Social Sciences

Abstract: Background: Social media engagement is often framed as either a source of connection and utility or a threat to healthy digital functioning. This binary view is limiting in emerging-market settings where Facebook and Instagram are embedded in communication, information seeking and entertainment. Drawing on Uses and Gratifications Theory (UGT) and a digital well-being perspective, this study examines whether engagement is associated with users’ gratifications and whether gratifications explain digital well-being among Facebook and Instagram users in Bangladesh. Method: The study analyses 385 populated records from the supplied Group 3 Meta master database. The focal model uses three reflective constructs-Social Media Engagement (SME), Uses & Gratifications (UG), and Digital Well-Being (DWB)-each measured with three five-point Likert items. Measurement diagnostics include indicator loadings, Cronbach’s alpha, composite reliability, AVE and HTMT. Structural relationships are assessed with standardized paths, R², effect sizes, bootstrap confidence intervals and mediation analysis. A sensitivity analysis excludes one straight-line response. Results: SME was positively associated with UG (β = .305, p < .001) and with DWB in the total-effect model (β = .199, p < .001). With UG included, the direct SME→DWB path remained significant (β = .174, p = .001), whereas UG→DWB was positive but non-significant (β = .085, p = .107). The indirect effect through UG was small and its 95% bootstrap interval included zero. The model explained 9.3% of UG and 4.6% of DWB variance. Composite reliability was acceptable, although Cronbach’s alpha was below .70 and DWB AVE was marginally below .50. Contribution: The study distinguishes engagement from gratification and digital balance rather than treating social media use as a unitary exposure. The evidence supports a direct engagement-well-being association in this dataset but not a gratification-mediated mechanism.

Abstract: Early news coverage helps make unfamiliar health threats intelligible, yet less is known about how language and imagery jointly organize crisis meanings in platform-distributed broadcast journalism. This study examines how the early COVID-19 outbreak was constructed in 66 BBC News and 195 CNA YouTube videos published between 20 January and 12 March 2020 and identified through the outlets’ designated playlists. Using inductive thematic analysis, the study coded the corpus qualitatively and interpreted recurring linguistic and visual patterns through discourse and multimodal analysis. Within the selected BBC News coverage, descriptions and images of enclosure, disrupted mobility, and repatriation represented Wuhan as an immobilized crisis space; narratives of hiding and escape associated restricted movement with vulnerability and departure with relative safety. Within the selected CNA coverage, evaluative language, quantification, and authoritative sourcing constructed the outbreak as severe, while inter-agency coordination, visible leadership, procedures, and regulatory enforcement represented it as administratively manageable and positioned public authorities as capable organizers of the response. These higher-order organizing logics are conceptualized as spatialization and governability. Governmental competence denotes an institutional identity constructed within CNA’s coverage, not an independent assessment of Singapore’s response. By showing how recurring verbal and visual resources cohered into outlet-specific crisis narratives, the study contributes an analytically transferable framework for multimodal crisis and health communication research. The findings remain limited to the two examined corpora and the defined period.

Abstract: Scientific disinformation has become a major challenge for contemporary societies, affecting public trust in science, evidence-based decision-making, and the communication of scientific knowledge. (1) Methods: This study maps the academic research on science communication and disinformation, identifying its main publication trends, thematic areas, and methodological approaches. A systematic literature review was conducted using the Web of Science Core Collection. The search identified 127 research articles published between 2003 and 2026, which were analyzed through bibliometric, thematic, and methodological coding. (2) Results: Results show a marked expansion of research since 2020, with 91.34% of the analyzed articles published between 2020 and 2026. The United States constitutes the main production node, while research is distributed across 52 journals. Thematic analysis shows a predominance of the media ecosystem and communication actors, followed by reception, trust, and cognitive processing. Public health, social platforms, and trust in scientific authority are among the most recurrent specific topics. Qualitative approaches predominate (51.2%), while content analysis and surveys are the most frequent research designs. Despite growing interest in prebunking, debunking, and media literacy, computational approaches remain marginal. (4) Conclusions: These findings reveal a rapidly consolidating but methodologically uneven field and identify priorities for future research, particularly computational methods, interdisciplinary collaboration, and intervention-oriented studies.

