Developments in digital technologies over the last 30 years have expanded massively human beings' capacity to communicate and connect. Media infrastructures have acquired huge complexity as a result of rapid technological change and the uneven spread of access. This is a good time to think critically about 'connection' and its potential contribution to social progress. We first explore key developments in media infrastructures and communication flows across the world, bringing out salient differences in the local evolution of, and inequalities in media access. Second, we examine how media – as infrastructures of connection – contribute to public knowledge and enable new types of encounter between people on various scales, while also enabling counter-movements for social progress. Third, we examine the changing governance of media infrastructures, the issues of social justice that such infrastructures raise and the counter-movements to which they give rise. Fourth, we consider media as a specific site of struggle for social progress, arguing that measures of social progress themselves need to be expanded to take account of the human needs (such as voice) that media serve. Overall the chapter reflects on how media and communications flows and infrastructures both maintain and challenge asymmetries of power, with complex implications for social progress.

This article discusses the role of media and communications in contributing to social progress, as elaborated in a landmark international project – the International Panel on Social Progress. First, it analyses how media and digital platforms have contributed to global inequality by examining media access and infrastructure across world regions. Second, it looks at media governance and the different mechanisms of corporatized control over media platforms, algorithms and content. Third, the article examines how the democratization of media is a key element in the struggle for social justice. It argues that effective media access – in terms of distribution of media resources, even relations between spaces of connection and the design and operation of spaces that foster dialogue, free speech and respectful cultural exchange – is a core component of social progress.

In the chapter Bolin argues that in the world of digital, interactive media, media users become involved in two kinds of valorisation processes: one in which they produce social, aesthetic and cultural value within the framework of a cultural economy – which then becomes appropriated by the media industries and transformed into economic value. Furthermore, the nature of the business models of social networking media makes the labour activities at their bottom easily misrecognized by the media users. The result of this process is an increased commodification of social realms that have previously been outside of the economic markets.

Following the spread of digital media, the interdisciplinary field of surveillance studies has gained prominence, engaging scholars from the humanities and the social sciences alike. This introductory article aims to map out the main terrain of surveillance through, by and in the media. First, we discuss the phenomenon of, and the scholarly work on, surveillance through and by media, taking into consideration both state and corporate surveillance and how these activities have grown with the new digital and personal media of today. We then discuss surveillance as the phenomenon is represented in the media and how representations relate to surveillance practices. We conclude by presenting the articles of this special issue.

Since the late 1990s, nation branding has attracted a lot of attention from academics, professional consultants and government actors. The ideas and practices of nation branding are frequently presented by branding advocates as necessary and even inevitable in the light of changing dynamics of political power and influence in a globalised and media-saturated world. In this context, some have argued that nation branding is a way to reduce international conflict and supplant ethno-nationalism with a new form of market-based, national image management. However, a growing body of critical studies has documented that branding campaigns tend to produce ahistorical and exclusionary representations of the nation and advance a form of ‘commercial nationalism’ that is problematic. Importantly, the critical scholarship on nation branding has relied primarily on sociological and anthropological theories of nationhood, identities and markets. By contrast, the role of the media – as institutions, systems and societal storytellers – has been undertheorised in relation to nation branding. The majority of the existing literature tends to treat the media as ‘neutral’ vehicles for the delivery of branding messages to various audiences. This is the guest editors’ introduction to the Special Issue ‘Theorizing Media in Nation Branding’, which seeks to problematise this overly simplistic view of ‘the media’ and aims to articulate the various ways in which specific media are an integral part of nation branding. It adopts an interdisciplinary approach and problematises both the enabling and the inhibiting potentialities of different types of media as they perpetuate nation branding ideas, images, ideologies, discourses and practices.

This volume sheds light on the underlying dynamics of mediatization, disentangling the actual unfolding of mediatization processes. The wide adoption and deep embedding of digital media and technology brings new questions to mediatization studies: how can we grasp this ‘deep mediatization’? In which way should we develop existing approaches of mediatization to analyse such dynamics? What are the consequences of this for theorising and empirically studying mediatization?  By using these questions as a starting point, this book presents an innovative and original collection that is dedicated to both the underlying dynamics of mediatization and recent dynamics related to digital media.

Introduction Time and again, it is said that we are living in an era of rapid technological change, or even one of increased acceleration (Rosa, 2013 [2005]). This idea of accelerating technological change, especially that involving media technologies, also serves as a basis for contemporary theories of ‘media generations’. These theories argue that in contrast to previous generations who were socialised into print media culture, those born over the past 50−60 years have seen a much more rapid transformation of technologies, impacting more strongly on the formation of generational identity. According to Gary Gumpert and Robert Cathcart, the faster pace of technological change leads to the formation of distinct media generations.

This afterword is an attempt to draw some general conclusions from the case studies presented in the individual articles and try to situate the analyses from these in a broader context of globalisation and modernity. It is specifically argued that symbolic assets and actions are becoming increasingly important for the modern project, and hence that new types of value forms, e.g. sign value, are coming to be important as the basis for the transformation of nations and regions into commodities. The article ends with discussing some epistemological and ontological implications for future research in this area.

Scholarly attention regarding the conflict between Russia and Ukraine has mainly concentrated on so-called Russian propaganda, directed both towards Russian-speaking populations and the international public, but less attention has been paid to the management of information from Ukraine. In this chapter is proposed that the conflict between Ukraine and Russia has engaged an entirely new set of actors engaged in the management of information, most notably from PR and nation branding activities, as well as journalists, oligarchs and various individuals with an interest in Ukraine’s international image. These new actors bring with them competences, ideologies and practices from their field of origin which impact on the practice and expressive character of information warfare. In this chapter we analyse three domains of communication used by Ukraine to address external audiences; the Ukraine Crisis Media Centre (UCMC), the English language news channel Ukraine Today and the fact checking website StopFake. With a focus on both individuals as well as the institutions they represent, this chapter explores the way in which actors in Ukraine have attempted to shape the content of the messages communicated.