History of Media Studies Newsletter June 2026

Welcome to the 59th edition of the History of Media Studies Newsletter. The monthly email, assembled by Dave Park, Jeff Pooley, and Pete Simonson, maintains a loose affiliation with the History of Media Studies journal and the Working Group on the History of Media Studies. Please contact us with any questions, suggestions, or items.

1. Working Group on the History of Media Studies

Join us for the next remote session devoted to discussing working papers with authors. Hosted by the Consortium for History of Science, Technology and Medicine (CHSTM). Open to anyone interested in the history of the media studies fields. Instructions to join are here.

The Working Group is off for the summer. We will resume in September with a draft paper from Andrew Williams (University of Pennsylvania).

Questions? Contact us

2. Conferences, Calls & Announcements

If you have a call or announcement relevant to the history of media studies, please contact us.

NOTE: Several items below have deadlines in the next few days.

1. CFP: Special Issue of International Communication Gazette: Communication Studies In Between Time and Space

• Inspired by self-reflexive debates on the status quo and transnational trajectory of communication studies, this special issue aims to shed light on the multifaceted global history of communication studies in stages of ‘in betweenness’. Such transition periods are marked by political system changes in which rules have become unclear and fluid, old authorities lost legitimacy and new rules are not yet established. How have such times influenced ideas, academic communities and institutions of communication and media studies? How have scholarly communities navigated turbulent times such as the so-called Arab Spring, the end of the socialist Era in Eastern Europe or the long transition from colonialism to independence and republic for instance in Brazil in 19th century? How did agency and structures interact to push or silence certain discourses in such periods, propel certain intellectual paradigms and schools of thought or strengthen certain actors over others? Which conclusions can be drawn from these times for today – , from the interconnectedness of (higher education) political structures and ideas, institutions and biographies? The call for papers for this special issue invites authors from all over the world exploring global histories of communication studies in times of ‘in betweenness’. These histories may cover the older and the more contemporary times. The special issue aims to gauge the breadth and depth of the field’s development. The guest-editors welcome abstracts of 500–800 words (not including references) describing the primary contribution or argument of the intended article, and how it fits with the overall description of the special issue.
• Deadline: 30 June 2026
• More details

2. CFP: Feminist Influences: Theorists and Writings that Shaped Feminist and Queer Media Studies

• Feminist Influences will be a collection of essays in which feminist and queer film scholars reflect on theories and theorists that shaped their thinking, focusing on a single essay or chapter. Essayists are encouraged to think not only about an essay or chapter written by an elder feminist or queer forerunner, but also essays by peers, or by younger scholars. It may be an essay that influenced your thinking early on, or something that changed your thinking later, something that modeled a form of academic writing or inquiry, something that you teach often or use in your own writing, or something that helped (re)frame your world view. Essayists may choose feminist or queer influences from within film and media studies or theorists whose work is external to media studies that nonetheless shaped one’s approach to film and media. Laura Mulvey’s “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” is not allowed (but will be discussed in the introduction). Final essays will be 3000 – 4000 words, notes included, and they should be written in a style accessible to undergraduates as well as graduate students and faculty. Proposals should be sent to [email protected] by June 30, 2026. Proposals should be 200 words with title, author and bibliographic citation of the preferred essay or chapter, an explanation of why it is central to your work, and why you think it is or should be relevant to others. Contributors may submit up to three ranked proposals (in case one’s choice is taken). Proposal should also include a 50 word bio. Submissions will be selected and writers notified by July 30, 2026. Any questions should be sent direct to Pamela at the email above.
• Deadline: June 30, 2026
• More details

3. CFP: Mediaciones teóricas en comunicación. Pensamiento, instituciones y debates contemporáneos (Theoretical Mediations in Communication: Thought, institutions, and contemporary debates)

• The dossier focuses on critical analysis, theoretical reflection, and epistemological reconstruction of communication and journalism studies, with a special emphasis on Latin America. Institution: Cuadernos del CIPeCo - Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, Argentina. Scope: Theoretical, epistemological, and critical research in communication and journalism studies, focusing on contemporary debates and Latin American perspectives. Languages accepted: Español.
• Deadline: 10 July 2026
• More details

4. CFP: The Film-Philosophies of Stanley Cavell and Gilles Deleuze

• In the latter half of the 20th century, philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Stanley Cavell developed parallel ideas on film’s distinct capacity for producing thought. While Deleuze and Cavell’s respective influence continues to grow across the Atlantic and indeed globally, and their texts on cinema are by now considered seminal works in the field of film-philosophy, their ideas have only in exceptional cases been brought to bear on one another productively. This special issue of Philosophies, edited by Jeroen Gerrits (Binghamton University, SUNY) and Sandra Laugier (Université Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne), seeks to explore generative conjunctions and differences between Cavell and Deleuze’s transversal thought in light of this changing media landscape, with a focus on the pertinence of their works on film and media for philosophy.
• Deadline: 1 August 2026
• More details

5. CFP: Intersections of psychological research and psychotherapeutic practices

• This special issue of the Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences seeks to contribute to the emerging historiography of psychotherapy, focusing on the “Intersections of Psychological Research and Psychotherapeutic Practices.” This topic originates from the 10th International Workshop on Historical Epistemology (University of Lübeck, 2025), which brought together scholars drawing on historical epistemology and related approaches that integrate the philosophy and history of science to analyze how knowledge and therapeutic practices concerning the psyche have been co-constructed across experimental, clinical and cultural contexts. By examining these intertwined epistemic and normative dimensions, this special issue aims to understand the history of psychotherapy as a crossroads of reciprocal production and continual transformation among psychological knowledge, research practices, techniques of the self, social institutions, and modern forms of subjectivity.
• Deadline: 30 September 2026
• More details

6. Third International History of Knowledge Conference: “Decentering the History of Knowledge”

• The third History of Knowledge Conference will take place in Utrecht on 25-27 August 2027. The conference follows the successful first international History of Knowledge Conference in Porto in 2023, and the second edition, hosted by the Lund Centre for the History of Knowledge in 2025. Utrecht University is home of the Descartes Centre for the History and Philosophy of Sciences and the Humanities, and the field’s flagship Journal for the History of Knowledge. In recent years, history of knowledge has developed into a vibrant field of interdisciplinary research and scholarship around the globe. The History of Knowledge Conference will gather scholars with a diversity of backgrounds to further develop the field and its impact on other disciplines and society. Fostering inclusivity, we welcome all scholars working on the history of knowledge in the broadest sense. The central theme of the conference will be: “Decentering the History of Knowledge.”
• Conference dates: 25–27 August 2027
• Deadline: A call for papers will be published in the Fall of 2026.
• More details

3. The Journal

History of Media Studies encourages submissions (en español) on the history of research, education, and reflective knowledge about media and communication—as expressed through academic institutions; through commercial, governmental, and non-governmental organizations; and through “alter-traditions” of thought and practice often excluded from the academic mainstream.

• The journal is soliciting proposals for a special section on the histories of publishing in the media, communication, and film studies fields. The focus of the special section is on the role of publishers—both commercial and nonprofit—in these fields’ development. Proposals of around 1000 words, including references, should be sent by September 15, 2026. See the CFP for more details.
• The journal published a review essay, “De sombras, silencios y reivindicaciones. Reseña de los libros En las sombras de la tradición y Voces silenciadas, voces escuchadas,” by Yamila Heram.

4. New Publications

Works listed here are newly published, or new to the bibliography.

The History of Communication Research Bibliography is a project of the Annenberg School for Communication Library Archives (ASCLA) at the University of Pennsylvania.

1. Bennett, Andy. "The legacy of Resistance through Rituals." Crime, Media, Culture 22, no. 3 (2026): 570--582. https://doi.org/10.1177/17416590261417217.

   ABSTRACT: Since its initial publication in 1976, Resistance Through Rituals has become one of the most influential – and criticised – texts in the academic study of youth culture. Criticisms fall into two broad camps: the perceived shortcomings of the study itself, notably its lack of attention to issues of gender and ethnicity, its Anglo-centric focus and the absence of empirical data to support its central claims vis a vis the significance of subculture as site of working-class youth resistance; criticisms of the concept of subculture itself and the proposing of new conceptual frameworks, notably, scene, lifestyle and neo-tribe. Beyond such criticism, however, there are also other questions to consider in assessing the 50-year legacy of Resistance Through Rituals. How has the concept of youth culture itself changed over the last 50 years? How have such changes been influenced by factors such as post-industrialisation, digital technologies and shifts in understandings about age and age-appropriate behaviour? Taking such considerations into account, this article will discuss the extent to which Resistance Through Rituals reads in the current context as a largely historical text and, conversely, what aspects of the work continue to have relevance (or perhaps revived relevance) for the study of youth in a contemporary context?

2. Bettinson, Gary. "Kung fu scholar: David Bordwell's poetics of Hong Kong cinema." 20, no. 1 (2026): 9--21. https://doi.org/10.3167/proj.2026.200103.

   ABSTRACT: In Planet Hong Kong and other writings, David Bordwell greatly advanced the academic study of Hong Kong cinema. From a perspective of “stealth poetics,” Bordwell illuminated the craft practices, aesthetic norms, and spectatorial effects that characterize filmmaking in the region. Yet his work drew the ire of scholars wedded to an allegorical hermeneutics of Hong Kong cinema. In this article, I contrast Bordwell's bottom-up analysis with the culturalism that governs the scholarship. I rebut several tenacious criticisms that have clung to Bordwell's account of Hong Kong film, from Bordwell's status as a cultural outsider to his reliance on Hollywood cinema as a key frame of reference. Lastly, I seek to extend Bordwell's work by advancing a poetics of Hong Kong acting and performance.

3. Clarke, John. "Revisiting Resistance through Rituals: Beyond essentialism – Then and now?." Crime, Media, Culture 22, no. 3 (2026): 526--543. https://doi.org/10.1177/17416590251345698.

   ABSTRACT: Revisiting Resistance through Rituals in a very different conjuncture has made me think about some of the less dramatic threads of its analyses for their capacity to connect then and now. The first involves the idea of a repertoire of negotiations and responses (Hall and Jefferson, 2006: 36) which sketches a non-essentialist approach to thinking about the forms and practices of working-class political culture. What might the idea of ‘repertoire’ allow us to think better? The second centres of the conception of subcultures as expressing magical solutions to the problems, contradictions and conflicts that confronted particular sections of the working class. How useful is the idea of magical solutions – and the associated displacement of problems, contradictions and conflicts – for thinking about contemporary forms and practices? Finally, I have been struck by echoes of the collection’s concern with, and critique of, concepts of generation and generational consciousness. Resistance Through Rituals emerged from a critique of generational consciousness. How might we rethink generation in terms of the complex relational constitution of political subjects? None of these are about a return to subcultural studies for me, but I find them suggestive ways of thinking about contemporary formations and questions about how to study them.

4. Cribb, Corey P. "Empire of rain: Rancière, Béla Tarr, and the politics of the sensible." 15 (2026). https://necsus-ejms.org/empire-of-rain-ranciere-bela-tarr-and-the-politics-of-the-sensible/.

   ABSTRACT: [first paragraph, in lieu of abstract] Jacques Rancière’s writings on the visual arts have been celebrated by scholars of film and media for their re-politicisation of aesthetics through the development of the category of the ‘aesthetic regime of art’ and the related concept of ‘the sensible’. Fundamentally linked to affect and sensation, Rancière’s concepts have struck a chord with humanities scholars in recent years due to their recasting of affectivity from the standpoint of a Marxist politics for which aesthetic judgement cannot be fully divorced from emancipatory struggles. And yet Rancière’s writings on cinema are animated by his belief that there lies an incommensurable ‘gap’ [écart] between his own cinephilic ‘passions’ (seemingly inherited from Cahiers du cinéma) and his political commitments, which Rancière addresses in the preface to The Intervals of Cinema.

5. Fahlenbrach, Kathrin. "Embodied cues in cinematic narration?." 20, no. 1 (2026): 115--125. https://doi.org/10.3167/proj.2026.200111.

   ABSTRACT: David Bordwell's work has been widely received as primarily focusing on cognitive aspects in film aesthetics and its experience by spectators. Indeed, he specifically emphasized cognitive inferences in narrative films, even explicitly excluding affective aspects from his approach. But at the same time, he put forward a multi-level understanding of film aesthetics and spectatorship and followed a holistic understanding to filmic spectatorship that could not be reduced to “higher cognition.” The article will revisit Bordwell's concept of narrative cues to reflect on its implications and potentials for embodied and affective approaches to film aesthetics. It will be discussed whether and how stylistic devices can channel “explicit meanings” on an embodied and affective level, also beyond culturally and cognitively grounded meanings.

