Research

Social media is an indispensable component of strategic communication and public life in China, positioning it as a central arena for crisis communication research. As social-mediated crisis communication (SMCC) scholarship expands, questions arise not only about what has been studied, but how methodological choices shape theory development. This study conducts a mixed-method review of 105 articles published between 2009 and 2025 in 15 SSCI-indexed journals spanning communication, public relations, risk and crisis management, and new media studies. By integrating manual coding, structural topic modeling (STM), and network analysis, the study demonstrates how mixed-method computational reviews can function as a theory-building device. Rather than cataloging topics, this approach maps the alignment between research topics, theoretical frameworks, and contextual dimensions, revealing under-theorized areas and methodological lock-ins. It identifies 13 research topics, highlights government-focused research as central, notes uneven use of framing theory and SCCT, and recognizes economic factors as an emerging contextual dimension. Overall, this study not only contributes methodological and theoretical insights to crisis communication scholarship by foregrounding China’s distinctive digital, institutional, and sociopolitical environment but also illuminates the theoretical and thematic blind spots generated by Western-influenced research agendas in engaging with the complex realities of non-Western societies.

As climate variability intensifies, effective climate risk communication has become a central element of crisis prevention and adaptive governance. However, existing studies on the climate crisis and risk communication remain predominantly informed by Global North perspectives, with limited attention to how Global South countries communicate climate risks. This study addresses this gap through in-depth interviews with 25 climate leaders across 18 Global South countries. Findings reveal three key factors shaping climate risk communication: epistemic disjuncture, discursive inequality, and material constraints. By centering communicators rather than audiences, this study contributes to rethinking climate communication infrastructures toward more equitable, actor-centered perspectives.

This autoethnographic paper explores how I, as a woman of color from the Global South, construct, challenge, and reshape my environmental identity. Drawing on personal experiences, the paper traces my journey from an initial gender-neutral understanding of climate action to a gradual realization of the gender and regional inequalities embedded in global climate governance systems, ultimately seeking pathways for self-expression in academic research, policy engagement, and climate communication. This study reveals the dynamic shaping process of environmental identity within discourse structures. The paper not only reflects on the realities faced by women from the Global South in climate action, but also critically examines how the global climate communication system defines the roles of Southern women through a ‘victim-savior’ binary narrative. It explores the transition from being ‘defined’ by others to ‘self-defined’ within this system. In this process, I came to understand that environmental identity is not a static accumulation of individual experiences, but something continuously constructed through dialogue, negotiation, and resistance.

Public understanding is essential to advancing energy transitions. Yet less is known about how energy transition is understood and communicated at the local level in Global South contexts, what barriers emerge in communication practices, and how local actors respond to these constraints. To address these questions, this study focuses on local climate communicators who are actively engaged in frontline energy transition communication. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 28 local climate advocates from 14 Global South countries, the findings show that energy transition is rarely understood as a technocratic pathway toward decarbonization. Instead, it is commonly framed around survival needs, local control, justice concerns, and gendered energy labor. In practice, energy transition communication is shaped by four challenges: linguistic and cognitive barriers; technological breakdowns and project discontinuities that erode trust; deeply embedded cultural meanings associated with energy use; and the systemic exclusion of women from communication and decision-making processes. In response to these constraints, local advocates develop a set of context-specific communication practices, including the use of local languages and visual tools, narrative storytelling, participatory dialogue, the mobilization of trusted community communicators, and the integration of communication with visible and tangible energy actions. While these practices emerge under comparable structural constraints, the meanings and communicative pathways of energy transition diverge across socio-cultural contexts. This study demonstrates how energy transition is continuously negotiated and reconstituted through concerns of survival, trust, and participation, thereby offering empirically grounded insights from the Global South to energy transition and energy communication research.

To publicly declare that one is a feminist in contemporary South Korea yields a certain stigma and risk, a phenomenon that has drawn sustained and marked attention from international media and scholarly communities. The contemporary wave of feminism in South Korea for the past decade has been met with a strong misogynistic backlash in both online and offline spaces, with cases of femicide, digital and physical violence, a rise in digital sex crimes utilizing emerging technologies, and other cases of gender-based violence. One might ask: What reasons do instigators of misogynistic violence cite as justification for their violence? In this short piece, I point to a few contemporary moments in South Korean politics and discourse to argue that violent misogynistic acts frame feminism as symbolically violent, therefore deserving of physical and material violence in retaliation. Violent misogyny, which comes in forms of physical, sexual, material, or financial harm via misogynistic logics, operates by justifying its violence in pointing to the supposed violence of feminism that “attacked” men “first.” The catch, of course, is that the violence of feminism is but a challenge against heteropatriarchy and hegemonic masculinity, or the institutionalization of heteronormative patriarchy and the ideology of masculinity embedded within social norms, systems, and logics. Misogyny interprets feminism as a challenge to these systems and, therefore, as aggression. It turns to “reciprocate” with magnified acts of violence, actively threatening women and gender minorities’ safety. Violence, therefore, operates as both a rhetorical and material tool to uphold existing cultures and structures of heteropatriarchy and misogyny.

