feminist ethic for Palestine
VICTORIA NETANUS XAKA
Original Articles
Framing Gaza: Medical Journals and the destruction of Healthcare
OSAMA TANOUS, YARA ASI, WEEAM HAMMOUDEH, DAVID MILLS, AND
BRAM WISPELWEY
Palestine as a laboratory: Aerial technologies, colonial violence and an origin of information-weaponry systems
SEBASTIAN JAMES ROSE AND BURCE CELIK
How to unsee Gaza: Israel’s visual politics in a time of genocide
REBECCA L. STEIN
Witnessing undone: Silence, noise and the enabling of genocide in Gaza
OMAR AL-GHAZZI
Algorithmic censorship, power, and resistance in the Arab region: A case study of pro-Palestinian content
TAMER FARAG, FLORIAN PRIMIG, AND HANAN BADR
Book Review
The decolonial cautions of Parting Gifts of Empire: Palestine and India at the Dawn of Decolonization
GOLDIE OSURI

Our Aim: Our goal is to rethink how knowledge about Palestine is produced and shared. We aim to move beyond framing Palestine as merely a 'conflict' or 'laboratory' and instead highlight the lived realities of colonial violence and media complicity. By centering anti-colonial thinkers like Edward Said, Aime Cesaire, Fanon, and Sherene Seikaly, we seek to reveal which facts are communicated, and which are silenced. Ultimately, we encourage scholars to rethink methods in understanding and representing Palestine.

White letters on background image featuring destroyed buildings in Gaza.

Read the full issue here: https://academic.oup.com/ccc/issue/19/1. This journal is available through most university libraries. If you are unable to access articles, please email us at cccjournal2024@gmail.com. Thank you to the authors, contributors, and reviewers whose work informs this issue. White letters on red and black backgrounds.

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Communication, Culture & Critique @ccc-journal.bsky.social · 18/02/2026

Last but not least in our forum on "Dismantling the Master's House" we have Karma Chávez and Taralee Cyphers. "Forging a feminist approach to peer review and mentorship: the case of OSU press’s intersectional rhetorics series" Check it out! academic.oup.com/ccc/article/...

Journal Article
Forging a feminist approach to peer review and mentorship: the case of OSU press’s intersectional rhetorics series

By Karma R Chávez and Taralee Cyphers
Communication, Culture and Critique, Volume 18, Issue 4, December 2025, Pages 300–301, https://doi.org/10.1093/ccc/tcaf046
Published:
26 December 2025

Abstract

In this article, the authors reflect on their purpose in creating the Intersectional Rhetorics series with Ohio State University Press, and what the series reviewing and editorial process looks like as feminist praxis.

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Communication, Culture & Critique @ccc-journal.bsky.social · 17/02/2026

Up next in our forum on "Dismantling the Master's House" we have Kim Fox. "Citing with care: citational politics, the communication canon and the responsibility of scholarly engagement" Check it out! academic.oup.com/ccc/article/...

Journal Article
Citing with care: citational politics, the communication canon and the responsibility of scholarly acknowledgment Purchased
Kim Fox
Communication, Culture and Critique, Volume 18, Issue 4, December 2025, Pages 297–299, https://doi.org/10.1093/ccc/tcaf042
Published:
26 December 2025

Abstract

This article explores citational politics as a practice that actively constructs and sustains the communication canon. It contends that citation is not a neutral academic formality, but a political and ethical act that shapes whose scholarship becomes visible, legitimate and foundational. Drawing from critical race, feminist and decolonial perspectives, the article highlights the systemic exclusion of Black women, the least cited group in academia, and interrogates how this erasure impoverishes the field. It also identifies patterns of exclusion, from disciplinary bias to technological barriers, that limit the discoverability of Black women’s scholarship. Building on initiatives like #CommunicationSoWhite and #CiteBlackWomen, the article urges communication scholars to adopt more inclusive and reflexive citation practices. It concludes that dismantling exclusionary canons requires both individual responsibility and collective structural change, ultimately reshaping the discipline’s intellectual DNA toward equity and epistemic justice.

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Communication, Culture & Critique @ccc-journal.bsky.social · 16/02/2026

Up next in our forum "Dismantling the Master's House," featuring essays on peer review of intersectional scholarship, we have Isabel Molina-Guzmán. "Tips for getting your work published by an overworked journal editor" Check it out! academic.oup.com/ccc/article/...

Journal Article
Tips for getting your work published by an overworked journal editor
Isabel Molina-Guzmán
Communication, Culture and Critique, Volume 18, Issue 4, December 2025, Pages 294–296, https://doi.org/10.1093/ccc/tcaf049
Published:
26 December 2025

Abstract

In this article, I discuss the constraints today’s journal editors are facing to help authors understand what they can do to more effectively manage the process. Specifically, I share advice with authors for improving the success rates of interdisciplinary and early career scholars. I conclude with a brief discussion of my journey into editing as way to open pathways for others interested in journal editing.