6. Havers, Grant N. The medium is still the message. Cornell University Pres (2025). https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501783661/the-medium-is-still-the-message/.

   ABSTRACT: The Medium Is Still the Message presents Marshall McLuhan, history's foremost philosopher of media, as the indispensable guide for understanding the impact of technologies. McLuhan (1911-1980) shows that media are not simply tools of communication: they create new environments with transformational effects on politics, economics, culture, identity, religion, and nature. Grant N. Havers argues that McLuhan's key insight--"the medium is the message"--is even more relevant today as humanity grapples with the unintended effects of new media. As McLuhan demonstrated, a lack of understanding about the power of media technologies allows these entities to become idols that enslave their makers. At the same time, they encourage human beings to act like gods who can reinvent reality itself, all the while leading to the decline of literacy, the weakening of democracy, the resurgence of tribalism within the global village, and the elusive search for identity in cyberspace. The Medium Is Still the Message ultimately offers good news: using McLuhan's insights, human beings can escape the technological cave that they have fashioned for themselves.

7. Jankowski, Filip. "Beyond Huizinga and Caillois: French play studies before game studies." Journal of Gaming & Virtual Worlds 17, no. 3 (2025): 269--281. https://doi.org/10.1386/jgvw_00134_1.

   ABSTRACT: Traditionally, the works of Johan Huizinga and Roger Caillois are recognized as the foundational texts of English-language game studies. This article, however, aims to demonstrate that French-speaking scholars Jean Château and Jacques Henriot, though overshadowed by the aforementioned authors, made equally significant contributions to the discipline’s development. Through an examination of their works, the author identifies key commonalities and distinctions between pre-1997 French play studies and English-language game studies, with the latter experiencing rapid growth since the 1990s. These differences encompass contrasting approaches to the ontology of play/games (predominant in English-language game studies) versus the social dimensions and applications of play (the central focus of French-language studies by Henriot and Château). The author advocates for the inclusion of Château and Henriot in the historiography of theoretical reflections on games, thus broadening our understanding of the field’s intellectual foundations.

8. Jefferson, Tony. "Reflecting on Resistance through Rituals 50 years on." Crime, Media, Culture 22, no. 3 (2026): 518--525. https://doi.org/10.1177/17416590251349555.

   ABSTRACT: Resistance Through Rituals (RTR) is an edited volume of essays variously addressing the question of youth subcultures in post war Britain that was written by many different hands. Reflecting on that diversity is, inevitably, selective. I wish to focus on three things that remain central to my work: the idea of conjunctural analysis; the importance of ‘secondary’ ethnography; and writing as a political intervention. RTR is perhaps best remembered for its notion of reading the various youth subcultural ‘styles’. I want to emphasise the way these were used to better understand the political conjuncture. RTR was often criticised for its lack of primary ethnographic detail. I wish to emphasise its use of secondary ethnography, the use of non-participant observation materials, and the importance of that. Finally, I want to discuss the politics of intellectual work, in the context of the atmosphere in the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) in the 1970s, and the idea of RTR as a political intervention in the battleground of ideas.

9. Jones, Paul K. "The reception of Frankfurt critical theory within ‘British’ cultural studies: Hall, Williams, Gilroy." In Global critical theories, eds. Oliver Kozlarek and Gustavo Leyva Martínez (2025): 371--408. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-47185-9_16.

   ABSTRACT: The ‘British’ cultural studies tradition, taking its name from the foundational Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, is a rich source of polemical dismissals of Frankfurt critical theory. These form part of the former’s cultural populist tendency, an intellectual populism that celebrates all ‘popular culture’ as constituting the voice of ‘the people’. Adorno, most strikingly, is so framed as a place marker for the ‘elitist other’ of such populism. The demonstrable nonsensicality of such claims, however, risks obscuring more considered scholarship within that cultural studies tradition. This chapter situates this place marking problem but also goes beyond place marking characterizations of both these intellectual formations. Accordingly, three key figures in the serious reception of critical theory are investigated as their work achieves a degree of scholarly elaboration suitable for immanent critique: Stuart Hall (1932–2014), Raymond Williams (1921–1988) and Paul Gilroy (1956-). For the Welsh-born Williams and leading Black intellectuals Hall and Gilroy a ‘British’ identity is necessarily problematic. Each draws on the Frankfurt tradition productively, if unevenly, in establishing their own distinct stances as critical intellectuals.

