Hee Jung Cho, Sue Lim, Miriya Saenz, Ralf Schmälzle
Media messages shape our knowledge about the world, but measuring individual exposure and attention remains challenging. Emerging media offer a solution to studying message reception in simulated real-world environments, which may soon become the actual media environments in which we encounter messages. Here, we utilized virtual reality (VR) and eye-tracking to investigate message processing in a realistic virtual city environment populated with billboards. We introduced an inception-style manipulation where billboards initially overlooked by participants were covertly reintroduced based on real-time gaze tracking. Our findings show this algorithmic manipulation, undetected by participants, significantly boosted message memory retention for the targeted messages. This study reveals a path of media influence, demonstrating how undetected algorithmic manipulations can shape individual and collective memory. The findings carry practical and theoretical implications for diverse communication contexts, from advertising and public health to political messaging in the emerging metaverse ecosystem.
{"title":"Memory inception through gaze-contingent message exposure: using virtual reality to study media influence","authors":"Hee Jung Cho, Sue Lim, Miriya Saenz, Ralf Schmälzle","doi":"10.1093/joc/jqaf048","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/joc/jqaf048","url":null,"abstract":"Media messages shape our knowledge about the world, but measuring individual exposure and attention remains challenging. Emerging media offer a solution to studying message reception in simulated real-world environments, which may soon become the actual media environments in which we encounter messages. Here, we utilized virtual reality (VR) and eye-tracking to investigate message processing in a realistic virtual city environment populated with billboards. We introduced an inception-style manipulation where billboards initially overlooked by participants were covertly reintroduced based on real-time gaze tracking. Our findings show this algorithmic manipulation, undetected by participants, significantly boosted message memory retention for the targeted messages. This study reveals a path of media influence, demonstrating how undetected algorithmic manipulations can shape individual and collective memory. The findings carry practical and theoretical implications for diverse communication contexts, from advertising and public health to political messaging in the emerging metaverse ecosystem.","PeriodicalId":48410,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Communication","volume":"8 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":7.9,"publicationDate":"2025-11-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145575730","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This study synthesized research from 4 theoretical frameworks that explicitly conceptualize media and communication as dynamic processes over time, emphasizing reciprocal and self-causing effects. A meta-analysis of 223 effect sizes from 103 studies supported the presence of both reciprocal and self-causing relationships, suggesting their robustness as communication phenomena. Time lag moderated self-causing effects, such that longer intervals weakened these effects. Longer lags attenuating the influence of media/communication on subsequent outcomes approached but did not reach statistical significance, and did not significantly alter the reverse pathway. Exploratory moderation analyses showed that effect sizes varied by audience age, analytic methods, topic areas, and media types. Findings highlight the importance of time lag specification in studying dynamic media effects.
{"title":"Temporal dynamics of media and communication processes: a review of theories and meta-analysis of empirical studies","authors":"Shan Xu, Wenbo Li, Yani Zhao, Michael D Slater","doi":"10.1093/joc/jqaf044","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/joc/jqaf044","url":null,"abstract":"This study synthesized research from 4 theoretical frameworks that explicitly conceptualize media and communication as dynamic processes over time, emphasizing reciprocal and self-causing effects. A meta-analysis of 223 effect sizes from 103 studies supported the presence of both reciprocal and self-causing relationships, suggesting their robustness as communication phenomena. Time lag moderated self-causing effects, such that longer intervals weakened these effects. Longer lags attenuating the influence of media/communication on subsequent outcomes approached but did not reach statistical significance, and did not significantly alter the reverse pathway. Exploratory moderation analyses showed that effect sizes varied by audience age, analytic methods, topic areas, and media types. Findings highlight the importance of time lag specification in studying dynamic media effects.","PeriodicalId":48410,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Communication","volume":"13 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":7.9,"publicationDate":"2025-11-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145472956","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Graham D Bodie, Miriam Brinberg, Susanne Jones, Denise H Solomon, Nilam Ram
This study proposes and tests five temporally explicit models of message evaluation derived from work on supportive communication. Although most empirical work in this area is based on a limited number of time-scales (temporal isolation of messages or temporal aggregation of conversations), theories that direct that work have the potential to make much more sophisticated predictions of how supportive messages, and the conversations within which they occur, are evaluated. Using data produced by pairs of friends who engaged in 5-min supportive conversations, we articulated a series of theoretically informed models that examined how type, accumulation, and timing of conversational moves impacted how disclosers evaluated the supportiveness of the statements made throughout the conversation (evaluated by the discloser using video-assisted recall) and how they felt after the conversation. Results confirmed that (a) evaluations made throughout a conversation are related to post-conversation reports of supportiveness and emotional improvement, (b) different types of speaking acts are generally not differentially supportive, and (c) timing of some speaking acts matters—altogether suggesting we pay more attention to how we conceptualize and measure time in studies of enacted support.
