Humans have markedly long periods of dependency; as such, care for one another—especially adults providing for children’s needs—is a necessity of survival. Most often, this necessary care is provided by immediate family members, and scholars and laypersons alike acknowledge parent–child relationships as foundational. While assumptions of biological connection permeate the ideology of family, not all (biological) parents of origin are able to provide care for (their) children. For hundreds of thousands of youths in the United States who are unable to safely live with their families of origin, the foster care system, of which foster families are a part, provides temporary residential care.
Although youths require care, understandings of and within the foster care system are mixed. Indeed, children in care, caregivers (e.g., foster parents and families), families of origin, and caseworkers and judges carry varied perspectives and goals as well as report on diverse experiences and outcomes. Contributing to efforts to understand and address these variances, communication researchers have begun to examine the foster care system and those it involves and impacts, with research typically focusing on one or more arms of the foster square (i.e., children in care; parents of origin; foster parents and families; and the state via case workers, child welfare departments, judges, etc.). Communication scholars have implemented numerous theories to frame foster square- and foster care-related studies and have focused on varied relationships and experiences within the foster care system and foster families, providing helpful insights into the nuances of foster care. However, extant literature has illuminated avenues for potential future research to expand on the breadth and depth of knowledge surrounding foster care and the foster square and related experiences and relationships.
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Foster Family Communication
Lindsey J. Thomas
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Media, Race, and Ethnicity in Puerto Rico
Anilyn Díaz-Hernández
Intersections between media, race, and ethnicity in Puerto Rico can be assessed from various perspectives, but the three most important and interrelated are the sociocultural history dimension, the institutional or structural dimension, and the geopolitical dimension. First, the academic and independent literature on media, race, and ethnicity has evolved in tandem with the history of Puerto Rico and of Puerto Ricans in the United States. Understanding this parallelism makes it easier to study the historical evolution of racialized notions of identity. Second, local and global media’s organizational structures and technological evolution have changed the types of content produced and thus the types of racial or ethnic representations. This, in turn, ignites cultural politics, civil action, and social justice debates that cannot be disassociated from race and ethnicity, such as gender identity, sexuality, social class, and access to social services, technologies, and so on. Lastly, Puerto Rico’s colonial status in the 21st century adds a particular geopolitical dimension. This is a necessary framework for understanding this political and economically organized territory, which claims cultural sovereignty over a legacy of colonialism and neocolonialism. In this context, concepts of race and ethnicity have been institutionally lagging and are constantly being redefined. This geopolitical dimension is also interconnected to a great extent with scholarship on Latin American and Caribbean cultural studies about migration vis-à-vis the local and global sociocultural history of social movements and displacement of people since pre-Columbian and colonization eras to the early 21st century. An intertwined and transversal look at these three dimensions—from the vantage point of media, race, and ethnicity—can provide a better study of a case as complex and still poorly understood as Puerto Rican identity.
This article approaches the study of media, race, and ethnicity in Puerto Rico through an assessment of available academic scholarship on particular media industries. There are many studies focused on film, television, music, and newspapers. To a lesser degree, there are studies on radio, magazines, photography, and graphic art, as well as their digital variants, over-the-top media, video games, as well as advertising, public relations, and events production. These studies can be also classified by research methods, mostly qualitative, and further enriched using mixed—integrative and cross-sectional—views on race and ethnicity as these relate to other variables of social identity.
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Discursive Construction of Race and Racism in India
Debalina Dutta and Mohan Jyoti Dutta
This article examines the interplay between race and racism in the backdrop of the assemblages of ideologies, assumptions, imageries, and practices of the exclusion of the “other” in India. Attending to the workings of caste, one of the foundational forms of racism, it is argued that the precolonial contexts of racist marginalization worked alongside colonial and postcolonial threads of racism in India, forming an infrastructure of violence. This infrastructure of violence rooted in the ideology of race purity connects caste with White supremacy. The article draws on the culture-centered approach to map how race and racism have played out historically and how they are sustained discursively in present-day India and in the Indian diaspora globally. Centering and identifying the messages that shape the construction of the “other,” the article locates the ontologies of race and racism in India amid the rapidly transforming neoliberal landscape. In doing so, it is noted that race and racism in India are intertwined with regionalism, colorism, and xenophobia; anchored in the making and marking of borders; and deeply tied to the neoliberal project. Finally, the article draws on the culture-centered approach to outline strategies of resistance, anchored in the voices of the “margins of the margins.”
