Mediascapes Journal

The Paths of Prevention

Laura Solito — 2025-12-31

This study analyzes the relationship between health prevention communication in Italy and health inequities through empirical research on two specific areas: cancer screenings and vaccination programs. Data collected over the past 20 years reveal significant differences among Italian regions in terms of informational material production and participation in prevention programs, influenced by economic, social, and cultural factors.

Northern regions, such as Emilia-Romagna and Tuscany, stand out for their high volume of communication materials and higher participation rates, demonstrating the effectiveness of integrated strategies between communication and healthcare infrastructure. Conversely, southern regions, such as Calabria and Campania, produce fewer materials and show lower adherence, highlighting structural delays and difficulties in accessing services.

The COVID-19 pandemic has further exacerbated these disparities: on one hand, it increased the production of communication materials, particularly on vaccines; on the other, it slowed participation in cancer screenings, further widening the territorial gap. Emilia-Romagna emerges as a virtuous case, characterized by high levels of communication and participation. In this region, a strategic and well-coordinated approach has led to excellent results. Sicily, on the other hand, despite increasing the production of materials, does not show a corresponding rise in adherence due to socio-economic and cultural barriers. These examples highlight the importance of health policies that take local specificities into account, combining awareness campaigns with structural interventions aimed at improving social and economic conditions. The disparities observed reflect the need for greater equity in public healthcare. Reducing the gap between North and South requires targeted interventions, not only in healthcare but also in social policies, to promote fair access to services and greater public awareness. Only an integrated approach—capable of considering cultural and territorial specificities and translating them into communication materials—can ensure more uniform participation in prevention programs and improve public health outcomes on a national scale.

Ageing Eastwood Between Films and Media

Roy Menarini — 2025-12-31

This article aims at analysing the last years of Clint Eastwood's artistic production and, at the same time, the physical ageing processes of the film star, as witnessed by images and photos that circulated on the Internet between his 93rd and 94th birthdays. Thanks to this case study, it is possible to identify more clearly some aspects hidden by media clamor: the ambivalent relationship between on-screen and off-screen; the differences that are now imposed between the third and fourth age in storytelling and media representation; the negotiation of Eastwood's masculinity and his role as a male star; the clear difference between the artistic longevity of film directors depending on whether they are men or women.

English

Federico Pilati — 2025-12-31

Artificial Intelligence is reshaping cultural and creative industries by challenging long standing paradigms of creativity. Tracing a trajectory from traditional models to the current digital landscape, this article argues that generative AI represents more than a technological innovation—it is also a renewed manifestation of participatory and decentralized creative practices. By examining ongoing changes and challenges through the interconnected lenses of authorship, labor, and intellectual property, our inquiry reveals how AI simultaneously democratizes and disrupts traditional notions of cultural production, suggesting a transformative shift with profound implications for both artists and publics.

Liveness generativa

Alex Dellapasqua — 2025-12-31

This article investigates the intersection of algorithmic mediation and live performance, focusing on how generative systems transform the experience of uncertainty and unpredictability from something to be minimized into a creative resource. The contribution situates itself within the broader debate on the risk society, examining how algorithmic systems reduce present uncertainty through probabilistic calculation. However, as recent scholarship on liveness emphasizes, live artistic practices often revalue unpredictability as a central aesthetic and communicative component. Drawing on theories of artificial communication the study explores how deep learning algorithms generate contingency within live performance contexts. Through qualitative analysis of semi-structured interviews and three case studies – two performances integrating generative AI (Spazio Latente, Radio Pentothal) and one live coding performance (L’Embodiment dell’Effimero) – the article examines how artists strategically engage with algorithmic systems to foreground risk and contingency. The interviews with performers, programmers, and creative technologists further reveal how unpredictability is deliberately designed and cultivated as an integral part of the communicative process in live performance. The article contributes to performance and media studies by exploring how liveness generated by leverages uncertainty to shape interactions between performers, computational systems, and audiences.

“Understanding Video Activism on Social Media”

Sabrina Brignoli — 2025-12-31

This review presents Understanding Video Activism on Social Media (Eder, Hartmann, & Tedjasukmana, 2025) as a strong conceptual and empirical framework for analyzing video activism under platform governance, algorithmic visibility, and the “Splinternet,” highlighting both its analytic value and its normative call for “diversity in solidarity.”