Abstract: Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 positions media as both an instrument and an object of national transformation. This systematic literature review synthesizes peer-reviewed evidence published between January 2016 and September 2026 to establish how, and under what conditions, media contribute to social change. In accordance with PRISMA 2020, a search of Open Alex conducted on September 28, 2026, was complemented by scoping searches; 86 studies in journals indexed in Scopus or the Directory of Open Access Journals were appraised on design features adapted from the Mixed Methods Appraisal Tool and synthesized thematically across three mechanisms: ownership and investment, digital audience engagement, and regulation. Three convergent patterns emerge. State-led investment and cultural policy have expanded capacity and youth-oriented production across television, film, streaming, gaming, and entertainment, a pattern termed here managed diversification. Platforms have become arenas in which reform, particularly women’s empowerment and flagship national projects, is debated, endorsed, and normalized, with influencers as prominent intermediaries. Regulatory modernization has formalized a fast-growing creator economy, and women’s professional inclusion has advanced, while studies report reliance on official sources and link legal uncertainty and perceived monitoring to anticipatory self-restraint. The review refines the concept of conditional transformation: the communicative visibility of reform has expanded substantially at home and abroad, whereas editorial autonomy has expanded more gradually, and the evidence points to regulatory predictability as a condition for its further expansion. The review maps gaps in political-economy, longitudinal, and reception research and derives recommendations aligned with Vision 2030’s commitment to effective, transparent, and accountable government.

Abstract: This paper explores the 2023 UAW Strike against the “Big Three” American automobile manufacturers and the union’s use of Facebook Live (FL) as a tool for organization and mobilization. Using John Kelly’s landmark Rethinking Industrial Relations Mobilisation, Collectivism and Long Waves (2012), the paper provides a short history of the 2023 strike and the difficulties faced by organized labor from the 1990s-2020. The UAWs use of Facebook Live (FL) in the strike is seen as bridging Kelly’s gap between organization and mobilization. The ubiquity of Facebook Live and livestream is seen as creating an environment in which union members can share information with each other, users can comment on aspects of the strike, and mainstream media outlets can access alternative views of the labor action. Facebook Live. Using Rainie and Wellman’s (2012) suggestion that Internet 2.0 platforms actually encourage and make it easy for users to work in virtual and real-life domains, the paper suggests that the sense of presence generated by Facebook Live helped the UAW to reach a good outcome. The use of FL in this labor action allowed for communication that helped the UAW to influence public opinion and increase membership. While recognizing that FL is not universally accepted across all users (Jung & Bhojwani 2025), the use of the platform by the UAW appears to have facilitated to some degree a settlement that was positive for the UAW.

Abstract: Marketing communication has undergone a structural transformation comparable in magnitude to the television revolution of the mid-twentieth century. This paper develops an integrative, qualitative analysis of marketing communication in the age of digital media across the 26-year period from 2000 to 2026, pursuing four questions: how digitalization has reconfigured the conceptual and operational architecture of the field; what role advertising now performs within that architecture; how the discipline relates, intellectually and institutionally, to the older tradition of advertising research and practice; and which research gaps most urgently demand scholarly attention. Methodologically, the study combines an integrative literature review with reflexive thematic analysis, triangulated against harmonized statistical series (ITU/World Bank, IAB/PwC, WPP Media) and industry audits. A structured review of 36 studies 20 foundational studies published between 2015 and 2023, and 16 studies published between 2024 and 2026—anchors the analysis at the research frontier, spanning integration and journey theory, causal effectiveness measurement, privacy regulation, influencer marketing, and generative artificial intelligence. The analysis traces the field's development through six historical stages, compares three research traditions whose convergence now defines the study of communication effectiveness, and documents an accountability crisis evidenced by programmatic supply-chain leakage, deflationary causal estimates of advertising effects, and signal loss under privacy regulation. Four overarching themes emerge: the migration from linear message delivery to dialogic orchestration; the datafication and algorithmic mediation of persuasion; the rising centrality of trust, privacy, and ethics; and the convergence-within-fragmentation of advertising. The paper contributes a stage model of the field's development, a comparative framework of research traditions and measurement approaches, two synthesis matrices of recent evidence, a consolidated taxonomy of research gaps, a concise analytical discussion, and a prioritized program of ten recommended research streams with implications for managers, regulators, and scholars.