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Funk “Proibido” Music and Communication of Criminal Commands in Brazil
Luciana Fernández Moretti
Brazil holds one of the highest mortality rates by firearms. Criminal commands operate on the outskirts of Brazilian cities, emerging as instances of sociability and parallel power, becoming a reference in values supporting community life. Violence in Brazil is a relational problem, inscribed in a conflict rooted in long-lasting inequality that opposes “crime” as a social world to socially established “citizens.” People who live in territories subjected to the logics of crime need to develop coexistence strategies that include adaptive communication practices, which thrive as they help ensure survival. The anonymous voice of crime uses “forbidden funk” (funk proibido), a subgenre of funk music in Rio de Janeiro protected as cultural heritage and pursued by the courts for an apology for crime, to communicate. Adapting funk music as an interactional device, voices situated in a precarious and vulnerable social place use the communicative power of “proibido” to reiterate strategic communication practices to coexist with crime, within it or side by side. One of these practices is “representing crime” in “proibido,” through which the anonymous voice of crime borrows the voices of the MCs to not only claim for themselves the ethical responsibility of speaking on behalf of the “world of crime” but also request a new social place, aiming to break the cycle of isolation and incommunicability of life within the criminal commands, in a lasting social conflict. The complexity of the problem requires a robust and open methodology to observe communicative practices in their production context, without enclosing them in established aprioristic theories and concepts. Here a model of proibido communicative power is depicted from an articulation between (a) an understanding of communication as a tentative and probabilistic process, (b) the idea of interactional devices and language games as heuristics, and (c) situational analysis, a variant of grounded theory for the situated analysis of communicational practices.
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Game Streaming: Implications for Streamers and Game Creators
Mark Johnson
Since the 2010s, the live streaming—live online video broadcast—of digital gaming has emerged as a significant Internet phenomenon. Millions of people stream their digital gaming for leisure, profit, or some combination, in the process often accumulating large communities of fans and followers who enjoy their streamed content, or simply broadcasting to small but often very dedicated handfuls of viewers. Game live streaming is also plagued by harassment and toxicity, but nevertheless continues to have a significant influence on gaming by generating famous and noteworthy moments within wider gaming culture. Game live streaming is far from a niche practice, and rather one with interest and applicability to a range of media studies, communication studies, game studies, and Internet research agendas.
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The Political Economy of News Media and Journalism
Errol Salamon
The political economy of news media and journalism critically examines the structures, processes, and democratic role of journalism within society. It is focused on the power relations that shape the production, distribution, and consumption of online, print, and broadcast news media. The field originated from classical Western political economy in the 17th century. Western media political economies of journalism can be traced back to the early 20th century, with the Frankfurt School’s culture industry approach and Dallas W. Smythe’s radical media approach. Scholars like Armand Mattelart and Jesús Martín-Barbero developed political economy of communication and culture approaches on the Global South. These traditions were informed by Marxian critiques and mainstream economic perspectives. Since the mid-20th century, radical media political economies of journalism have encompassed three key strands:corporate ownership and control; labor and standpoints of resistance; and platform capital and labor. By comparison, the cultural-industries school has analyzed the distinctiveness of individual sectors within journalism, including their structural and creative-labor characteristics. A subset of this school, the infomediation approach, highlights the impact of digital platforms. Unlike the cultural-industries school, radical media political economists often link their research to industry impact. These approaches draw on theoretical perspectives, including liberal pluralism, Marxism, and conflict theories, to analyze the commodification of journalism and social relations. Methodologically, these approaches typically draw on qualitative social science or humanistic methods to analyze media companies, governmental interventions, media production, labor, and resistance. Some political economists also use industry-level statistics to track media ownership concentration, the financial state of media markets, individual companies, and labor market trends. Future research should examine the financialization of journalism, its impact on funding models, the integration of generative artificial intelligence into the labor process, and a wider range of advocacy and activist organizations and practices.
