Copyright (c) 2026 Minchul Kim, Yanqin Lu

In this study, we analyzed students’ confessions during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, comparing Facebook Confession Boards (FCBs) from universities in 4 countries. Themes were interpreted through the framework of eudaemonic media entertainment (EME). Using semantic network analysis, we map the central themes in students’ confessions and use qualitative content analysis to explore them further through eudaemonic lenses. Our findings reveal three main cross-national themes: personal life, university life, and romantic relationships. While COVID-19 was a relatively less central topic across all countries, it was present in every aspect of students’ lives. In different countries, sentiments and topics varied according to cultural differences and national policies vis-à-vis the pandemic. Many confessions contained eudaemonic elements, as students used FCBs for support and personal growth, as well as to address sensitive topics. The anonymity and peer-group context of FCBs fostered open discussions on taboo subjects, creating sympathetic communities and facilitating collective meaning making during a global crisis.

This study advances a relational and translocal approach to hybridization through a comparative computational analysis of how feminist and anti-feminist discourses coevolve across seven Spanish-speaking Twitter communities. Drawing on 126,978 tweets from the first year of #MeToo, we use time-series analysis, topic modeling, and cross-national comparison to examine how discourses interact and how national contexts shape thematic trajectories. We identify 4 relational patterns—mutual association, feminist-driven dynamic, anti-feminist-driven dynamic, and no association—showing that these movements are not merely reactive, but dynamically shape one another. Topic modeling reveals that specific countries assert discursive leadership, illustrating that linguistic commonality does not imply homogeneous uptake. These findings provide a comparative framework for understanding how polarized movements adapt, compete, and interact in networked publics, with implications for feminist strategizing.

Copyright (c) 2026 International Journal of Communication

ALT: a man is flying through the air with the words coming in hot

Beating Algorithmic Discrimination: Maneuvering Digital Surveillance to Indigenize the Narrative

Forced: Perceptions of “Woke” Politics in Video Games