Abstract: Advertising is the principal financial base of commercial media, and its scale, structure, and distribution shape what media institutions can produce. This study analyzes the role of advertising in the Saudi media industry across the 26-year period from 2000 to 2026, a span that opens with the consolidation of a pan-Arab satellite television market financed largely by Saudi capital and closes with a platform-dominated digital advertising economy operating under the Vision 2030 media strategy. Adopting a descriptive–analytical documentary design, the study triangulates industry expenditure estimates (Ipsos, IAB MENA, Statista), connectivity and audience data (DataReportal, the Communications, Space and Technology Commission), regulatory documents, corporate disclosures (MBC Group), and peer-reviewed scholarship to address three questions: how the scale, structure, and measurement of the Saudi advertising market have evolved; which conditions have sustained the advertising base of the media industry across the satellite and platform eras; and to what extent nine anticipated effects of advertising on the Saudi media industry, formulated at the dawn of the satellite era, have materialized. The findings show that Saudi Arabia became the largest national advertising market in the Middle East and North Africa, that digital media rose from under 10% of Gulf advertising expenditure in 2012 to roughly three-quarters of Saudi expenditure by 2023, and that an estimated 70–80% of digital spending flows to global platforms. Seven of the nine anticipated effects are supported or partially supported and two have been transformed: advertiser influence over content now operates through platform algorithms and influencer economies rather than through channel schedules, and advertising’s expected contribution to news credibility has been complicated by platform capture of revenue and by state ownership. The study concludes with recommendations on measurement, regulation, professionalization, and research.

Abstract: The parallel evolution of agenda-setting and gatekeeping theory constitutes one of the most consequential intellectual trajectories in communication studies, yet the two traditions have developed largely in isolation from each other despite their deep functional interdependence. This paper undertakes a critical, integrative review of both traditions across the period 2000 to 2025, a quarter-century defined by the migration of public discourse from institutionally controlled media environments to algorithmically mediated digital platforms. Drawing on a structured synthesis of peer-reviewed scholarship, including the landmark platform-experiment literature of 2021–2025, the paper traces the transformation of gatekeeping from a process enacted by identifiable human decision-makers within institutional hierarchies to a distributed, computationally governed phenomenon in which algorithms, platform architectures, and user behaviors jointly determine the visibility of information. Simultaneously, it examines the reconfiguration of agenda-setting from a linear transfer of salience between media institutions and mass publics to a recursive, networked process shaped by personalization technologies, platform-specific affordances, and the fragmentation of formerly unified audiences into algorithmically constituted micro-publics. The paper introduces the concept of salience agency as an integrative meta-theoretical framework capable of capturing the convergence of gatekeeping and agenda-setting within contemporary communication systems. It argues that the algorithmic mediation of information visibility represents not merely a technological augmentation of existing communicative processes but a structural transformation that demands new theoretical vocabularies, new empirical methodologies, and new normative commitments. Implications for communication scholarship, media management, regulatory policy, and democratic governance are discussed, and priorities for future research are identified.

Abstract: Audiences increasingly encounter the news not through newsrooms but through chatbots, AI-generated summaries, and platform intermediaries that reproduce the form of journalism while omitting the human judgment that produces it. This paper asks what is lost in that substitution. We argue that a central but invisible casualty is epistemic labor: the contextual, accountable human work that converts plausible-sounding information into locally trustworthy knowledge. We examine this from an unusual vantage point, inside a local television newsroom in the American Midwest that is integrating an AI-assisted editorial tool, where the same class of technology audiences meet outside the newsroom becomes briefly visible at the human-AI handoff. Drawing on an in-progress, IRB-approved qualitative case study (embedded observation, workflow mapping, journalist interviews, and participatory co-design), we introduce the provenance gap: the systematic invisibility of epistemic labor in AI-mediated news, which leaves audiences unable to distinguish accountable local reporting from outputs that merely resemble it. We discuss implications for provenance signaling, local news sustainability, and the design of AI news agents.

Abstract: This qualitative investigation examines the multifaceted role of the media in managing collective psychological crises during disasters and armed conflicts, with particular emphasis on identifying and evaluating mitigation strategies that enhance community resilience. Through semi-structured interviews with 45 purposively selected participants—media professionals, mental health experts, academic researchers, and community members directly affected by crisis media coverage, the study explores the complex, bidirectional relationship between media discourse and collective psychological responses. Interpretive phenomenological analysis was employed to capture nuanced understandings of how communities experience and interpret media narratives during traumatic events. The findings reveal that constructive journalism approaches, strategically balanced content, and institutionalized collaboration between media organizations and mental health professionals contribute to meaningful enhancements in community resilience. The study articulates the key psychological mechanisms through which media influence collective behavior and proposes an evidence-based framework—the Psychologically Informed Crisis Coverage (PICC) model—for responsible crisis reporting. The results indicate that transparent, culturally sensitive, and solution-oriented coverage can transform collective trauma responses from patterns of despair and fragmentation into opportunities for community cohesion, collective healing, and posttraumatic growth. Synthesizing emerging research on digital media effects, trauma-informed organizational practice, and culturally responsive crisis communication, the study offers actionable implications for media practitioners, organizational leaders, and policymakers seeking to align media practices with public mental health imperatives.

Abstract: This article examines how Spanish rural cinema functions as a media dispositif — understood, following the Foucauldian concept as operationalised in media studies, as an apparatus of heterogeneous practices, discourses and institutional arrangements that produces and governs representations — for the construction and circulation of territorial imaginaries, thereby participating in the media ecosystem of public debates on depopulation, migration and multicultural coexistence. Through a diachronic and sociodemographic comparison of La piel quemada (Josep Maria Forn, 1967) and Suro (Mikel Gurrea, 2022) — two feature films set in the province of Girona (Catalonia, Spain) but separated by 55 years and opposing migratory pressures — the study analyses how audiovisual fiction produces, challenges and renegotiates the dominant sociodemographic imaginaries of two distinct historical conjunctures: the developmentalist boom of late Francoism and the neo-rural turn of the early twenty-first century. A qualitative chronotopic methodology is applied to 18 systematically selected sequences from both films, organised around three contextualising axes (historical, territorial, sociodemographic). The central original contribution is the concept of the media-geographic diptych as an instrument for diachronic comparative analysis of rural cinema as a media form. Secondary contributions include evidence of the structural continuity of xenophobia in the rural territorial media discourse of Girona over five decades and a theoretical proposal on cinematic multilingualism as an undertheorised territorial media practice. The discussion situates these findings within current debates on rural cosmopolitanism, overtourism and the media construction of la España vaciada, and offers preliminary evidence that audiovisual fiction occupies a differentiated position in the media ecology of territorial public discourse that merits systematic attention in future studies.