10. Jones, Steve. "Logging off (but leaving the tabs open)." New Media & Society 28, no. 6 (2026): 2337--2340. https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448261451618.

    ABSTRACT: [first paragraph, in lieu of abstract] It has been 30 years since Nick Jankowski, Rohan Samarajiva, Roger Silverstone, and I first began the conversations that led to the creation of New Media & Society. While new media have changed greatly during that 30-year period, the goal we set out when creating the journal, that it would “contribute to the social, cultural, and political understanding of new media and information technologies” (Jankowski et al., 1999: 5), remains valuable, relevant, and necessary. As we noted in our editorial introduction in 1999, the notion of what is “new” itself demands critique. Media and technologies have changed, come, and (rarely) gone, and they have introduced new questions, problems, issues and areas for research and scholarship. They have also made critical inquiry of the “new” media of past decades just as important.

11. Keating, Patrick. "On classicism and causal clarity." 20, no. 1 (2026): 40--51. https://doi.org/10.3167/proj.2026.200105.

    ABSTRACT: This article explains how David Bordwell's theory of classical Hollywood cinema changed over the years, comparing his writings from 1985 with later publications such as Reinventing Hollywood. While Bordwell continued to argue that narrative was a dominant principle in classical cinema, his definition of narrative grew more expansive, placing less emphasis on the causal chain and more emphasis on narrative dynamics. Extending this insight about classical narration to the study of classical style, I argue that stylistic devices, such as cinematography, do much more than causal clarification. Even in a storytelling context, a classical film may use cinematography to hint, conceal, mislead, and reveal. Classical style can be eye-catching and emotionally charged, not in spite of narrative, and not in addition to narrative, but because of it.

12. Kovács, András Bálint. "David Bordwell’s norm." 20, no. 1 (2026): 90--99. https://doi.org/10.3167/proj.2026.200109.

    ABSTRACT: David Bordwell's reformulation of film historiography reintroduced style as a historical and empirical category, positioning it between the formalist rigor of semiotics and the contextual concerns of social and industrial history. Drawing from Jan Mukařovský’s concept of the aesthetic norm, he reinterpreted it through Ernst Gombrich's problem–solution model and the cognitive-psychological framework of schemata and mental models. By integrating sociological, psychological, technological, and functional dimensions of film style, Bordwell's historical poetics established a method for understanding how filmmakers negotiate competing functions and constraints to solve expressive problems. The “norm” thus serves as his Archimedean point—a balance between individual agency and collective convention that renders film stylistics intelligible without recourse to deterministic or essentialist histories.

13. Lima, Venício A. de. "Lições de um professor de economia política da comunicação." Revista Eletrônica Internacional de Economia Política da Informação da Comunicação e da Cultura 28, no. 1 (2026): 57--63. https://doi.org/10.54786/revistaeptic.v28i1.25197.

    ABSTRACT: El texto explora la relación entre el cristianismo y el marxismo, a partir de la trayectoria de Thomas H. Guback, herdeiro y continuador de la tradición de estudios de Economía Política de la Comunicación, tornado padre episcopal hace 64 años. Trata-se de un buen ejemplo de “velho” que, así como Paulo Freire y Terry Eagleton, permanece militante tanto con Cristo, cuanto con Marx y, además, soube enfrentar con lucidez el “horror metafísico”.

14. MacDonald, Robert. "Missing youth: Reflecting on Resistance through Rituals and the sociological study of working-class youth and youth culture since then." Crime, Media, Culture 22, no. 3 (2026): 544--555. https://doi.org/10.1177/17416590251359146.

    ABSTRACT: Resistance Through Rituals (RTR) remains one of the most important texts in the history of British youth sociology. The influence of CCCS sub-culture theory was profound and far-reaching. Nevertheless, criticisms soon came and, arguably, one of the most significant of these was about the apparent absence of the mass of working-class young people from subcultures and subcultural analysis and their implicit framing, therefore, as less interesting and more conformist than the stylish and ‘spectacular few’. In this short and occasionally autobiographical paper, I will, firstly, note some of the key criticisms of the work of the CCCS on youth sub-cultures. Secondly, I will sketch out the ‘two traditions’ of youth sociology in the UK since RTR and locate my own research in relation to youth cultural studies and studies of youth transitions. This is followed, thirdly, by a brief critique of the turn to post-modern, ‘post-subcultural studies’ in the 1990s and, fourthly, by an explanation of the abeyance of a concerted youth cultural sociology in Britain since then. Finally, in conclusion, I suggest that the theoretical framework developed by the CCCS writers – which went beyond the tight focus on narrowly-defined, stylistically spectacular subcultures – still has great relevance for contemporary youth sociologists.

15. Mantovaneli, Wagner Piassaroli. "O controle social na teoria da comunicação: Uma revisão histórica | Social control in communication theory: a historical review." MATRIZes 20, no. 1 (2026): 203--228. https://doi.org/10.11606/issn.1982-8160.v20i1p203-228.

    ABSTRACT: A presente pesquisa tem por objetivo estabelecer uma visão acerca do conceito de controle social na história das mais influentes teorias da comunicação. A presente narrativa, tida como resultado, visa conectar historicamente teorias que pertencem tanto à tradição teórica da sociologia quanto da psicologia social. O conceito de controle social é capaz de gerar uma narrativa integradora para compreender a evolução do pensamento comunicacional como consequência da preocupação de pesquisadores da comunicação com questões de regulação comportamental e social no decorrer do tempo. Desde Lippmann, ao menos, desenvolveu-se uma preocupação constante sobre como atitudes humanas são reguladas em uma sociedade de crescente midiatização.| The present research aims to establish a perspective on the concept of social control within the history of the most influential communication theories. The resulting narrative seeks to historically connect theories belonging to both sociological and social psychological traditions. The concept of social control serves as an integrative framework to understand the evolution of communication thought as a consequence of communication researchers’ concern with issues of behavioral and social regulation over time. Since Lippmann, at least, there has been a consistent focus on how human attitudes are regulated in an increasingly mediatized society.

16. Mantovaneli, Wagner Piassaroli. "Communication and control in the fabric of the social construction of reality." Galáxia (São Paulo) 50 (2025): 1--32. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1590/1982-2553202568497.

    ABSTRACT: This article aims to reestablish the dialog between communication and control by providing central arguments that the relation between both concepts is not only documented in many authors’ works on the subject, but also by reflecting that these works helped maintain the central point that social control and communication lie in the very fabric of the social construction of realities, from the regulation of interactions to whole societies. Communication science, too, is a result of this process, not merely a consequence of the development of industries, but rather an outgrowth of knowledge of regulatory problems of society in general. Communication science was built in America upon the necessities of understanding the control of human affairs and politics through public opinion and mass media in the urban areas. The history of communication science has taken the concept of control for granted and connected it either to cybernetics and “mainstream sociology” as in the work of functionalists, creating a stalemate in the discussions around communication and its means of control developed in many theories, as well as preventing our studies from connecting to larger social and criminological grand narratives.

17. Martin, Greg. "Revisiting Resistance through Rituals 50 years on." Crime, Media, Culture 22, no. 3 (2026): 489--499. https://doi.org/10.1177/17416590261450414.

    ABSTRACT: This article introduces the special issue of Crime Media Culture that considers the legacy and currency of Resistance through Rituals (RTR) since its publication in 1976. While RTR and the wider work of the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) influenced a succession of research studies on youth culture and subculture, as well as paving some of the way for what has come to be called cultural criminology (which provided a foundation for establishing Crime Media Culture), they have not received universal affirmation. Most prominently, from the 1990s, RTR and the work of the CCCS were criticised by researchers associated with the post-subcultural turn for focusing on socio-economic class, and working-class youth in particular, when youth identities and styles at the turn of the century appeared far more fluid and fragmented than the clearly delineated and internally coherent youth subcultures of RTR. Notwithstanding those criticisms, many contributing to the special issue maintain there is currency in RTR, including in relation to its method of conjunctural analysis.

18. O’Connor, Justin. "Rethinking the foundations: Global cultural policy at the crossroads." European Journal of Cultural Studies 29, no. 2 (2026): 427--444. https://doi.org/10.1177/13675494251337934.

    ABSTRACT: This article extends the culture-as-foundational approach to the global level of cultural policy. Reviewing the failure of the 2015 campaign to establish culture as one of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the article argues that reframing culture away from being an economic sector and towards a cross-cutting all of society thematic is likely to compound the problems facing culture at global level. The article argues for a narrower framing of culture as the symbolic system of ‘art and culture’, taking as its exemplars the 1982 UNESCO MONDIACULT Conference, the 1995 UNESCO Our Creative Diversity and the 2005 Convention on Diversity of Cultural Expressions. It tried to show how a foundational approach to culture, including the notion of (global) public goods, can open up a route to a new, more radical approach to global cultural policy fit for these more uncertain times. This article is part of the special issue Culture as Foundational.

19. Patel, Jayesh, Anuj Sharma, Yupal Shukla, and Kallol Das. "Role of culture in consumer marketing: Thematic trajectories and theoretical roots." Journal of Creative Communications 21, no. 2 (2026): 147--165. https://doi.org/10.1177/09732586231205069.

    ABSTRACT: Culture has been considered the primary motivator affecting consumers’ decisions for years. Despite the importance of consumer culture, the systematic review of literature studying consumer culture is less and remains highly fragmented. This study uses a topic modelling approach to explore the role of culture in marketing literature to propose a way forward for future researchers interested in this domain. The study helps to synthesise cultural impact in marketing with a specific focus on dominant research topics and key themes, presenting clarity to the extant knowledge base. This study offers two potential contributions to the research community. First, this study demonstrates the application of structured topic modelling as a text analytics method that helps to report the evolution and thematic structure of this rapidly expanding domain. Second, the scientometric analysis in this study maps the conceptual structure of research with interconnected research themes hidden in this domain.

20. Plantinga, Carl, and Jeff Smith. "Introduction to projections: David Bordwell’s contributions to the study of film." 20, no. 1 (2026): 1--4. https://doi.org/10.3167/proj.2026.200101.

    ABSTRACT: David Bordwell's passing in 2024 reverberates throughout film studies, but especially for his many colleagues, mentees, former students, and cinephiles generally. It would be hard to exaggerate David Bordwell's role in the development of cognitive film studies. His work pointed the way for many of us in its rigor and precision. His attention to form and style and how they relate to viewer psychology has been unsurpassed. Bordwell was a tireless writer and blogger, and his work has a central place in film scholarship. He showed how fruitful the combination of cinema poetics and cognitive psychology could be. In fact, a poetics of film that ignores viewer perception and comprehension now seems thin and incomplete.

21. Sampson, Tony D., Jernej Markelj, and Diana Lengua. "On modes of (over)stimulation." Media Theory 10, no. 1 (2026): 01--28. https://doi.org/10.70064/mt.v10i1.1364.

    ABSTRACT: This essay provides an introductory account of concerns over media stimulation through a series of critical lenses. Building on theoretical debates concerning the struggle for control of perception and the potential to rewire the human perceptual apparatus, we examine issues such as distraction, shock, and desensitization, and consider their significance in the contemporary mediascape. First, we map historical precedents theorizing the modern sensorium, including Georg Simmel’s account of the metropolis, Walter Benjamin’s concept of shock, and Marshall McLuhan’s notion of numbness. Second, we consider stimulation and overstimulation from a media-ecological perspective, which emphasizes entanglement between human subjects and computational technologies. We then reconsider pessimistic diagnoses of media (over)stimulation, seeking to nuance these accounts, and turn to emerging interfaces, such as neural media, to explore new frontiers of stimulation. Before introducing the inspired contributions to this special issue, we establish some guiding principles for a new media theory of (over)stimulation.

22. Shin, Charis, and Jiawei Sophia Fu. "Looking back, moving forward: A systematic review of entrepreneurship studies in communication research." International Journal of Business Communication 63, no. 3 (2026): 861--889. https://doi.org/10.1177/23294884241255906.

    ABSTRACT: Despite scholarly consensus that communication is significant to entrepreneurial organizing, communication research in entrepreneurship is nascent. To advance theory and empirical research, this article presents a systematic review of entrepreneurship studies published in communication journals. Through a comprehensive keyword and literature search, we identified 49 relevant articles published in the past 30 years. Content and computational analyses suggest scholars have studied entrepreneurship in a variety of communication domains and sub-fields, including news and journalism, new media technologies, and social networks. Furthermore, most research has focused on conventional entrepreneurship and the processes supporting it rather than entrepreneurship’s antecedents and/or outcomes. Based on our review, we highlight six areas for future research in the intersection of communication and entrepreneurship: (1) entrepreneurial identity, (2) innovation, (3) social networks, (4) digital technologies, (5) institutions, and (6) entrepreneurship by historically underrepresented and minoritized groups.