Risk communication and risks of communication:

Alessandro Lovari — 2025-12-31

This editorial by the guest editor Alessandro Lovari introduces the special issue “Risk (of) Communication: Ethics, Futures, and Strategic Complexity” through a dual lens: risk communication as a response to crises and disasters, and the risk of communication when organizational practices are strategically weak or ethically fraught. It outlines thirteen contributions showing how communication can anticipate, amplify, or mitigate crises—from environmental and geopolitical disruptions to AI-driven infrastructures—while foregrounding questions of power, justice, duties, and responsibility.

Anticipating Breakdown

Brett Robertson — 2025-12-31

This essay calls for an urgent reorientation of risk communication research and practice toward interdisciplinary futures in an era of cascading crises. Hazards today unfold across interdependent infrastructures, multiplying disruptions that no single discipline can address in isolation. The concept of speculative risk communication captures this challenge by emphasizing anticipation: messages that project possible breakdowns into the present, guiding publics to prepare before crises fully materialize. However, anticipatory communication also carries ethical, political, and strategic stakes that demand an integrated perspective. The central argument of this research agenda is that communication must be treated as core infrastructure, sustaining trust and coordinating action across strained systems. Knowledge infrastructures that often reinforce disciplinary silos must instead incentivize collaboration and cooperation. This essay issues a call to action for scholars, practitioners, and institutions: dismantle silos, integrate insights, and build interdisciplinary futures capable of anticipating breakdown with coherence and ethical responsibility.

Toward ‘Strategic Communication Literacy’

Marta N. Lukacovic — 2025-12-31

This contribution situates the proposed concept of “strategic communication literacy” (SCL) within the field of strategic crisis communication, particularly as it applies amid mega-crises. We postulate that it is vital to define and advance a type of literacy initiative that encompasses communication knowledge and skills among a range of stakeholders, including those who are marginalized. SCL aims to empower stakeholders to participate in efforts to mitigate risks that spiral toward mega-crises, as well as to contribute to structural changes necessary to counter mega-crises, which are the grand challenges faced globally that undermine human well-being, security, and the natural environment. In the contemporary era, AI represents a technological field that exacerbates existing mega-crises but also potentially introduces new security risks. Accordingly, we use AI-exacerbated mega-crises as the primary cases to illustrate our central arguments about SCL. We outline how SCL overlaps with, yet remains distinct from, media literacy and AI literacy. SCL can be further enriched by insights from communication frameworks such as the culture-centered approach. While elevating SCL represents one pathway to strengthening culture-centered voice infrastructures in terms of marginalized stakeholders’ agency, the need for organizational and political change at a structural level is paramount and will require a broad coalition capable of enacting change at the large scale where mega-crises arise. Hence, within the ongoing quest to define and refine the key components of SCL, an inclusive and interdisciplinary approach is absolutely fundamental. Furthermore, we propose a research agenda to refine the concept of SCL and assess its relevance in relation to broader categories of mega-crises.

Safeguarding lives

Bianca Persici Toniolo — 2025-12-31

This theoretical article introduces an original model for planning and evaluating risk and crisis communication by public organizations in disasters, with a particular focus on wildfires. Adopting a systemic and integrative perspective, the Loop Model synthesizes knowledge from specialized literature and draws upon well-established scientific theories and models to highlight the critical role of communication throughout every stage of forest and wildfire management. Developed through an extensive literature review and applied to the chronological pattern of wildfires in Portugal, the framework demonstrates both theoretical relevance and practical applicability. It may also be adapted as a framework for evaluating and planning communication strategies and messages in response to other climate- and weather-related disasters. The proposed model yields the Informational Quality Indicator (IQI), designed to assess the quality of public organizations’ risk and crisis communication. A higher IQI value indicates that the communication prioritizes public protection over political reputation management. By advancing a comprehensive framework, this article contributes to the refinement of crisis and risk communication theory while offering practical guidance for public organizations facing disaster scenarios, which can be further tested in future research.

Allies or Antagonists?

Alessandro Lovari — 2025-12-31

The article investigates the complex relationships between public communicators and journalists in the coverage of risks and natural disasters in Sardinia and Sicily, two Italian islands. Drawing on the theoretical frameworks of public relations and public sector communication, the manuscript presents findings from a qualitative study based on in-depth semi-structured interviews. Findings highlight a hybrid relational model in which institutional procedures intertwine with informal practices during these emergency situations. Although collaboration is perceived necessary by both professionals, it is hindered by bureaucratic constraints, journalistic routines, algorithmic and public pressures. Spectacularization and news sensationalism influence the relationship, raising ethical risks in a contemporary digital ecosystem marked by visibility and disinformation. In this context, journalists and public communicators emerge not as antagonists nor as fully aligned partners, but as imperfect allies jointly responsible for producing reliable and timely information to face risks and natural disasters, essential to supporting vulnerable territories, such as insular contexts.