Abstract: International communication scholarship has undergone a paradigmatic reorientation since 2000, yet the field’s conceptual repertoire has expanded more rapidly than it has been theoretically integrated. This systematic literature review interrogates that fragmentation by mapping the trajectory of the field across the period 2000–2026 and assessing the extent to which its proliferating frameworks—cultural imperialism, hybridization, network society, platform imperialism, data colonialism, computational propaganda, sharp power, and algorithmic governance—constitute cumulative theoretical advancement or analytically incommensurable parallel vocabularies. Following PRISMA 2020 procedures (Page et al., 2021) and a thematic synthesis design (Thomas & Harden, 2008), the review consolidates peer-reviewed scholarship across seven major communication databases into seven thematic clusters: cultural globalization and media flows; comparative journalism and cross-national media systems; de-Westernization and decolonial currents; platformization, digital sovereignty, and media infrastructures; disinformation, computational propaganda, and information disorder; soft power, public diplomacy, and affective strategic communication; and the integration of generative artificial intelligence into transnational communication. Three theoretical findings emerge. First, the apparent succession of paradigms from broadcast-era to platform-era frameworks is better understood as conceptual layering, in which power-asymmetric models persist in modified form rather than being displaced by network-based alternatives. Second, the field’s longstanding tension between structural and agentic accounts has been reconfigured—but not resolved—by the platform turn, with infrastructural analysis emerging as a potential synthesizing register (Parks & Starosielski, 2015; Plantin & Punathambekar, 2019). Third, the persistent disjuncture between the field’s de-Westernization commitments and its bibliometric realities (Demeter, 2020) is theoretically consequential, indicating that epistemic asymmetries function not as residual artifacts but as constitutive features of contemporary international communication knowledge production. A seventh identified gap—the under-theorization of affective dimensions of international communication—extends the review’s analytic horizon to include emergent comparative work on emotion, civilizational rhetoric, and cross-border public engagement (Çelik, 2025; Hameleers & Garnier Ortiz, 2024; Wahl-Jorgensen, 2019). The review proposes a future research agenda centered on epistemic pluralism, methodological diversification, infrastructural and material analysis, and sustained engagement with planetary-scale technological change.

Abstract: As the information environment evolves, social media has become the primary channel through which the public accesses and shares information, and perceived credibility has emerged as a critical influence on how users evaluate the credibility of information. Existing research suggests that heuristic credibility cues can enhance users’ perceived credibility, yet the findings remain inconsistent. Consequently, it is necessary for researchers to systematically examine whether heuristic credibility cues can effectively enhance perceived credibility. This study employed a meta-analysis to analyse 18 studies meeting the selection criteria, involving a total sample size of 14,188 participants. The aim was to assess the overall effect of social media heuristic credibility cues on perceived credibility and to explore the influence of potential moderating mechanisms on perceived credibility. The results indicate that manipulating source cues and social cues which serve as heuristic credibility cues on social media significantly increased perceived credibility (g = 0.307, p = 0.000). Effect sizes varied across moderating variables such as the type of heuristic credibility cue, participant type, method of measuring perceived credibility, experimental design, sample size, and year of publication. Among these, the type of heuristic cue and participant type as significant moderators, specifically, authoritative sources were more effective than other types of information sources in enhancing perceived credibility; the impact of different types of social cues on perceived credibility was also significant to varying degrees. Furthermore, student groups were more susceptible to the influence of heuristic credibility cues than non-student groups. These findings provide theoretical and practical insights for the design of information dissemination and the construction of perceived credibility on social media. It should be noted that, given the limited number of studies included in this meta-analysis and the restricted range of moderator variables, the above conclusions require further empirical research to be tested and confirmed.