{"title":"Supportive message evaluation across multiple time-scales","authors":"Graham D Bodie, Miriam Brinberg, Susanne Jones, Denise H Solomon, Nilam Ram","doi":"10.1093/joc/jqaf041","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/joc/jqaf041","url":null,"abstract":"This study proposes and tests five temporally explicit models of message evaluation derived from work on supportive communication. Although most empirical work in this area is based on a limited number of time-scales (temporal isolation of messages or temporal aggregation of conversations), theories that direct that work have the potential to make much more sophisticated predictions of how supportive messages, and the conversations within which they occur, are evaluated. Using data produced by pairs of friends who engaged in 5-min supportive conversations, we articulated a series of theoretically informed models that examined how type, accumulation, and timing of conversational moves impacted how disclosers evaluated the supportiveness of the statements made throughout the conversation (evaluated by the discloser using video-assisted recall) and how they felt after the conversation. Results confirmed that (a) evaluations made throughout a conversation are related to post-conversation reports of supportiveness and emotional improvement, (b) different types of speaking acts are generally not differentially supportive, and (c) timing of some speaking acts matters—altogether suggesting we pay more attention to how we conceptualize and measure time in studies of enacted support.","PeriodicalId":48410,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Communication","volume":"92 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":7.9,"publicationDate":"2025-09-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145183134","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In this presidential address, I make a call to embrace a cosmopolitan imagination. I understand the cosmopolitan imagination as an intellectual vision that recognizes and embraces a global consciousness—the presence and the contributions of scholars from around the world. It is a vision that encourages us to act as members of a global community of communication scholars. I outline why this vision is necessary to further develop and strengthen such a community, and discuss challenges for such a vision given long-standing global, structural disparities as well as the assault on academic freedom.
{"title":"The cosmopolitan imagination: a call for global communication studies","authors":"Silvio Waisbord","doi":"10.1093/joc/jqaf043","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/joc/jqaf043","url":null,"abstract":"In this presidential address, I make a call to embrace a cosmopolitan imagination. I understand the cosmopolitan imagination as an intellectual vision that recognizes and embraces a global consciousness—the presence and the contributions of scholars from around the world. It is a vision that encourages us to act as members of a global community of communication scholars. I outline why this vision is necessary to further develop and strengthen such a community, and discuss challenges for such a vision given long-standing global, structural disparities as well as the assault on academic freedom.","PeriodicalId":48410,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Communication","volume":"62 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":7.9,"publicationDate":"2025-09-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145141498","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Artificial intelligence (AI) has recently been used to aid in deception detection and to simulate human data in social scientific research. Thus, it is important to consider how well these tools can inform both enterprises. We report 12 studies, accessed through the Viewpoints.ai research platform, where AI (gemini-1.5-flash) made veracity judgments of humans. We systematically varied the nature and duration of the communication, modality, truth-lie base rate, and AI persona. AI performed best (57.7%) when detecting truths and lies involving feelings about friends, although it was notably truth-biased (71.7%). However, in assessing cheating interrogations, AI was lie-biased by judging more than three-quarters of interviewees as cheating liars. In assessing interviews where humans perform at rates over 70%, accuracy plummeted to 15.9% with an ecological base-rate. AI yielded results different from prior human studies and therefore, we caution using certain large language models for lie detection.
{"title":"The (in)efficacy of AI personas in deception detection experiments","authors":"David M Markowitz, Timothy R Levine","doi":"10.1093/joc/jqaf034","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/joc/jqaf034","url":null,"abstract":"Artificial intelligence (AI) has recently been used to aid in deception detection and to simulate human data in social scientific research. Thus, it is important to consider how well these tools can inform both enterprises. We report 12 studies, accessed through the Viewpoints.ai research platform, where AI (gemini-1.5-flash) made veracity judgments of humans. We systematically varied the nature and duration of the communication, modality, truth-lie base rate, and AI persona. AI performed best (57.7%) when detecting truths and lies involving feelings about friends, although it was notably truth-biased (71.7%). However, in assessing cheating interrogations, AI was lie-biased by judging more than three-quarters of interviewees as cheating liars. In assessing interviews where humans perform at rates over 70%, accuracy plummeted to 15.9% with an ecological base-rate. AI yielded results different from prior human studies and therefore, we caution using certain large language models for lie detection.","PeriodicalId":48410,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Communication","volume":"27 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":7.9,"publicationDate":"2025-09-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145017482","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Social media platforms form information ecosystems distinct from the Web and reconfigure power relationships, especially the distribution of visibilities, among news media. We developed a theoretical framework based on structuration theory to explain the differences between the Web and social media, and investigated four prominent factors: institutional legacy, information reliability, ideological differences, and news inequalities. This study collected social media data from three platforms (Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube; N = 8.4 million posts), web traffic data, and an information reliability index for 766 media outlets in the USA. We investigated how four factors explained differences between the platforms and the Web: media outlets that were digital-born (compared to newspapers), partisan, and mass-oriented gained greater visibilities on platforms relative to their web traffic. Meanwhile, the three platforms displayed differences. For example, only Twitter showed significantly increased visibilities of unreliable sources. Our multiplatform research design demonstrates the impact of platformization on journalism.
社交媒体平台形成了不同于网络的信息生态系统，并重新配置了新闻媒体之间的权力关系，尤其是知名度的分布。我们建立了一个基于结构理论的理论框架来解释网络和社交媒体之间的差异，并研究了四个突出的因素：制度遗产、信息可靠性、意识形态差异和新闻不平等。本研究收集了美国766家媒体的三个平台（Facebook、Twitter和YouTube； N = 840万个帖子）的社交媒体数据、网络流量数据和信息可靠性指数。我们调查了四个因素如何解释平台和网络之间的差异：数字媒体（与报纸相比），党派和大众导向的媒体相对于其网络流量在平台上获得了更高的知名度。同时，三个平台也表现出了差异。例如，只有Twitter显示不可靠来源的可见性显著增加。我们的多平台研究设计展示了平台化对新闻业的影响。
{"title":"Are partisan, unreliable, digital-born, and mass-oriented media more likely to thrive on social media? Comparing four information ecosystems","authors":"Tian Yang, Xuzhen Yang, Yilang Peng, Subhayan Mukerjee","doi":"10.1093/joc/jqaf035","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/joc/jqaf035","url":null,"abstract":"Social media platforms form information ecosystems distinct from the Web and reconfigure power relationships, especially the distribution of visibilities, among news media. We developed a theoretical framework based on structuration theory to explain the differences between the Web and social media, and investigated four prominent factors: institutional legacy, information reliability, ideological differences, and news inequalities. This study collected social media data from three platforms (Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube; N = 8.4 million posts), web traffic data, and an information reliability index for 766 media outlets in the USA. We investigated how four factors explained differences between the platforms and the Web: media outlets that were digital-born (compared to newspapers), partisan, and mass-oriented gained greater visibilities on platforms relative to their web traffic. Meanwhile, the three platforms displayed differences. For example, only Twitter showed significantly increased visibilities of unreliable sources. Our multiplatform research design demonstrates the impact of platformization on journalism.","PeriodicalId":48410,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Communication","volume":"14 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":7.9,"publicationDate":"2025-09-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144987294","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Nicolas Mattis, Lucien Heitz, Philipp K Masur, Judith Moeller, Wouter van Atteveldt
News aggregators inherently constitute choice architectures in which placement and presentation of news articles in the user interface affect how people perceive and engage with them. Accordingly, deliberate changes of a news aggregators’ choice architecture may nudge engagement. Against this background, our study aims to test the effects of 2 nudges, namely a position and an accessibility nudge, on (a) the selection of, (b) the engagement with, and (c) learning from environmental news articles by means of a 7-day field experiment using a news aggregator app in the United Kingdom. Results suggest that prominent article positioning coupled with visual highlighting significantly increases the selection of environmental news, its reading time and recall of information. In contrast, automated rewriting of environmental articles for lower text complexity had no significant effects. Additional analyses indicate that neither nudge backfired by decreasing user satisfaction, thus suggesting the practical usability of our approach.