Brazilian Black councilwoman Marielle Franco was assassinated in March 2018 by Rio de Janeiro’s right-wing militia. Born and raised in Rio’s Favela da Maré, Franco ran for city council in 2016 on an explicitly queer Black feminist platform that centered on working-class concerns, especially of Black women. Her supporters spanned from working-class favela voters to college students and progressives of various ages from different parts of the city. Once elected, Franco became a vocal critic of state-sponsored violence in Rio’s favelas, shedding light especially on the extrajudicial killings performed by Rio’s military police and associated militias. She was fatally shot on her way home from a Black feminist circle event, and just a few days after denouncing the slaughter of Black youth by the police in Rio’s neighborhood of Acari. Two former police officers connected with Rio’s militias were arrested the following year for the shootings; years later, two politicians from Rio, along with then head of Rio's Civil Police, were arrested for ordering her killing. Crucially, the years following Franco’s death, which went unsolved for over five years, became a defining moment in Brazil, when the country was called on to reckon with the pervasiveness of racist gendered violence in Brazil’s political life.

This essay bridges three moments of Brazilian history and politics: first, we connect the Brazilian historical and cultural context to Franco’s ascension and subsequent murder; second, we examine how Franco’s death worked as a reminder of the country’s violent colonial past amid contemporary right-wing violence. Third, we discuss how Franco’s memorialization has served as a catalyst for organized Black feminist praxis in Brazil. Despite continuous brutal backlash endured by Black women in the Brazilian public sphere, Franco’s legacy prevails. This essay furthers critical perspectives of intercultural communication arguing that gendered violence is a continuation of colonial practices. At the same time, we also highlight that the relentless feminist work by Black women from Latin America is a site of decolonial knowledge that deserves scholarly attention.

Public support for science is critical to managing emerging societal risks, particularly in contested scientific issues involving moral tensions. Incorporating moral concerns into persuasive messages may therefore represent a promising strategy for strengthening such support. Drawing on moral foundations theory, this study examined how moral framing shaped public support for science through two online experiments with U.S. adults across distinct risk contexts. In the context of agricultural biotechnology, Study 1 (N = 405) found that individualizing moral framing increased perceived message credibility and, in turn, support for agricultural biotechnology compared to binding moral framing. Study 2 on future pandemic preparedness (N = 218) further demonstrated that individualizing moral framing enhanced message credibility, which heightened moral engagement and subsequently increased support for federal spending. However, this serial mediation emerged only among individuals low in binding moral foundations. Theoretically, these findings advance moral foundations theory by identifying credibility and moral engagement as key mechanisms underlying the persuasive effects of moral framing. Practically, the results highlight the value of tailoring science and risk messages to audiences’ moral values to strengthen public support for science in contested risk contexts.

Media discourses on environmental disasters play a crucial role in shaping public opinion, perceptions of the disaster, policy formation, and management strategies. This study employed a computational approach to examine the African media agenda and sentiments surrounding flood disasters in Ghana over 20 years (2004–2024). Findings uncovered media discourses around the complex climate change paradox, government disaster preparedness, and risk management, as well as rural/urban practices and their effects. Results also indicated that the majority of coverage was positive (69.45%), whereas less than half (30.55%) was negative, with no neutral coverage. In addition, the study observed positive sentiments regarding the coverage of the proactive steps taken by the government and its agencies in responding to the disaster. In contrast, negative sentiments focused on the loss of lives and the destruction of property. The study discussed the role of cultural norms in these findings to contribute to the praxis of media and environmental disaster communication.

As digital platforms continually evolve, rapid changes to platform affordances quickly render digital tools and data collection methods obsolete. Researchers of digital culture therefore must proactively adapt to the ephemerality of data. This paper examines these challenges within the context of Twitter (X) following its 2022 acquisition by Elon Musk, and the subsequent limiting of access to the API for data collection. Using a combination of manual data-collection practices and Zeeschuimer [Peeters 2025], a browser extension that collects social media data while browsing, researchers developed a novel data collection method, and model methodological adaptability within shifting digital terrains.

Focusing on the two basic aspects of message strategies—“what to communicate” and “how to communicate”—the chapter provides a comprehensive overview of CSA message strategies. For the “what” strategies, a company can communicate about the social issue it is addressing, its stance on the issue, and what advocacy efforts it is making, as well as highlighting its motives and its history of commitment. For the “how” strategies, we review strategies for tone, value-oriented vs. action-oriented strategies, strategies of emotional appeals, and visual strategies. We identify valuable insights attained so far but point to areas where more research is needed. The chapter ends with a mini-case study comparing the message strategies of Lyft and Levi’s CSA supporting abortion rights in response to the Supreme Court’s 2022 Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade.