Abstracts Submission
The following issues are currently accepting abstract submissions:
Voices of Discontent: Unpacking Populist Rhetoric, Social Media, and the Crisis of Democracy
Academic Editors: Belen Casas-Mas (Complutense University of Madrid), Adriana Ștefănel (University of Bucharest), and Ana Maria Cordoba Hernandez (Universidad de La Sabana)
- Submission of Abstracts: 1-15 March 2026
- Submission of Full Papers: 1-15 September 2026
- Publication of the Issue: January/June 2027
The rapid rise of digital technologies has fundamentally reshaped political communication, providing new opportunities for civic engagement while amplifying risks tied to populist rhetoric, societal polarization, and extremist narratives. Digital platforms, capable of bypassing traditional media gatekeepers, have become powerful tools for political actors to spread messages directly to the public. This environment fosters misinformation, radical ideologies, and emotionally charged content.
Populism amplified by social media has become a defining feature of political systems globally, influencing electoral dynamics, public discourse, and the resilience of democratic institutions in an increasingly post-truth era. This dynamic is closely linked to rising societal polarization, where digital platforms magnify voices of discontent, creating fragmented public spheres and deepening ideological divides. For instance, Donald Trump’s return to the US presidency in 2024 illustrates how populist discourse, spread via social media, capitalizes on societal grievances. His campaign leveraged platforms like Truth Social to bypass traditional media, amplifying grievance politics and narratives around the “stolen election” of 2020, which fueled distrust in democratic institutions. Similarly, Călin Georgescu’s unexpected success in Romania’s 2024 elections highlights how digital disintermediation empowers extremist outsiders. His anti-establishment, nationalist, and Eurosceptic rhetoric resonated with disenfranchised voters through social media, exploiting economic frustrations and societal fears.
This thematic issue invites theoretical, empirical, and methodological contributions that explore how digital communication technologies shape contemporary populism and polarization, and what implications this has for democratic resilience. We particularly welcome submissions addressing questions such as:
- How do algorithmic recommendation systems and social media logics amplify populist and polarizing messages?
- In what ways do populist actors use digital disintermediation to circumvent journalistic scrutiny and reach disenfranchised publics?
- What types of narratives are most effectively disseminated through digital platforms?
- How does exposure to emotionally charged or conspiratorial content affect civic trust, political participation, or electoral behavior?
- How do mainstream political actors respond to the digital strategies of populist competitors, and with what success?
- What are the gendered, generational, or socio-economic dimensions of digitally mediated populist mobilization?
Readers across the globe will be able to access, share, and download this issue entirely for free. Corresponding authors affiliated with any of our institutional members (over 90 institutions worldwide) publish free of charge. Otherwise, an article processing fee will be charged to the authors to cover editorial costs. We defend that authors should not have to personally pay this fee and encourage them to check with their institutions if funds are available to cover open access publication costs. Further information about the journal's open access charges can be found here.
Alternative Media Logics: Intermedial Perspectives on Transformative Media Practices
Academic Editors: Kristoffer Holt (Linnaeus University) and Beate Schirrmacher (Linnaeus University)
- Submission of Abstracts: 1-15 March 2026
- Submission of Full Papers: 15-30 October 2026
- Publication of the Issue: January/June 2027
In recent years, the study of alternative media has gained renewed urgency. As digital media platforms evolve, so too do the practices, strategies, and aesthetics of actors positioning themselves as alternatives to mainstream journalism and mass media communication. This thematic issue of Media and Communication seeks to revisit and expand the concept of media logic by asking whether there is such a thing as an alternative media logic and how this might be understood through an intermedial lens that moves beyond the binary oppositions to explore the dynamic interactions between established media logics, technical affordances, and audience expectations.
We invite contributions that explore how alternative media actors develop distinct logics of production, dissemination, and reception—logics that emerge not only in opposition to mainstream institutions but also as performative and hybrid engagements with the broader media environment. Alternative media adopt a broad variety of communicative genres: From memes and video essays to podcasts and livestreams, alternative media increasingly operate across platforms and modalities, blending aesthetic forms and communicative strategies in ways that merit closer scholarly attention.
By foregrounding intermediality, we encourage submissions that investigate how alternative media cross, blur, and reconfigure the boundaries between different media types and technologies and distinguish alternative uses of the communicative networks without ignoring fundamental similarities.
We welcome theoretical, empirical, and methodological contributions that address topics including (but not limited to):
- Theoretical reflections on “alternative media logic”;
- Intermedial practices in alternative journalism and activism;
- Aesthetic intermedial and multimodal strategies in alternative media (e.g., video, memes, audio);
- Platformization and algorithmic logics in alternative media;
- Counter-discourse, credibility, and audience engagement;
- Transmedia storytelling in alternative media;
- Intersections of alternative media with populism, protests, and social movements;
- Comparative studies across national or regional media contexts;
- Methodologies for studying intermediality and hybridity in media practices.
Readers across the globe will be able to access, share, and download this issue entirely for free. Corresponding authors affiliated with any of our institutional members (over 90 institutions worldwide) publish free of charge. Otherwise, an article processing fee will be charged to the authors to cover editorial costs. We defend that authors should not have to personally pay this fee and encourage them to check with their institutions if funds are available to cover open access publication costs. Further information about the journal's open access charges can be found here.