{"title":"Nudges for news recommenders: prominent article positioning increases selection, engagement, and recall of environmental news, but reducing complexity does not","authors":"Nicolas Mattis, Lucien Heitz, Philipp K Masur, Judith Moeller, Wouter van Atteveldt","doi":"10.1093/joc/jqaf019","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/joc/jqaf019","url":null,"abstract":"News aggregators inherently constitute choice architectures in which placement and presentation of news articles in the user interface affect how people perceive and engage with them. Accordingly, deliberate changes of a news aggregators’ choice architecture may nudge engagement. Against this background, our study aims to test the effects of 2 nudges, namely a position and an accessibility nudge, on (a) the selection of, (b) the engagement with, and (c) learning from environmental news articles by means of a 7-day field experiment using a news aggregator app in the United Kingdom. Results suggest that prominent article positioning coupled with visual highlighting significantly increases the selection of environmental news, its reading time and recall of information. In contrast, automated rewriting of environmental articles for lower text complexity had no significant effects. Additional analyses indicate that neither nudge backfired by decreasing user satisfaction, thus suggesting the practical usability of our approach.","PeriodicalId":48410,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Communication","volume":"13 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":7.9,"publicationDate":"2025-08-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144901577","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Jason C Coronel, Matthew Sweitzer, James Alex Bonus, Rebecca Dore, Blue Lerner
A new era of message processing research will emerge from the convergence of powerful machine learning algorithms with dynamic data from everyday devices equipped with biological sensors. Our study takes critical steps into this era by integrating theory-guided artificial neural networks with eye movements to understand how people learn science concepts from dynamic multimedia. Essential to our theory-guided machine learning approach is a cognitive conceptualization of time as the dynamic interdependence between past and new information that guides how multimedia is attended to and understood. We tracked the eye movements of 197 children as they watched an educational video. We trained two neural network architectures differing in theory guidance to predict learning outcomes using eye movements. The theory-guided architecture, which considered the temporal interdependence of information, yielded more accurate out-of-sample predictions. Our work advances the use of theory-guided machine learning and the development of systems that monitor real-time learning.
{"title":"Fusing theory-guided machine learning and bio-sensing: considering time in how children learn science from dynamic multimedia","authors":"Jason C Coronel, Matthew Sweitzer, James Alex Bonus, Rebecca Dore, Blue Lerner","doi":"10.1093/joc/jqaf036","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/joc/jqaf036","url":null,"abstract":"A new era of message processing research will emerge from the convergence of powerful machine learning algorithms with dynamic data from everyday devices equipped with biological sensors. Our study takes critical steps into this era by integrating theory-guided artificial neural networks with eye movements to understand how people learn science concepts from dynamic multimedia. Essential to our theory-guided machine learning approach is a cognitive conceptualization of time as the dynamic interdependence between past and new information that guides how multimedia is attended to and understood. We tracked the eye movements of 197 children as they watched an educational video. We trained two neural network architectures differing in theory guidance to predict learning outcomes using eye movements. The theory-guided architecture, which considered the temporal interdependence of information, yielded more accurate out-of-sample predictions. Our work advances the use of theory-guided machine learning and the development of systems that monitor real-time learning.","PeriodicalId":48410,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Communication","volume":"7 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":7.9,"publicationDate":"2025-08-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144899002","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In this essay, we a collective of Indigenous, Black, and migrant Global South scholars engaged in experiments with the culture-centered approach (CCA) draw on our lived experiences amidst struggles against land grab, neoliberal extractivism, and capitalist exploitation to outline a framework for qualitative methods as anticolonial politics. We begin by exploring the interplays of colonialism, imperialism, and racial capitalism that have shaped the origins and uses of qualitative methods toward serving extractive agendas of global capital. This critique serves as the basis for outlining the key principles of the CCA, turning to voice, storytelling, and embodied action as the basis for situating qualitative methods amidst anticolonial struggles that resist settler colonialism and extractive neoliberal neocolonialism. Through our review of diverse culture-centered interventions, we explore the roles of voice infrastructures in anticolonial resistance, outlining the contribution made by the CCA to decolonizing research methods by offering a theoretical-methodological framework for communication interventions for social justice.
