International Journal of Media & Cultural Politics - Volume 16, Issue 3, 2020

This article contributes to an emerging field of ‘urban communication’ research and its intersections with civic culture and digital citizenship. It does so by presenting a case study of how an activist group in North London’s Tottenham region co-designed bespoke digital media platforms, akin to civic media, to advocate an approach to urban planning that also recognizes migrants’ rights. Conducted as a part of a broader participatory action research project, the study outlined here offers an analysis of the online and offline communicative routes taken, the urban rights enacted and the visions expressed during an eight-week consultation period. Drawing on both quantitative and qualitative metrics from the official and alternative digital platforms inviting consultation around the community-led planning application, the article offers insights about the co-construction of space, and the effect that the particular site had in unearthing wider enactments of ‘the right to the city’ and affective belonging, alongside struggles against threats of displacement. By offering these insights, the study contributes to a better understanding of the digital mediation of belonging through space/place and what this means for urban citizenship. Looking beyond processes of urban planning, this understanding seeks to contribute to wider debates of urban citizenship, often expressed at the intersection of urban rights, digital citizenship and virtual reality.

Given the state sponsorship of film production in Germany, this article examines general mechanisms in the formation of meaning in German filmmaking. With reference to Schimank’s framework of agent–structure dynamics and based on a constructivist understanding of the world, the results of 97 expert interviews with screenwriters, directors, producers, distributors, cinema theatre operators, funding representatives and public television editors, as well as document analyses, show that the medium’s construction of reality is anything but unconditioned. On the contrary, due to the fundamental role of film funding and public television in the agent constellations intertwined with social structures that shape the film production process in Germany, the medium’s key communicators are confronted with expectations that go far beyond economic parameters. More precisely, the article reveals that German filmmaking reflects a political dimension, and expresses hierarchies and constraints that prompt struggles for legitimate meaning and challenge any autonomous practice in the field.

There is no consensus in the literature about how successful media clusters can be developed. Using insights from workshops and survey data, this study develops and tests a new model that explains why media activities agglomerate at certain places. The model consists of four economic drivers: urbanization, localization, agglomeration and perception economies. The findings emphasize that a one-size-fits-all policy regarding media cluster development is best avoided, due to the high levels of heterogeneity in the conditions for success.

Iran’s controversial Nuclear Crisis (INC) has attracted many eyes and thoughts. While much ink has been spilled on its evolution and impact on international security and Middle Eastern politics, there has been a theoretical void in the explanation of the role of media in framing the INC. The present article gives a new frame on media power in issues related to international conflicts. It traces how CNN and Fox News, as the major US media broadcasting news channels, covered sequential phases of the INC. The article also tracks down the roles of these channels in securitizing the INC and framing it as a threat to international peace. Last but not least, it explains how these media channels construct and consolidate the discourse of Iranophobia.

Review of: Identity Discourses About Spain and Catalonia in News Media: Understanding Modern Secessionism, Clara Juárez Miró (2020)

Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, xii+182 pp.,

ISBN 978-1-79360-964-9, h/bk, $90.00, £69.00