This anthology explores the current evolution of interactive storytelling across digital as well as physical spaces by examining how games, digital narratives, and participatory art can reshape creative expression and learning at fundamental levels.



The contributors propose that interactive fiction is best examined by combining social, literary, and technical analyses together. Used independently, each modality provides an insufficient picture of the deeply merged social, technical, and artistic media environments we currently inhabit. We focus instead on the nature of the social interactions involved when engaging in digital storytelling, emphasizing that an interactive narrative is perpetually constructed and reconstructed each time it is experienced.



The collection provides in depth analysis, organized into three distinct sections, the first two based on the key modalities of alternate realities and digital interactive fiction. The third section then provides an important political critique of gaming ideologies. Contributors with expertise and experience in each section topic provide diverse and timely analyses on how interactive narratives function in educational contexts, community engagement, and human-machine collaboration. The authors also investigate both theoretical frameworks and practical applications, from live-action role-playing to AI-assisted writing, while considering the significant social and political implications of gaming culture in general.



The collection's strength remains on its unique bringing together diverse perspectives from game designers, educators, artists, and theorists to examine how new forms of storytelling emerge at the intersection of analog and digital realms, with particular attention to the role of play and interactivity in contemporary learning environments.

The media and creative industries thrive on passion, but that passion often comes at a cost. Behind the glamour of journalism, filmmaking, games, music, advertising, and online content creation lies a growing crisis-one of burnout, anxiety, substance abuse, and exhaustion. Why do so many creative professionals report feeling both deeply fulfilled and profoundly unwell?

Mark Deuze investigates the systemic issues that make creative work both exhilarating and unsustainable. Drawing on extensive research and in-depth interviews with media professionals, he notes the hidden downsides of doing what you love and offers a candid analysis of how workplace structures, high workloads, and perceived injustices contribute to mental and physical distress.

But this book is not just about what's broken; it's about what can be done. Deuze provides a roadmap for rethinking the culture of creative industries and offers strategies for balancing passion with sustainability. A practical resource for media scholars and those navigating the highs and lows of a creative career, this work challenges us to imagine a healthier future for our labour of love.

This article brings Francesco Guicciardini (1483–1540) into the history of communication. The author argues Guicciardini should be added to the short list of Renaissance authors considered part of the so-called proto-history of public relations, like Machiavelli. In his work, the Italian author Guicciardini crafts several maxims and reflections that emphasize the importance of reputation in public and private affairs and how the use of communication and power can help to achieve a solid reputation. Ricordi’s communication menu includes advice about the importance of monitoring and cultivating public opinion, deeds, timing, context and information management. With certain nuances, immorality, as in the case of Machiavelli, seems to be the norm in this period, characterized by pragmatism. A main conclusion of this article is that Guicciardini belongs to a group of historical authors, alongside Machiavelli, Gracián and Cardinal Mazarino, who used communication management with a purpose of hegemony and control over publics on behalf of the powerful class. In fact, nobles, princes and kings used communication management, despite the differences the use of media technology imposes, in a similar fashion to current organizations and enterprises.

The aim of this study is to show how Leila Aboulela incorporates digital diaspora in her narration of Bird Summons (2019). Largely focusing on the main character, Salma, the study also explores how Aboulela depicts Arabs, who in the West try to cope with their new life through technology and social media. Aboulela shows how Salma reaches to what Homi Bhabha calls ‘The Third Space’ with the assistance of digital devices and social media. The novel is analysed through the lens of postcolonialism with the use of corpus linguistics. The importance of digital environments is well-established in migrant groups in diaspora is highlighted in the novel. There is shortage of studies that tackle digital environments and diaspora in general. The contribution of the study lies in the fact that Bird Summons (2019) as a novel has been tackled by a few scholars. Added to that, corpus linguistics is not widely used in literary studies. Thus, the study fills in an important gap in the literature due to these important contributions. The study concludes with the fact that Aboulela includes digital dispersions in her storytelling of Bird Summons (2019). Furthermore, Aboulela portrays her primary protagonists, who are individuals of Arab descent residing in the western hemisphere, as capable of adapting to their unfamiliar surroundings through the utilization of technology and social networking platforms, with particular emphasis placed on the character Salma.

This article explores Generation Z’s understanding of entertainment through the connection between video streaming service use and fun. The proliferation of media entertainment tools designed for personal consumption has multifaceted implications, alienating entertainment from its social aspect. The rising popularity of video streaming services largely reshapes entertainment by disconnecting it from the conventional viewing experience. Through semi-structured in-depth interviews with samples from Generation Z, this study examines the traces of this transformation. Research findings reveal that Generation Z participants have developed three ways to have fun through video streaming services. These are simultaneous viewing together, watching together by downloading add-ons from different screens and solo viewing that later becomes a topic of discussion during friends’ gatherings. This research interprets the use of video streaming services for fun as direct experience, indirect experience and postponed experience, and it holds potential for contributing to communication studies.

In the wake of the 7 October Uprising, there has been a considerable online discourse surrounding the Palestine–Israel conflict. Drawing on qualitative content analysis, this research focuses on how the story of Palestine is conveyed on Instagram. Instagram has emerged as one of the biggest social media channels where advocacy and social activism occur in the current digital era. This study will focus on 75 Instagram posts (photos, reels and carousels) related to the Palestinian issue, from October 2023 to June 2024. The objectives of this research are to understand how digital storytelling on Instagram has projected the Palestinian issue and to examine the content, tone, visuals, themes and underlying messages of Instagram activism regarding the Palestinian story. The findings of this study revealed that the use of precise visual and textual elements that distinguish the recurrence of themes such as suffering, solidarity, violation of human rights and resistance, act as stand-ins for strategic framing within digital activism to raise awareness and garner support for collective action. The study reveals how Instagram users have helped boost Palestinian perspectives. The major themes that emerged are those of suffering and solidarity with a tinge of emotion and humanitarian elements of the Palestinian struggle. This research, thus, underlines the potential capacity of Instagram to reshape conflict narratives to emerge from historical marginalization, contributing to a change in global discourse.

This article examines the mediation of human rights in English-speaking media during the 2023/2024 Israeli war on Gaza, Palestine. It investigates the extent to which human rights are effectively or ineffectively represented, depending on how the media cover the death and suffering of civilians. A central focus is the media’s portrayal of civilian suffering as defined under International Humanitarian Law (IHL). The way media coverage addresses the deprivation of civilians’ rights can have significant ethical and practical implications, potentially either mitigating or exacerbating human loss. Using critical discourse analysis, this study explores the BBC’s coverage of the politics of de-civilianization in Palestine. Israeli settler colonialism in Palestine is seen an effort to stretch the boundaries of IHL, eroding the concept of civilians as protected persons under IHL. Understanding how media frame these acts of Israeli settler colonialism in their reporting is crucial, as the representation of events can either uphold or undermine the notion of justice, a fundamental human right. The media are expected to promote ‘hydraulic’ human rights, meaning they should contribute to the cumulative process of empowering the vulnerable and the weak until their rights are realized. The article questions the extent to which the BBC’s coverage of the 2023/2024 war on Gaza supports or undermines the human rights situation in Palestine. It argues that human rights can be compromised by biased media coverage and, paradoxically, by seemingly unbiased coverage that claims to be ‘objective’. The application of objectivity by major English-speaking media outlets, including the BBC, may inadvertently disadvantage the weak. Although objective media coverage aims to provide a balanced representation of all sides, subtle editorial practices, such as ‘transediting’ conducted by ‘journalators’, can marginalize certain voices, ultimately suppressing the human rights of vulnerable populations, particularly civilians.

As with many industries, artificial intelligence (AI) is playing a pivotal role in transforming the podcasting sector. However, like any technology, it is essential to strike a balance between opportunities and challenges. This study, conducted through semi-structured, in-depth interviews with seven podcast creators in the Sultanate of Oman, aims to explore the opportunities and challenges associated with integrating AI into the podcast industry. It also examines strategies for mitigating potential risks and considerations for ethical practices when incorporating AI technologies into podcasting. The key findings suggest that the opportunities arising from AI integration in the podcast industry encompass time, effort and cost savings, particularly in improving sound quality, eliminating noise, adjusting tone, expanding the reach through translation and transcription services and increasing accessibility for visually impaired and deaf audiences. Moreover, the results indicate that this integration can lead to certain challenges, including information bias, limited access, loss of human touch, potential lack of uniqueness, data accuracy and credibility, deep fakes, privacy and data security concerns, intellectual property issues, job displacement, accessibility issues for visually impaired individuals and financial costs associated with AI tools. Furthermore, the results emphasize the importance of ensuring the accuracy and credibility of information obtained through AI, respecting the intellectual property of others, maintaining authenticity and creativity, and considering the general ethical considerations in content creation when integrating AI technologies.

This article examines the transformative impact of Reliance Jio, an Indian telecommunications company, on the digital media landscape in India. By securing the digital rights for the immensely popular Indian Premier League (IPL), a cricket tournament known for its massive viewership and cultural significance, and streaming it for free on JioCinema, Jio disrupted the over-the-top (OTT) video platform market. This move highlights Jio’s strategy of leveraging vertical integration and regulatory leniency to dominate the market. The research delves into the historical context of India’s digital policies and the government’s role in fostering a liberalized market environment through ‘regulatory silence’. It also explores the implications of media convergence and platformization, where digital giants shape the production and distribution of media content. The article argues that Jio’s control over the internet infrastructure and its extensive content library position it as a formidable player in the Indian media industry, influencing both market dynamics and regulatory frameworks. By analysing Jio’s ascent and the broader media policy environment, this study provides insights into the evolving power structures and economic strategies within India’s digital media sector, offering a critical perspective on the interplay between telecommunications and media in a rapidly digitalizing economy.

Internet memes – images and GIFs – have become part of internet pop culture and are here to stay. Memes’ success as an online communication phenomenon is due, to some extent, to the fact that memes are self-explanatory. Indeed, messages conveyed in memes, however complex, are instantaneously grasped. The themes that memes cover can be casual or serious, but the humour and wit they radiate diffuse the tension of most sombre topics. However, it is unclear what makes a particular meme popular or, as they say, viral. Notably, when using the word viral to refer to a meme, internet users inadvertently uphold the take on memes as gene-like units of information that evolve as quasi-biological entities. In this article, the authors intend to move away from this approach and investigate memes from a semiotic and logical perspective. To do that, the authors deploy Peircean terminology that helps position memes in the sphere of signs and analyse meme structure using both ‘icon–index–symbol’ and ‘token-type’ classifications, as well as ‘the habit of inference’ concept. This analysis allows them to describe the mechanics of meme transformation and define the boundaries that memes do not cross.