{"title":"Anticolonialism and qualitative methods for culture-centered interventions","authors":"Mohan Jyoti Dutta, Ambar Basu, Satveer Kaur-Gill, Debalina Dutta, Mahuya Pal, Iccha Basnyat, Selina Metuamate, Venessa Pokaia, Phoebe Elers, Indranil Mandal, Rabindranath Mandi, Pankaj Baskey, Devalina Mookerjee, Shaunak Sastry, Jaime Robb, Andrew Carter","doi":"10.1093/joc/jqaf021","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/joc/jqaf021","url":null,"abstract":"In this essay, we a collective of Indigenous, Black, and migrant Global South scholars engaged in experiments with the culture-centered approach (CCA) draw on our lived experiences amidst struggles against land grab, neoliberal extractivism, and capitalist exploitation to outline a framework for qualitative methods as anticolonial politics. We begin by exploring the interplays of colonialism, imperialism, and racial capitalism that have shaped the origins and uses of qualitative methods toward serving extractive agendas of global capital. This critique serves as the basis for outlining the key principles of the CCA, turning to voice, storytelling, and embodied action as the basis for situating qualitative methods amidst anticolonial struggles that resist settler colonialism and extractive neoliberal neocolonialism. Through our review of diverse culture-centered interventions, we explore the roles of voice infrastructures in anticolonial resistance, outlining the contribution made by the CCA to decolonizing research methods by offering a theoretical-methodological framework for communication interventions for social justice.","PeriodicalId":48410,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Communication","volume":"98 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":7.9,"publicationDate":"2025-07-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144684650","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Trends are a common feature in the contemporary media and cultural environment as well as media and communication research. Yet trends remain undertheorized. This article seeks to address this gap. Rather than just a synonym for shift or change, I define trend as a temporally bounded, dynamic pattern of observable change and argue that such a concept deserves greater prominence within the study of media and communication. In addition to this definition, I theorize trends by characterizing the trend’s key features, exploring its relationship to media, and mapping its connection to questions that animate media and communication research. The case of “brat summer” of 2024 is offered as an exemplary case from which trend’s core features may be discerned. The article’s primary contribution is to advance the trend as a central concept through which communication and media studies researchers may think more comprehensively and critically about change.
{"title":"What is a trend?","authors":"Devon Powers","doi":"10.1093/joc/jqaf029","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/joc/jqaf029","url":null,"abstract":"Trends are a common feature in the contemporary media and cultural environment as well as media and communication research. Yet trends remain undertheorized. This article seeks to address this gap. Rather than just a synonym for shift or change, I define trend as a temporally bounded, dynamic pattern of observable change and argue that such a concept deserves greater prominence within the study of media and communication. In addition to this definition, I theorize trends by characterizing the trend’s key features, exploring its relationship to media, and mapping its connection to questions that animate media and communication research. The case of “brat summer” of 2024 is offered as an exemplary case from which trend’s core features may be discerned. The article’s primary contribution is to advance the trend as a central concept through which communication and media studies researchers may think more comprehensively and critically about change.","PeriodicalId":48410,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Communication","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":7.9,"publicationDate":"2025-07-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144639747","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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