Global journal publishing, soft power, Italian Americans and social media visual impact

Academic journal publishing stands as a pivotal conduit for global communication of scholarship and knowledge. However, the field of Communication, despite its significance, lags notably in encompassing diverse voices from across the globe. In this winter issue, we highlight a significant initiative undertaken by our journal this year: fostering a dialogue between the Global South and Global North within the sphere of global scholarly publishing.

Our efforts materialized through a Journal Editors’ Dialogue Forum convened on July 2 at Shanghai International Studies University. Six journal editors from the West collaborated with counterparts from leading Chinese communication journals to discuss, enhancing the dissemination of scholarship between the Global North and Global South. This collaborative endeavor aimed at shedding light on practices and opportunities within their journals. Against this backdrop, our journal’s co-editor-in-chief, Ke Guo, along with co-author Hui Zhou and Peiqin Chen, contributed an invited review essay titled, “Path to Global Knowledge: Review of Chinese Scholars on International Publishing.” Their work delves into how Chinese scholars navigate the international publishing challenges within the Chinese research database CNKI. This essay takes the lead in this issue, with the aspiration of stimulating vital discussions among scholars to bolster research quality while establishing an equitable platform for academics worldwide.

However, the challenge of international journal publishing is not exclusive to Chinese scholars but extends to scholars in the Global South. Our research article, “Who Navigates the ‘Elite’ of Communication Journals? The Participation of BRICS Universities in Top-Ranked Publications” authored by Naiza Comel, Francisco Paulo Jamil Marques, Luiz Otavio Prendin Costa, Chirlei Kohls, and Maíra Orso, meticulously documents how universities in BRICS countries – Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa – navigate elite communication journal publishing. It emphasizes the pivotal role of partnerships for success, underlining that only a select few elite universities in these countries manage to engage in this process effectively.

Shudipta Sharma’s article, “From Screen to Soft Power: The Rising Appeal of Turkish TV Series in Bangladesh,” analyzes the rhetoric within Facebook and YouTube comments on the Bengali-dubbed channel of the immensely popular Turkish TV series, The Magnificent Century. It elucidates Turkey’s endeavor to position itself as a leader in the Islamic world by harking back to the historical grandeur of the Ottoman Empire under Sultan Suleiman, thereby appealing to Islamic countries.

While many studies on ethnic minorities in social media have focused on people of color, Stephanie Longo and Andrea Towers Scott’s “Hashtags and Heritage: The Use of #italianamerican on Instagram” sheds light on European immigrants, specifically Italian Americans in the U.S. They showcase how this community establishes its digital neighborhood and proudly displays its ethnic identity, culture, and heritage through the use of the specific ethnic group hashtag, #italianamerican, on Instagram.

Visual content plays a pivotal role on social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram. Elina Koutromanou, Catherine Sotirakou, and Constantinos Mourlas utilized computational analysis, facial recognition tools, and machine learning models to examine the impact of diverse visual elements in 4,144 posts from 12 child-related non-governmental organizations (NGOs) on Instagram and Facebook between 2020 and 2021. Their findings indicate that the presence of people and emotions such as joy and calmness significantly influence the likes, shares, and replies to these posts.

This issue also features a special review essay on online media communication research published in English focusing on Central Asia (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan) by Rashad Mammadov. Mammadov delves into research concerning online media’s impact, spanning from its role in political dynamics to its implications for society, governance, national identity, cultural expression, and e-learning in Central Asian countries. He discusses the transformative potential of online media within a region heavily influenced by Russia and China.

Highlighting an article translated from outside the Anglosphere, our featured piece from South Korea, “Perception and Attitude Toward the Regulation of Online Video Streaming: A Comparison Between Users and Non-users (in South Korea),” authored by Eun Yu, Haeyeop Song, Jaemin Jung, and Youngju Kim, originally published in Korean Journal of Broadcasting, delves into the rise of online video streaming in South Korea. It assesses the need for regulatory measures by policymakers, drawing from a national survey of non-users and users of online video streaming. Notably, non-streaming users exhibited more support for regulation compared to users in South Korea. The article confirmed the third-person effect: the perceived influence on adolescents is a key determinant of support for regulation.