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Communication, Culture & Critique @ccc-journal.bsky.social · 13/02/2026

Up next in our forum "Dismantling the Master's House," featuring essays exploring new directions for peer review of intersectional scholarship, we have Meshell L. Sturgis. "A Black sensibility for intersectional scholarship" Check it out! academic.oup.com/ccc/article/...

Journal Article
A Black sensibility for intersectional scholarship
by Meshell L Sturgis
Communication, Culture and Critique, Volume 18, Issue 4, December 2025, Pages 292–293, https://doi.org/10.1093/ccc/tcaf043
Published:
26 December 2025

Abstract

Most advice on how to write critical theory tends to focus on the logistics. Taking the perspective that writing is a skill rather than a talent, such approaches tend to overlook the presence and consequences of emotions in writing. Intersectional scholarship entails navigating and cultivating relations, rituals, and evolving emotional states from the most private to the more generalizable. This essay documents just some of the feelings experienced by one queer Black woman who studies race and communication in the United States. It begins with Black feminist theorizing about writing, research, and the embodiment of intersectional harm. Then, it captures discrete writing experiences and some of the emotions paired with such experiences over the course of the author’s writing career. Finally, it ends with a poetic reveal of writing habits to distill some of the sensory inputs and emotional underpinnings of a Black feminist writing praxis.

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Communication, Culture & Critique @ccc-journal.bsky.social · 12/02/2026

Check out our latest forum, "Dismantling the Master's House" featuring essays exploring new directions for peer review of intersectional scholarship. It kicks off with an introductory essay from Meredith D. Clark, "Grounded Under a Blue Sky." A must read! academic.oup.com/ccc/article/...

Journal Article
Grounded under a Blue Sky: tools for disrupting the peer review process as we know it Purchased
by Meredith D Clark
Communication, Culture and Critique, Volume 18, Issue 4, December 2025, Pages 290–291, https://doi.org/10.1093/ccc/tcaf051
Published:
26 December 2025

Abstract

This article provides an introduction to a scholarly forum on intersectional approaches to challenging the peer-review process. Developed out of a Blue Sky session at the International Communication Association’s annual conference in 2025, the article and the forum discuss ways to build out of the strength of differences with practical insights that can be adopted throughout the publication process to advance critical scholarship.

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Communication, Culture & Critique @ccc-journal.bsky.social · 29/01/2026

Check out @victorpickard.bsky.social's contribution to our forum on Left Democratic Futures, on the urgent need for post-capitalist media in a world where corporate media and big tech have clearly and spectacularly failed us. academic.oup.com/ccc/article/...

academic.oup.com

Eroding the market’s hidden hand: toward a Post-Capitalist media system

Abstract. Media-related problems facing democratic societies around the world today often stem from various kinds of market failures and structural limitat

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Communication, Culture & Critique @ccc-journal.bsky.social · 28/01/2026

Check out @grohmannrafael.bsky.social's contribution to our forum on "Democratic Left Futures" for real world examples of "solidarity in action" against the dystopia of big tech fascism! academic.oup.com/ccc/article/...

academic.oup.com

Solidarity in action: building worker-owned intersectional platforms in Latin America

Abstract. The project Worker-Owned Intersectional Platforms (WOIP) (Grohmann et al., 2025) brought together six organizations from Brazil and Argentina in

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Communication, Culture & Critique @ccc-journal.bsky.social · 08/01/2026

In light of the Trump administration's renewed imperialism in Latin America, it's worth revisiting the insights of José Aricó. In our latest forum on "Left Democratic Futures," we include a republication of his 1980 essay “Neither Cynicism nor Utopia.”

It is impossible to reorient the operation of a society’s economic life in an anticapitalist path without a decisive presence from the state. Yet the ever-growing presence of the state in society causes a progressive stifling of democratic spaces. This is the dilemma that was posed at that time and it is the dilemma that frames the processes of change today. To put it bluntly: bread and democracy seem to be mutually exclusive concepts; all that is left is to opt for one or the other. During these long years, the Latin American left – and not only the Latin American left, of course – justified “real” socialism on the basis of the admission that it had been able to solve the same persistent issues affecting the people of Latin America. According to it, those who, also from the left, insisted on speaking about democracy did so with the narrow-minded goal of denying the conquests achieved by socialism – in the end, who cared about those miserable bourgeois freedoms, like reading the newspaper of one's choice, compared to the countless benefits that socialism gave to humanity!

