The article combines the genre of the visual essay with written-textual contextualizations, to analyse the attempts to reconstruct the Estonian memorialscape through the removal of Soviet memorials in the second part of 2022. Theoretically grounded in a theory of discursive-material entanglement and assemblage theory, the article investigates these attempts to fixate history, but also the resistance they generate, by paying attention to the human contestations (mainly through a politics of mourning) but also the material resistance and the recalcitrance of historical traces, through everyday life’s desacralizing routines and novel infrastructures, and material decay and neglect...

This article introduces the special issue on “Arts-Based Research in Communication and Media Studies”, starting from a discussion on the different strategies and models that have been used to move away from the dominance of the written text in academia...

From a sociological point of view, this is a truly challenging time: a time of ‘revelation’ as well as possible ‘revolution’, capable of revealing many of the pathologies of our lifestyle. The Coronavirus crisis has exposed the way oursociety works in a sort of a global social experiment, whichprovides the opportunity to question many of the categories and paradigms of our disciplines, aswell as our way of life...

The article evaluates an academic intervention which consisted out of two photography exhibitions in Cyprus, focussing on the memorialization of the Cyprus Problem. These exhibitions communicated academic research into antagonistic nationalism and aimed to trigger societal debate, empowering the more agonism-oriented parts of society, and offering opportunities for reflection to others, simultaneously acknowledging the limits one intervention has...

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The article starts with a general reflection on the social relevance of theory, and moves on to...

RIASSUNTO La diffusione dei «nuovi» media online ha suscitato un ottimismo generalizzato riguardo le loro potenzialità sociali e partecipative, spingendo a preconizzare un’evoluzione del paradigma comunicativo dal modello mass-mediatico a quello many-to-many. Ma, come già accaduto in passato, la riscoperta della partecipazione pone una serie di problemi teoretici, concettuali ed empirici. La partecipazione è diventata – se non del tutto, almeno in parte – un oggetto da celebrare, intrappolata in un discorso riduzionista di trasformazione, distaccata dal processo di ricezione dei suoi pubblici e decontestualizzata rispetto alle cornici politico-ideologiche che la inquadrano e alle condizioni comunicative che la contraddistinguono sul piano culturale e strutturale. Queste prospettive ottimistiche impediscono di comprendere quanto alcuni dei concetti fondamentali del paradigma mass-mediatico siano tuttora validi e continuino a costituire il quadro discorsivo entro cui si svolge la fruizione dei media tradizionali e digitali. L’articolo ha l’obiettivo di mostrare tale persistenza mediante un’analisi della ricezione di due prodotti mediali partecipativi diffusi in Belgio. Uno di questi riguarda la «nuova» frontiera del video-sharing e analizza una piattaforma simile a YouTube chiamata 16plus; il secondo caso di studio prende in considerazione un programma del 2002, Barometer, e ruota attorno al «vecchio» concetto di fruizione televisiva. Attraverso un’analisi di questi processi di ricezione multi-stratificati, l’articolo mostra come le pratiche partecipative non siano apprezzate in maniera incondizionata dai pubblici, ma siano invece soggette a specifiche condizioni di possibilità profondamente radicate nel paradigma mass-mediatico. Sebbene con intensità diverse, questi casi di studio mostrano come i giudizi che le audience esprimono sulle pratiche partecipative siano ancora influenzati da due «vecchi» concetti: la qualità professionale e la rilevanza sociale. SUMMARY The popularization of «new» internet-based media has generated much optimism about the social and participatory-democratic potentialities of these media, leading to predictions about the demise of the mass communication paradigm, and its replacement by a many-to-many communicative paradigm. But as happened before, the reappraisal of participation also produced a number of theoretical, conceptual and empirical problems. Participation became (at least partially) an object of celebration, trapped in a reductionist discourse of novelty, detached from the reception of its audiences and decontextualized from its political-ideological, communicativecultural and communicative-structural contexts. These celebratory perspectives on participation cover how some of the basic concepts of the mass communication paradigm are still very much alive, providing the discursive frameworks for the reception of old and new media products. This article aims to show the persistence of (a number of components of) the mass communication paradigm through an analysis of the reception of two north Belgian participatory media products. One of these case studies is based on the ‘new’ world of a YouTube-like online platform called 16plus; the second case study is based on the «old» concept of access television in a 2002 TV programme called Barometer. Through an analysis of these multilayered audience receptions, this article shows that participatory practices are not unconditionally appreciated by audience members, but are subject to specific conditions of possibility that are still embedded within the mass communication paradigm. Albeit in different degrees, these case studies show the importance of two «old» key concepts – professional quality and social relevance – for these audiences’ evaluation of participatory practices.