Smart Alerts for Complex Risks

Kulsawasd Jitkajornwanich — 2025-12-31

This paper develops a framework for “smart alerts” that explains how artificial intelligence (AI) and computational social media analytics are reshaping crisis communication, amplifying detection speed and message personalization while introducing new categories of technological risk. We theorize a dual-risk structure: (1) primary hazards (e.g., floods, wildfires) that alerts aim to mitigate, and (2) secondary risks embedded in AI-mediated communication systems (false positives, bias, privacy, deepfakes). Using a speculative design approach and an illustrative technical case study of Twitter-based flood detection in Thailand, we show how human–AI collaboration models (AI-assisted, human-supervised, and parallel processing) can be operationalized from data ingestion and geocoding to visualization and verification. We propose three cross-cutting design and governance mechanisms: graduated confidence communication, multi-source verification, and adaptive governance architectures. They jointly balance the speed–accuracy dilemma while safeguarding equity and democratic accountability. The framework advances crisis and strategic communication by (a) reframing time in predictive messaging (from reactive to anticipatory communication), (b) specifying organizational design patterns for decision rights and oversight in AI-enabled warning systems, and (c) articulating implementable practices that can sustain public trust. We conclude with implications for empirical evaluation and policy design.

Processing Fabricated Foreign Risks with AI Fact-Checker

Qi Chen — 2025-12-31

The proliferation of fake information has become a global challenge, with conspiracy content particularly prone to misleading the public, making it a key focus of risk communication governance. The widespread application of AI in news writing and verification has transformed news interaction, with articles increasingly labeled as “verified by a human” or “verified by AI,” creating distinct interfaces for news evaluation. Individual personality traits, such as nationalism and conspiracy orientation, are crucial in shaping responses to risk information, while group influences increasingly guide opinions and behaviors. The third-person effect theory provides a valuable framework for understanding how people perceive and react to information based on others’ opinions. This study explores how personality traits and verification interfaces influence users’ information judgment and behavior through the third-person effect. A group experiment randomly assigned participants to a human-checker group (N=254) or an AI-checker group (N=252). Participants read news labeled with different verifiers and completed questionnaires assessing their perceptions of others’ opinions and their willingness to seek information. The study examines how personality traits interact with verification interfaces to affect information behavior, offering theoretical insights for optimizing verification strategies. Results indicate that verification interfaces significantly shape the relationship between personality traits and the third-person effect, influencing information-seeking behavior. In the human verification interface, blind patriotism positively predicts perceived social consensus (β = 0.257, p = 0.001), which indirectly increases information-seeking behavior (indirect effect = 0.032), suggesting that individuals with strong blind patriotism are more motivated to seek information based on social consensus. In contrast, conspiracy preference has limited influence on information-seeking in this interface (β = 0.123, p = 0.006). In the AI verification interface, blind patriotism continues to positively predict social consensus (β = 0.216, p = 0.004), though its indirect effect on information-seeking is slightly stronger (indirect effect = 0.046), indicating a weakened link between patriotism and information-seeking. Notably, conspiracy preference significantly predicts information-seeking behavior (β = 0.168, p = 0.032) and has a marginally significant effect on third-person perception (β = -0.147, p = 0.119). This suggests that AI-verified interfaces trigger the exploratory motivation of high-conspiracy individuals, heightening their attention to others’ reactions and promoting active information seeking. Overall, the type of verification interface moderates the effect of personality traits on third-person perceptions and information behavior, with the third-person effect serving as a central mediator. These findings deepen understanding of how personality and interface design shape public engagement with verified information, offering theoretical guidance for improving information verification strategies and enhancing media literacy.

Responding to Online Hoaxes

Anli Xiao — 2025-12-31

This study investigates the interaction between contextual priming, crisis narrative type and crisis communication strategy in the context of a geopolitical conflict. Specifically, it examines how an international company, when its country of origin is being caught in geopolitical tension and being portrayed positively vs. negatively by the media, should respond to misinformation paracrisis on social media using different crisis narrative types and crisis communication strategies. An online experiment (N = 506) found that a narrative response might be more effective; people’s judgment of the crisis response is partially influenced by the contextual priming of how the company’s country of origin is portrayed. This study enriched communication literature by examining strategic crisis narratives in the context of geopolitical conflicts, and exploring the roles of different response types, response strategies and contextual priming into crisis situations. This study yields important implications on how international organizations should respond to threats amid geopolitical uncertainties. Media scanning may be critical when geopolitical tensions are present. International organizations may benefit from adopting informative, accommodative responses rather than informative, defensive responses when handling misinformation-driven paracrises. Alternatively, a narrative response might work better than an informative response.