Today, this terrible quid pro quo has blown up. Because it is not true that socialism assures the historical necessities of men and women by amputating their fundamental freedoms. In the long run, this amputation hampers the fulfilment of historical necessities. Today, the crisis of socialism is showing us that it is impossible to draw a dividing line between bread and democracy, because, in doing so, socialism itself disappears. In increasingly complex modern societies, it seems as though socialism cannot make headway based on an enlightened confidence in the abilities of reason to create progress, but rather the opposite, on questioning, to the fullest, its neocapitalist recuperation. It is only by questioning the harmoniousness of socialist models that we can admit social conflictiveness and political interaction as irrepressible phenomena of all future – and therefore present – societies. Socialism resets recompone the dialecticity of its relationship with democracy by incorporating pluralism (political, organisational, ideological, cultural, etc.) as its own irrepressible value; but in doing so, it radically questions all concrete socialist experiences.

Socialists have no practical solutions, nor Marxists theoretical answers, to all these issues. But I wonder: Does anyone have them, or did anyone ever have them? Is capitalism an answer? Are we not witnessing the fall of the ideological paradigms on which bourgeois societies were constructed? Are we not beginning to accept the idea of the un-governability of such societies? At the same time, does the firm questioning of current socialist experiences mean we are negating the gains in the growth and redistribution of resources? Put another way, does it mean we must renounce any programmatic and society-centered reconstruction project of society? Is there a third way that would allow us to escape capitalism to construct a more egalitarian – but also infinitely freer and more democratic – society? This is where, I think, the debate turns into a vicious circle and shows itself completely incapable of moving forward in novel paths. It is here, too, that we are unable to prevent ourselves from either dashing for utopia or accepting cynically the state of things. It is here where, in total good faith but with maximum critical faculty, we must learn to measure ourselves against the facts.

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Communication, Culture & Critique @ccc-journal.bsky.social · 06/01/2026

OPEN ACCESS! In our latest issue, @manijehm.bsky.social interviews Iranian left feminist activist Neda Naji on resisting authoritarianism and imperialism. academic.oup.com/ccc/article/...

Protestors in a city park holding signs reading "JIN JIYAH AZADI" and "FEMINISTS FOR JINA" and "From Iran to Palestine, End the War, End the Crime" among other slogans.

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The Media, Inequality & Change Center @miccenter.bsky.social · 05/01/2026

In his recent essay for @ccc-journal.bsky.social, @victorpickard.bsky.social analyzes the capitalist logics at the root of many media-related issues and provides a framework for shifting to a less capitalist, more democratic media system. Read here: buff.ly/AYvibor

academic.oup.com

Eroding the market’s hidden hand: toward a Post-Capitalist media system

Abstract. Media-related problems facing democratic societies around the world today often stem from various kinds of market failures and structural limitat

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Communication, Culture & Critique @ccc-journal.bsky.social · 28/08/2025

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.

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…

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Communication, Culture & Critique @ccc-journal.bsky.social · 26/06/2025

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! doi.org/10.1093/ccc/...

doi.org

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

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A.J. Bauer @ajbauer.bsky.social · 05/06/2025

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!

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Communication, Culture & Critique @ccc-journal.bsky.social · 05/06/2025

🚨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! academic.oup.com/ccc/article/...

academic.oup.com

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—

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Paula C @paulachak.bsky.social · 03/06/2025

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! doi.org/10.1093/ccc/...

doi.org

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

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Lori Regattieri @followlori.bsky.social · 03/06/2025

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

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Aymar (AJ) @thehost.theinvite.us · 03/06/2025

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

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A.J. Bauer @ajbauer.bsky.social · 03/06/2025

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: doi.org/10.1093/ccc/...

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.

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Paula C @paulachak.bsky.social · 23/05/2025

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! doi.org/10.1093/ccc/...

doi.org

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

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Christian Strippel @strippel.bsky.social · 03/06/2025

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-...

academic.oup.com

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

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Communication, Culture & Critique @ccc-journal.bsky.social · 23/05/2025

Check out @chaficnajem.bsky.social's latest on smuggled digital technologies used by incarcerated people in Lebanon, now available from @ccc-journal.bsky.social! doi.org/10.1093/ccc/...

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.

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Paula C @paulachak.bsky.social · 23/04/2025

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..

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Communication, Culture & Critique @ccc-journal.bsky.social · 23/04/2025

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.

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

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Reposted by Communication, Culture & Critique

Paula C @paulachak.bsky.social · 16/04/2025

🚨 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 doi.org/10.1093/ccc/...

doi.org

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

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Communication, Culture & Critique @ccc-journal.bsky.social · 16/04/2025

🚨 JUNE ISSUE PREVIEW 🚨 Check out the latest from @sydneyforde.bsky.social and @desfreedman.bsky.social, on public service media's coverage of Gaza! doi.org/10.1093/ccc/...

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.

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Communication, Culture & Critique @ccc-journal.bsky.social · 08/04/2025

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"! doi.org/10.1093/ccc/...

"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.”

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Communication, Culture & Critique @ccc-journal.bsky.social · 03/04/2025

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...

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

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Communication, Culture & Critique @ccc-journal.bsky.social · 02/04/2025

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

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

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