23. Smith, Murray. "David Bordwell – Man of cinema." 20, no. 1 (2026): 5--8. https://doi.org/10.3167/proj.2026.200102.

    ABSTRACT: It's hard to know where to start when trying to capture, in a few sentences, the enormous contribution that David made to my life, and those of my peers—such was its depth and extent. So I will begin at the beginning, or at least what was the beginning for me. Just after finishing up my undergrad degree in English at the University of Liverpool in 1984, I was looking to throw myself into the world of film. I'd taken a single film course, for which we'd been assigned the first edition of Film Art. These people seem to know a thing or two about film, I thought, so I guess I'll apply to their program, even if it is in this strange place called Wisconsin. I sent a handwritten note of inquiry to David, along with formal applications to Madison, NYU, and USC. David wrote back—and remember, this is the mid-1980s, when even a short reply required rather more effort than a few clicks on a computer keyboard—with a characteristically warm and encouraging response. (Meanwhile, from the East Coast and the West Coast: silence.)

24. Smith, Matthew J., Jared Gardner, Charles Hatfield, et al. "Looking back, looking forward: A decade of the Comics Studies Society." Inks: The Journal of the Comics Studies Society 10, no. 1 (2026): 119--142. https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/30/article/991720.

    ABSTRACT: This roundtable reflects on the first decade of the Comics Studies Society by examining how the organization took shape and matured. Contributors discuss its intellectual beginnings, practical foundations, communication strategies, and publishing work, considering how these efforts supported comics scholarship and what challenges and possibilities lie ahead for the field.

25. Webster, Colin. "Resistance through rituals: Theoretical and methodological legacy." Crime, Media, Culture 22, no. 3 (2026): 556--569. https://doi.org/10.1177/17416590251375045.

    ABSTRACT: As an original, albeit short lived, researcher and member of the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at Birmingham University in the mid-1970s, this author reflects about the legacy and influence of Resistance through Rituals (RTR) on the author’s scholarship and research, and the theoretical and methodological hinterland from which RTR emerges and to which it continues to be linked. The article argues that the main influence on RTR was a materialist theory of culture conveyed through everyday ritual and style. In this sense culture is the class arena through which each generation of young people attempts to resolve anew the dilemmas and contradictions of their parent culture, brought by disruptive rapid social and economic change. Focussed on work, leisure, housing and community, youth transitions and subcultures concentrate and expose, sometimes in exaggerated ways, the vulnerability and exposure felt by parent cultures towards change at key points in the intergenerational reproduction of social order.

26. Wood, Julian, and George Morgan. "Odd man in: A critical appreciation of the work of Phil Cohen." Crime, Media, Culture 22, no. 3 (2026): 583--594. https://doi.org/10.1177/17416590261443517.

    ABSTRACT: This article provides a critical appreciation of the life and work of social theorist Phil Cohen, tracing the evolution of his ideas and activities from working class ethnography, through his years as a street and housing activist, to his years at the University of East London in the 2000s. His important contributions to youth cultural theory and race relations theorising are described. He both set agendas and moved them forward. Cohen’s writing style was literary, characteristically digressive and dense, but always ambitious in scope. The piece ends with a brief consideration of the status of intellectuals on the left as well as a consideration of Cohen’s later innovative work on cartography and cultural mapping.

27. Zarowsky, Mariano. "Armand Mattelart (1936–2025), in memoriam." Revista Eletrônica Internacional de Economia Política da Informação da Comunicação e da Cultura 28, no. 1 (2026): 8--12. https://doi.org/10.54786/revistaeptic.v28i1.25196.

    ABSTRACT: O dia 31 de outubro de 2025 faleceu na França Armand Mattelart, aos 89 anos. Nascido na Bélgica em 1936, estudou direito e demografia antes de se radicar no Chile em 1962, onde assessorou o governo Allende. Após o golpe de Estado de 1973, foi exilado na França com sua família. Em sua vasta obra, muitas vezes junto com Michèle Mattelart, analisou os vínculos entre comunicação, economia e hegemonia global. Também investigou os imaginários sobre a comunicação e o papel das tecnologias no controle social. Foi um intelectual comprometido, ativo na esfera pública e próximo dos movimentos culturais emergentes.