Beyond Interpersonal Abuse

Elina Erzikova — 2025-12-31

Gaslighting, traditionally examined as a psychological phenomenon within intimate relationships, has recently gained interdisciplinary attention that extends into institutional and organizational contexts. In this paper, we define gaslighting as a risky strategic communication practice in which individuals or organizations deliberately obscure truth, discredit critics, manipulate narratives, and normalize doubt in order to maintain power and control. Normative ethical theory is used to explain the unethical nature of gaslighting as well as offer deontological (principled) ethical analysis tools and recommendations. This bibliometric study analyzed 235 academic publications indexed in the Web of Science to map the disciplinary distribution and thematic clusters of gaslighting research. Keyword co-occurrence mapping reveals a highly fragmented field—85% of journals (n = 195) published only a single article—yet concentrated scholarly activity exists in feminist philosophy, interpersonal violence, and education. Four thematic clusters emerged: (1) structural inequities and institutional contexts, (2) identity, power, and organizational life, (3) psychological traits, emotional harm, and interpersonal relations, and (4) abuse, control, and help-seeking. This study proposes Organizational Gaslighting as a Strategic Communication Risk (OGSCR) framework for understanding organizational gaslighting, encompassing four interrelated dimensions: power and hierarchy, narrative control, discrediting and delegitimization, normalization through internal culture, and stakeholder responses to issue or policy change. By reframing gaslighting as a risky communication practice, the study underscores how organizations may not only communicate about risks but also generate risks through their communication strategies. This dual nature—communication of risk and risk of communication—highlights the ethical, strategic, and societal stakes of gaslighting, making it a critical phenomenon for advancing debates in risk and strategic communication. This framework serves as a foundation for theoretical development and encourages cross-disciplinary collaboration.

Governing Harms from Deepfakes in Crisis Situations

Katerina Tsetsura — 2025-12-31

This study analyses deepfake-related initiatives of the Group of Seven (G7) countries—Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, the United States—and the United Nations and the European Union from a comparative perspective to examine in what ways, if any, AI-generated inaccurate content, generated in times of crises such as natural disasters, is regulated in these countries. Using the Social Amplification of Risk Framework (SARF), a theory that explains how risk perceptions and communication create ripple effects, we demonstrate why the potentially detrimental risks that might come from deepfakes, which aim to distort societies in times of crises, should be accounted for in national and global initiatives to regulate the AI-generated content. We collected and thematically analysed documents using a qualitative open coding approach. The findings demonstrated that while existing and proposed country-specific laws and regulations reviewed offer useful principles, they were not designed to address the kinds of digital harms arising from the use of deepfakes in crises such as natural disasters. Global initiatives also contained the same limitations: despite encouraging responsible innovation and digital transparency, existing frameworks did not address the kinds of harms associated with deepfake use in disaster scenarios. Overall, these initiatives failed to provide concrete strategies for crisis management or harm mitigation from deepfakes deployed to mislead the public in natural disasters or to initiate or escalate violent conflict. Based on the analysis, the article offers implications and recommendations for policymakers and for future studies.

Risks of gender communication strategies in the Public Sector

Gea — 2025-12-31

This article explores the risks of gender-sensitive communication in the public sector, with a focus on the European Union (EU) that adopted significant gender and inclusive community policies (e.g. the recent Gender Equality Strategy 2020-2025). The analysis is framed within a broader theoretical context, where public communication is understood as a strategic tool for strengthening democratic systems, fostering trust, and promoting social inclusion in an increasingly fragmented digital society. Theoretical perspectives on institutional public sector communication, inclusivity, intersectionality, and media polarization are considered to highlight the tensions between normative policy ambitions and the contested, often politicized, nature of gender public discourse in Europe. Against this background, the study aims to understand what kinds of European communication campaigns on gender issues are conducted, how they are disseminated across different platforms, and which risks emerge from the management of media and channels. Additionally, it seeks to examine how gender-related themes are framed and represented, and what risks may arise in terms of inclusivity and effectiveness.To achieve these objectives, the study considers four selected EU communication campaigns launched between 2020 and 2024. A qualitative approach is adopted, drawing on media content analysis and critical interpretation of campaign narratives. The findings, briefly outlined, point to structural, socio-cultural, and political risks that limit the transformative potential of EU gender-sensitive communication.

Cooperation rhetoric as risk-communication

Juyan Zhang — 2025-12-31

This research applies the Mixed-motive Model of Public Relations to analyze the Biden Administration’s rhetoric on China policy, focusing on crisis and risk communication. It explores how the administration rhetorically shifted from Trump’s pure advocacy approach, known as “decoupling,” to a nuanced mixed-motive strategy combining competition and cooperation. This shift redefines the US-China relationship, articulates the US vision, expresses underlying worldviews, and manages inherent tensions in policy rhetoric to reduce the risk of direct conflict. Using Burke’s cluster-agon rhetorical criticism method, the study identifies key God terms, such as “rule-based international order,” “shared vision of future,” “diplomacy,” “network of allies and partners,” “Chinese people,” “US strengths,” and “comprehensive strategy/compete”, and Devil terms, including “challenges,” “conflict,” and “China.” The analysis reveals that Secretary Blinken’s speech serves as strategic communication reflecting a blend of liberalism, realism, and constructivism, which justifies the use of mixed-motive strategies and mitigates tensions by aligning each strategy with a specific worldview. This complex rhetorical approach is shaped by the multifaceted nature of US-China relations and global dynamics. Importantly, the cooperative rhetoric functions as risk communication designed to prevent the US-China competition from escalating into armed conflict.

Crisis, Coercion and Conflict as the New Peace

Gregory Simons — 2025-12-31

George Orwell wrote and warned about the role of deceptive and misleading language in politics, a form of double speak to influence and persuade unwary audiences. War is an activity that requires the accumulation of political capital and legitimacy. By invoking a crisis situation, the political environment implies an extra-ordinary moment where standard laws and rules no longer apply. This is better done not by framing or narrating the ‘desired’ coming armed conflict in terms of unemotional national interests or the logical use of “just war”, but through the emotional use of selective values and norms and through vague concepts like ‘humanitarian war’. The Orwellian language of Western politicians and other actors promoting war in the name of peace during the era of the Global War on Terrorism (GWOT) and the Arab Spring from the year 2001 shall be subject to critical analysis, which reveals that the use of emotions and deceptive language are key components to the war justifying discourse. This literature review reveals that a rather systematic, symbolic and ritualistic use of war justifying discourse is the mechanism through which actors’ attempt to engineer public perception and consent to an act that in all probability undermines the interests and security of that same public. This article looks at these aspects and factors as a sum of the individual parts, rather than identifying and analysing those individual pieces as the influence of the war justifying discourse comes from the totality through the cumulative effect of the interactions.

Why risky and amoral ‘transparency’ fails as a lone ethical concept

Shannon Bowen — 2025-12-31

Transparency is a concept frequently arising in ethics discussions but poorly conceptualized and, in some cases, even harmful. Searching outside the term’s current general popularity in media ethics and in public relations, a literature review revealed that many scholars from various disciplines have misgivings and concerns about transparency. Other professions are used to discuss the problems that arise when relying on transparency for ethical guidance. Consequentialist, virtue, and deontological ethics all object to the use of transparency as an ethical construct. Many problems emerge, based on a Kantian reading; for example, transparency does not ensure good intention; and, transparency does not equal veracity, as transparency can also be used for unethical purposes. Immanuel Kant did not discuss transparency as an a priori (reasoned from cause to effect) moral concept but awarded prima facie (on its face) moral worth to good intention (the highest form of good), dignity and respect, and duty – in a context of rational moral autonomy. Transparency is not on its own considered a moral construct but rather its use should be accorded to intention. Transparency can be used for either ethical or unethical intention - therefore the term transparency is rendered amoral (without moral status on its own) and should not be used as a lone ethical construct but must be combined with stronger concepts for more rigorous moral analyses. Transparency as a professional standard is also explored yet proved problematic across other professions from health care to AI. Ethical analyses, as added to the issues management process, is advised and discussed. The lexicon of strategic communication management should replace transparency with more meaningful terms rooted in moral philosophy and conceptually grounded for not only clearer understanding but also for enhancing organizational responsibility, ethical principle use, and ethical outcomes. Good intention, veracity, full disclosure, visibility, candor, clarity, completeness could aid precision in our ethical analyses. As a lone unqualified good, pure intention should drive veracity, disclosure, dialogue, and so on. These terms are offered in conclusion as a normative and practical alternatives (or amendments) to risky and amoral transparency. Greater acumen in our lexicon can enhance the professionalism of the field and strengthen its analyses by aligning it with the discipline and analytic of moral philosophy, using the well-examined traditions of ethics therein, and stand the field in organizational and ethical leadership with other professions.