Abstract: This study presents a comprehensive qualitative synthesis and critical analysis of how foundational mass communication theories have been transformed across the digital media age, spanning the period from 2000 to 2025. Drawing on a systematic integrative review of 23 scholarly manuscripts that collectively engage more than 600 peer-reviewed sources, the investigation examines how ten canonical theories—Agenda Setting, Cultivation, Framing, the Two-Step Flow of Communication, the Spiral of Silence, Uses and Gratifications, Media Dependency, Gatekeeping, Diffusion of Innovation, and Technological Determinism—have evolved, converged, and been reconceptualized in response to the affordances and constraints of digital platforms, algorithmic mediation, and networked communication environments. Employing reflexive thematic analysis grounded in a critical-realist epistemology, the study identifies five overarching meta-themes: (a) the emergence of algorithmic agency as a structural force reshaping every theoretical paradigm; (b) the dialectical tension between expanded user agency and platform-imposed constraint; (c) the increasing platform specificity of communication effects; (d) the convergence and theoretical integration of formerly discrete paradigms; and (e) persistent global inequities in digital communication power structures. The findings indicate that although the core premises of classical theories retain explanatory value, their operative mechanisms, boundary conditions, and societal implications have undergone fundamental transformation. To capture this transformation, the study advances an integrative framework—the Algorithmic Communication Ecology Model (ACEM) that synthesizes insights across all ten theories to account for the recursive, multidirectional, and structurally mediated character of contemporary communication. Significant research gaps are identified, including the scarcity of longitudinal and cross-cultural scholarship, the limited investigation of emergent technologies such as generative artificial intelligence and immersive virtual environments, and the need for methodological innovation that couples computational scales with interpretive depth. The manuscript contributes to communication scholarship by offering a unified analytical lens for understanding how digital transformation has simultaneously preserved, disrupted, and reconstituted the theoretical foundations of the field.

Abstract: This integrative review traces the evolution of journalism in Saudi Arabia from its origins in early state communication to a contemporary, digitally networked media ecosystem. Drawing on peer-reviewed scholarships, official documentation, and verifiable industry data, the study situates the Kingdom’s media transformation within the wider programme of socio-economic reform associated with Vision 2030 and interrogates the interaction among regulatory governance, cultural continuity, economic diversification, and technological innovation. Using Whittemore and Knafl’s (2005) integrative method and a comparative media-systems lens (Hallin & Mancini, 2004, 2012), the analysis synthesises historical milestones, current connectivity indicators, and market estimates, and it corrects several errors that recur in secondary accounts—most notably the dating of the first radio (1949) and television (1965) services and the institutional lineage of contemporary media regulation. By January 2025, internet and social-media penetration had reached approximately 99% of the population (Kemp, 2025), reshaping production, distribution, and consumption of news, while female labour-force participation rose from 23.2% in 2016 to roughly 35% by 2023, surpassing the Vision 2030 target ahead of schedule (World Bank, 2026). The findings describe a model of managed modernisation in which media reform is deliberately sequenced to align with national development while preserving social cohesion. The review contributes to scholarship on media development in non-Western contexts and offers evidence-based recommendations for policymakers, media organisations, educators, technology developers, and international partners.

Abstract: Academic discourse on artificial intelligence (AI) philosophy is produced pre-dominantly within elite institutional settings, leaving the global public’s philosophical en-gagement patterns empirically underexplored. This exploratory observational study ana-lyzes a closed 38-day behavioral analytics corpus from Human Error, a YouTube Shorts channel releasing 351 serialized philosophical episodes across 12 thematic series (16 April–23 May 2026; Nviews = 11,634; nunique viewers = 1,514; 13 countries). Per-episode YouTube Studio analytics were integrated with two-coder thematic title classification (κ > 0.81) and national-level contextual variables. Five exploratory, descriptive findings emerge. First, episodes addressing biological embodiment and grief were associated with higher aver-age views than those addressing consciousness and identity themes (series means: 366.3 vs. 43.2 views per episode, respectively); this descriptive contrast should not be interpreted causally. Second, the 38-day audience distributed across three generational cohorts—13–17 years (10.9%), 25–34 years (58.2%), 35–44 years (30.9%)—with the 25–34 cohort appearing at approximately 2.7 times the YouTube global baseline. Third, behavioral engagement was recorded organically across 13 countries, including unexpected presence from Malaysia and Bangladesh, providing preliminary evidence that challenges a narrow Western-only interpretation of interest in AI irreducibility discourse. Fourth, direct philosophical claims in episode titles were associated with substantially higher average views (M = 237) com-pared with urgency-coded titles (M = 31). Fifth, adults aged 45+ registered no measurable engagement in either analytical window; the Thumb Exclusion Cascade (TEC) is proposed as a plausible theoretical hypothesis for this pattern pending future empirical validation. Three constructs are introduced as analytical tools for future research: the Impression-to-View Conversion Ratio (IVCR), the Completion Surplus Index (CSI), and the Thumb Exclusion Cascade (TEC). All findings are interpreted as exploratory and hypothesis-generating; the observational design does not support causal inference.

Abstract: The rapid expansion of artificial intelligence (AI), algorithmic governance, and digital platform infrastructures has fundamentally transformed communication systems, public participation, and information accessibility across technologically advanced societies. In Japan, the emergence of a platform-centered digital environment has intensified debates surrounding media governance, digital citizenship, data ethics, and communication inequality, particularly among socially vulnerable populations. Despite Japan’s global reputation for technological innovation and smart society initiatives, significant disparities remain in terms of digital inclusion, algorithmic fairness, accessibility, and participatory communication. Vulnerable citizens—including elderly populations, migrant workers, and women subjected to online harassment, persons with disabilities, and socially isolated youth— frequently encounter structural barriers within AI-mediated communication ecosystems. These challenges raise critical concerns regarding media policy adequacy, platform accountability, and democratic communication rights in contemporary Japanese society.This study critically examines the interrelationship between AI-driven digital platforms, vulnerable citizens, and emerging media policy concerns in Japan. Drawing upon theories of platform society, surveillance capitalism, digital citizenship, and social vulnerability, the article explores how algorithmic systems reproduce communication inequalities and reinforce forms of digital exclusion within everyday media environments. The research adopts a qualitative interpretative methodology using critical discourse analysis and policy analysis to examine Japanese media governance documents, AI ethical guidelines, digital platform regulations, governmental reports, and public communication frameworks. The study further incorporates interdisciplinary perspectives from communication studies, political economy of media, digital sociology, and technology governance.The findings indicate that while Japan has advanced significantly in technological modernization and AI integration, media policy frameworks remain fragmented and insufficiently responsive to the needs of vulnerable communities. Algorithmic visibility inequalities, multilingual accessibility limitations, digital literacy gaps among elderly citizens, AI-assisted discriminatory moderation systems, and unequal access to digital public services contribute to new forms of communication precarity. The study also demonstrates that platform governance structures frequently prioritize technological efficiency and data-driven optimization over communication justice, inclusivity, and democratic participation. Moreover, AI-based communication systems in disaster management, smart city governance, and automated information dissemination often fail to adequately address the socio-cultural realities of marginalized populations.The article argues that vulnerability in contemporary Japan must be understood not merely as an economic or social condition, but increasingly as an algorithmically mediated and platform-produced phenomenon. Consequently, existing media policy paradigms require substantial transformation toward more inclusive, rights-based, and ethically accountable governance frameworks. The study proposes policy recommendations emphasizing transparent algorithmic governance, accessibility-centered platform regulation, multilingual digital communication policies, AI literacy initiatives, and strengthened public service media infrastructures.By situating Japan within broader global discussions on AI governance and digital inequality, this research contributes to emerging scholarship on media policy and vulnerable populations in platform societies. The article advances theoretical debates concerning communication rights, digital citizenship, and algorithmic power while offering policy-oriented insights applicable to technologically advanced democracies confronting the social consequences of AI-mediated communication systems.

Abstract: Comparative research on digital social influence and sustainable food consumption has grown substantially; however, most transnational studies do not verify measurement invariance nor assess whether observed structural differences reflect genuine cultural variation or measurement artifacts. This study addresses this gap by applying the Stimulus–Organism–Response (SOR) model to examine whether Social Media Content (SMC) and Online Member Group Support (OMGS) influence Organic Product Purchasing Behavior (OPPB) through Environmental Attitude (EA) and Subjective Norms (SN) in Ecuador, Chile, and Peru. A cross-sectional quantitative design was implemented with 809 organic consumers, analyzed using PLS-SEM in two stages: assessment of compositional invariance via the MICOM procedure and multigroup analysis (MGA) based on permutations. Full compositional invariance was confirmed across the three national groups, validating transnational structural comparability. The SOR model held consistently, with EA emerging as a stable predictor of OPPB. Significant structural differences were identified: the SMC→SN path was significantly stronger in Chile (β = .671 vs. β = .558 in Peru; p <.01), whereas the OMGS→EA path was stronger in Peru (β = .284 vs. β = .211 in Chile; p < .05). These findings underscore the need to formally verify invariance before drawing transnational conclusions and highlight the cultural contingency of sustainable digital marketing strategies in Andean emerging markets.

Abstract: The connectivity paradox of contemporary platforms — unprecedented technical connectivity alongside rising loneliness, passivity, and erosion of deliberative public space — has been diagnosed as a problem of attention, design, or scale. We argue it is a symptom of a more fundamental shift: the architectural removal of the human social other from communicative circuits. This paper introduces directionality as a formal variable that captures the presence, absence, and configuration of the human other, and traces its variation from bidirectional social graphs through unidirectional interest graphs to Zero-Directionality, where the user interacts with a synthetic partner alone. Drawing on Luhmann’s social systems theory, Simmel’s analysis of dyadic and triadic forms, and the Latour–Verbeek tradition of technological mediation, we show that zero-directionality is a structural threshold rather than a point on a continuum. When the human other is removed, the Luhmannian third selection collapses, the Simmelian dyad faces a binary choice, and the social form bifurcates into two divergent trajectories. In the Inverted Loop (−1SC), the machine absorbs the structural position of the other, the user becomes operand in a self-referential circuit, and agency contracts from authorial to inhibitory. In the Triadic Mesh (3SC), AI mediates between humans rather than replacing them, preserving human connection while transforming its operation. We propose three diagnostic tests: Adaptation Loop, Agency Topology, Bounding Variable. These tests determine which regime a given system instantiates, and apply them across major consumer platforms. The framework reframes contemporary debates about AI and democracy, autonomy, and the right to the future tense as questions about which directionality regime a given AI-mediated environment instantiates — a question of design, not destiny.

Abstract: This integrative review examines the theoretical evolution and empirical applications of three interconnected media dependency frameworks: the foundational Uses and Dependency Model, Internet Use and Dependency adaptations, and the New Media Uses and Dependency Effect Model. Drawing on 30 peer-reviewed studies spanning five decades, the review traces how dependency theory has evolved from explaining mass media effects in centralized broadcast systems to accounting for interactive, ubiquitous, and habitual digital media use. The foundational model established that media effects emerge from goal-directed dependency relations embedded in tripartite audience–media–society relationships, with understanding, orientation, and play as primary audience goals. Internet adaptations extended these principles to digital affordances—interactivity, comprehensiveness, and perpetual availability—while shifting the unit of analysis from media systems to specific platforms.The New Media Uses and Dependency Effect Model further refined causal mechanisms by integrating habitual use as a precursor to dependency and specifying mediation pathways linking habit to cognitive, affective, and behavioral outcomes through dependency intensity. This review synthesizes theoretical continuities, identifies key innovations across models, presents comparative analyses, and discusses empirical evidence, critical limitations, and future research directions. The analysis demonstrates that while all three frameworks retain the core logic of goal-oriented dependency, they progressively incorporate finer-grained mechanisms—platform attributes, perceived utility, and habitual patterns—that enable more precise operationalization and testing in contemporary digital environments.