Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Title: Remapping the Legacy of Enslavement: Street Names, Stealth Stickers, and the Living Black Atlas File-URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/10990 File-Format: text/html DOI: 10.17645/mac.10990 Journal: Media and Communication Volume: 14 Year: 2026 Number: 10990 Author-Name: Derek H. Alderman Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Geography and Sustainability, University of Tennessee-Knoxville, USA Author-Name: Joshua Inwood Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Geography, Pennsylvania State University, USA / Rock Ethics Institute, Pennsylvania State University, USA Abstract: This article interprets the Stealth Slavery Sticker Campaign, a grassroots counter-mapping project led by the artist-activist collective Slavers of New York, as a chapter in the broader Living Black Atlas. Started during the racial reckoning of 2020, the campaign placed unauthorized stickers on street signs and other surfaces across Brooklyn to reveal suppressed histories of slavery embedded in commemorative place names. The stickers transformed daily encounters with taken-for-granted road names into unexpected opportunities to confront prominent historical families who profited from enslavement and to acknowledge the contributions of enslaved Africans in shaping the city. The collective framed their campaign as a “guerrilla educational” action that disrupted memorial landscapes, challenged discourses of white innocence, and provoked broader conversations about racial justice and accountability. At a time when official institutions are increasingly retreating from confronting racism, small, temporary interventions, such as these Stealth Stickers, can play a crucial role in encouraging critical audits of commemorative infrastructures, layering counter-narratives onto public spaces, fostering embodied confrontation with historical truths, and remaking everyday places through bold, unexpected acts of resistance. Keywords: Black counter-mapping; commemorative justice; memory-work; Slavers of New York; white innocence Handle: RePEc:cog:meanco:v14:y:2026:a:10990 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Title: Making a Scene via Counter-Data Mapping: The Digital Cartography of Hong Kong’s Resistant Economy File-URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/10979 File-Format: text/html DOI: 10.17645/mac.10979 Journal: Media and Communication Volume: 14 Year: 2026 Number: 10979 Author-Name: Tin-Yuet Ting Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Applied Social Sciences, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong SAR Abstract: Studies of contemporary social movements have explored the role of digital maps and mapmaking in the organisation and visualisation of protest events, yet little is known about the contentious political potential of maps when the political opportunities for street politics fade. This article examines the digital cartography of Hong Kong’s yellow economic circle, a networked system of retailers and consumers linked by political values that support pro-movement stores and boycott pro-establishment businesses, for which citizen activists amassed crowdsourced data to create and update counter-maps that galvanised political consumerism to uphold dissent. Drawing on a renewed conception of the networked movement scene, I contend that counter-data mapping demonstrates a connective structure of self-mobilisation that affords the (trans)formation of (a) dissent spatiality, (b) sociality, and (c) solidarity during the declining stages of movements. Based on digital ethnography and archival research, I show how this nascent cartographic data-as-repertoire not only helped establish and sustain a resistant economy but also allowed people to maintain and refashion their contentious political participation via everyday engagement with data. While the state authorities attempted to expand their territorial control amidst the crisis, counter-data mapping, as a digitally enabled, joint practice of scene-making, (re)invented dissent territory, enabling dispersed citizen activists to continue to connect and mobilise amidst intense urban policing and social distancing protocols. This article casts new light on the utility and capacity of digital cartography during movement latency while illuminating the understudied contours and consequences of counter-data mapping in a non-Western context. Keywords: counter-data mapping; digital cartography; Hong Kong; movement scene; yellow economic circle Handle: RePEc:cog:meanco:v14:y:2026:a:10979 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Title: Local Media, Rural Depopulation, and Territorial Attachment: Geographies of Hope in Castilla-La Mancha File-URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/11030 File-Format: text/html DOI: 10.17645/mac.11030 Journal: Media and Communication Volume: 14 Year: 2026 Number: 11030 Author-Name: Vanesa Saiz-Echezarreta Author-Workplace-Name: Faculty of Communication, University of Castilla-La Mancha, Spain Author-Name: Belén Galletero-Campos Author-Workplace-Name: Faculty of Communication, University of Castilla-La Mancha, Spain Author-Name: Joan Ramon Rodriguez-Amat Author-Workplace-Name: School of Information, Journalism and Communication, University of Sheffield, UK Abstract: This article explores the relationship between local media ecosystems and territorial hope in depopulated rural areas of Castilla-La Mancha (Spain). Drawing on geographies of hope as a travelling concept, we examine how local media shape affective orientations toward the future. Within the framework of rural mediatization, we conceptualize media ensembles as key drivers in the symbolic construction of place and as potential enablers of hope in territories historically marked by demographic decline. Approaching news deserts from the perspective of communicative resilience, we combine a media mapping of 721 depopulated municipalities with a face-to-face survey of 529 residents to analyze the role of local media in sustaining collective affective configurations. We construct an index of territorial hope based on three interrelated indicators: personal optimism, sense of belonging, and outward projection of the locality. Statistical analyses show that municipalities with more local media score significantly higher on this index, and a regression model confirms that media-related variables—especially interest in local news and trust in professional media—are stronger predictors of territorial hope than most sociodemographic factors. Our findings suggest that local media contribute to the emergence of territorial hope. This underscores the importance of integrating communication indicators into the study of geographies of hope and highlights their relevance to strengthen the symbolic agency of rural communities. Keywords: geographies of hope; local media; media ensembles; mediatization; rural depopulation Handle: RePEc:cog:meanco:v14:y:2026:a:11030