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The 1972 Asian Expulsion in Uganda and the Framing of Ethno-Racial Discourse in the Post-Colonial Press
William Tayeebwa, Charlotte K. Ntulume, and Adolf E. Mbaine
The social-cultural and political history of Uganda since British colonial rule (1894–1962) to the present offers several manifestations of ethnic and racial confrontations. The first major racial skirmishes in the 1940s and 1950s played out against the Asian business owners and the British colonial masters. Native resentment of Ugandan-Asians reached a peak point leading to their expulsion by President Idi Amin in 1972. In recent times, there have also been increasing reported incidences of xenophobic confrontations between nationals and immigrants and refugees due to the high immigration pressure the country faces from troubled neighboring countries, such as Rwanda, South Sudan, Republic of the Sudan, and Democratic Republic of the Congo. There have also been recent incidences in which Asians have been attacked in the country. However, the most prominent case of xenophobia in the national psyche, which was also a major international media story, remains the expulsion of Asians by President Idi Amin in 1972. In this article, content analysis is used to present the media framing of the Asian expulsion as a manifestation of ethno-racial and xenophobic violence in Uganda. The findings show that the expulsion was framed predominantly as an “economic war” for the “economic independence” of Uganda. Asians were framed as “foreigners” who were “exploiters,” “tricksters,” and, during the expulsion, as “arsonists” and “saboteurs.” Idi Amin was framed as a “brave liberator” and a “patriotic nationalist.” Based on increasing tensions between nationals and a new Asian business class increasingly dominated by Chinese, the historical data provides insights as to what might lie ahead if local grievances are not properly addressed.
Article
Serious Games
Richard Lamb
Serious games are interactive digital applications that go beyond entertainment and incorporate educational, informational, or training objectives as the goal of the game. They leverage the engaging and motivating aspects of gaming experiences to facilitate learning, skill development, and behavioral change. With more than 3.24 billion people worldwide engaging with games, gaming has become a prominent medium for entertainment, social interactions, education, and training. While most research focuses on games purely for entertainment, serious games have emerged as a distinct category and are designed for professional development, assessment, learning, skills development, and training across multiple industries. Serious games find applications in diverse fields such as military, education, science, healthcare, and engineering. They prioritize the use of specific skills and employ pedagogies tailored to achieve outcomes. For example, serious games have been used to raise awareness about posttraumatic stress disorder, as well as environmental and social issues, and to teach information literacy skills. They provide an immersive and interactive learning environment that promotes active participation, problem solving, and critical thinking. By integrating game mechanics with educational content, serious games can enhance engagement, motivation, and retention of knowledge. However, there are challenges associated with serious games, such as designing effective game mechanics, aligning learning objectives with gameplay, and evaluating their impact on learning outcomes. Additionally, ensuring accessibility and inclusivity while also addressing ethical concerns are crucial considerations when designing serious games. Despite these challenges, serious games have the potential to transform education and training by offering innovative and engaging learning experiences.
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The Mestizo Nation and the Linguistic Operations of Racial Invisibility in El Salvador
Amparo Marroquín Parducci
The media landscape, for more than a century, has shaped El Salvador as a mestizo nation and was constructed through the invisibilization of indigenous and Black groups that populated Salvadoran territory. The Salvadoran media has constructed the idea of racial otherness and discriminated against and denied the rights and existence of indigenous peoples. This occurred in three historical periods. One, before 1932, when the media configured the idea of a mestizo nation, without making the indigenous world visible. Second, after 1932, a moment that began with the massacre of more than 25,000 indigenous people at the hands of the army. In this period, the media configure the indigenous person as a violent being that has already been almost completely exterminated. Finally, the period that follows after the peace agreements, in 1992, where the media recovers the indigenous past, but without hiding the disgust that this produces. In every period, indigenous voices are silenced and deprived of access to community or indigenous media.
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Competition and Cooperation in Video Games
Y. Skylar Lei, Hanjie Liu, and David R. Ewoldsen
Competition and cooperation are both essential to human evolution and social interactions. Humans naturally compete with each other over resources, yet humans also evolved to engage in cooperation to enhance survivability. Competition and cooperation as complex social interactions can be observed in many contexts. Video games are a vivid illustration of how people compete, cooperate, or compete and cooperate at the same time with each other. The history of video games reflects how people are naturally inclined to build environments and construct rules to facilitate competition. Meanwhile, video game play also demonstrates how people are drawn to cooperation with each other whenever the need arises. Competition and cooperation have been examined and discussed in many fields of study. Social interdependence theory provides a clear theoretical framework for understanding competitive or cooperative situations. Competition in video game settings can be seen as a range of negative interdependence between players, while cooperation is a range of positive interdependence. With video game settings becoming more complex and connecting more players virtually, games that facilitate both competition and cooperation between teams of players emerged and became prevalent. Research has previously demonstrated that cooperation in video games tends to result in increased positive outcomes for players compared to competition. However, in games where competition and cooperation between human players coexist, newly observed phenomena, namely toxic behaviors and antisocial interactions, contradict previous findings. It is evident that we still have a lot to learn about human competition and cooperation in video games. With video game technologies improving and diversifying rapidly, more research is needed to understand players’ psychological processes and behaviors in video game settings.
