The study focuses on the struggles and threats to the media landscape from the perspectives of regulatory institutions, news media organizations, and citizens. In doing so, twelve interviews with editors-in-chief and journalists from major leading news media outlets (print, TV, radio, online, and community media), four interviews with representatives of major national media authorities, and four focus group discussions in the capital and a smaller city with media users (n=38) from heterogeneous socio-demographic backgrounds (including gender differences and disadvantaged groups) were conducted in the summer of 2024. We identify several threats to the media and their possible implications for democracy from the perspective of citizens. These threats all have their discursive and material components. However, some threats – particularly economic sustainability – have stronger material components, while others – such as lack of trust, the transformation of political knowledge, and increasing polarization – have stronger discursive components. In addition to specific materialist characteristics, like rising energy prices and inflation, which worry respondents the most, the findings highlight the more discursive (symbolic) and affective dimensions of the threats.

Smartphone bans or pledges signed by parents/carers to delay giving phones to young people are gaining international traction. Bans are usually based on arguments that smartphones are addictive, unhealthy and contribute to worsening educational outcomes. However, as a relatively new phenomenon, little existing research exists on the practical and experiential repercussions of these bans. Extant research shows that abstinence approaches to mitigating other potentially risky activities, including underage sex or drug and alcohol use, may increase harms, especially for vulnerable young people, and erode children’s rights. In this paper, we offer a preliminary analysis of our qualitative, multi-pronged study which seeks to better understand ‘on the ground’ experiences of the banning policies as they are rolled out in England. Working collaboratively with an educational charity, a media centre and a secondary school, our research explores the views of multiple actors and considers the varied contexts in which smartphone banning matters. We advance a sociodigital and postdigital approach, arguing that smartphones and people are engaged in complicated and processual human-media relations. We analyse the material and affective experiences of smartphone banning for young people, teachers and parents, exploring how banning smartphones doesn’t cut users off from digital mediation, but rather puts them in different relationships to these contexts. We offer some tentative recommendations for supportive structures in educational environments that are attentive to these sociodigital complexities, and which can help young people and adults navigate phone bans and the new relationalities around devices these set in play.

Social media platforms (SMPs) evolve rapidly and continually, impacting their affordances, user experiences, and societal interactions. Existing research has often analyzed these changes from organizational or technological innovation perspectives or examined SMPs and their policies in isolation, rather than within broader patterns. SMPs, however, are distinct in their logics, relevance, practices, and user engagement. Thus, we propose a taxonomy of SMP change, grounded in sensitizing concepts from literature on platform and technological evolution alongside an analysis of 400 public communication documents from Meta, YouTube, X, and TikTok. Our aim is to theorize SMP evolution and critically reassess its broader implications.

Our taxonomy categorizes SMP change into three interdependent dimensions: material, algorithmic, and ideological. Material changes involve modifications to platform features, interfaces, and user experiences. Algorithmic changes refer to backend modifications that are often less transparent and largely invisible, yet they significantly shape user interactions and content visibility. Ideological changes reflect shifts in governance priorities and policy frameworks, often driven by political and economic pressures. These dimensions are not mutually exclusive but intersect in ways that redefine SMP values, affordances, impacts, and potential harms.

By theorising SMP change, our taxonomy highlights the embedded politics of digital platforms and their role in shaping contemporary information ecosystems as infrastructures. This hopes to provide researchers with lens and language to critically examine how platform changes influence societal structures. We also emphasise the importance of such a language to study their growing relevance, particularly as corporate-state collaborations within SMP industries expand in unprecedented ways.

This paper offers a contribution to debates about the alternative histories of computing, automation and AI. It looks at the case of the nation-wide project of digitalization of the economy in Socialist Bulgaria that took place from the mid-1960s. The focus of this paper falls specifically on the Unified System of Environmental Protection developed in the 1980s, which offers the opportunity to revisit debates about the relationship between economic growth, technological innovation and industrialization and their detrimental impact on the environment. This paper takes as a methodological focus the example of failures and paths not taken in order to show how contemporary debates about the environmental impact of AI and the promise of technosolutionism can be evaluated from a southern historical perspective.