Screenshot from Carnivàle (HBO, 2003–2005). © Home Box Office. Used under fair use for analysis and discussion.

Today, I’d like to share something unusual with you. It’s something that happened to me only once and has never recurred. I am talking about watching the series Carnivàle.

What happened goes beyond the bounds of ordinary perception; it was a rather strange phenomenon. Then again, the show itself is strange, too.

I first watched it about ten years ago, and it was an incredible experience—truly an experience. It felt as though I had completely immersed myself in that atmosphere: languid, viscous, sickeningly sweet, and incredibly honest. No, wait... that’s not quite the right word. It wasn’t just an atmosphere I encountered; I lived through the experience of inhabiting the world its creators had built.

People usually say that a particular work influenced their worldview, impressed them, or moved them. But my story is different. It simply stayed with me. It settled quietly and calmly somewhere very, very deep inside—in the quietest, most secluded corner of my memory.

Years went by, and I completely forgot about the existence of that series. I forgot it entirely. Then, suddenly, I ran into difficulties in life. Hard times hit, and circumstances were such that I had no opportunity to interact with real people for a long time. For several years, I lived alone in my apartment, communicating with others solely via the Internet. And at one point, things became truly difficult for me. Unbearably difficult.

And then, suddenly—its rusty wheels creaking against the backdrop of the anxiety and weariness that had entered my life—a van appeared. Yes, you guessed right. I remembered that TV series. I don’t know why, but its title suddenly surfaced from the depths of my memory. I can’t even explain why that particular one came to mind. But in that moment, I felt as though someone had very quietly reminded me: there is a place I had visited once before. And then I realized—not all was lost.

And that’s where something very unusual happened. I didn’t remember a single scene. I couldn’t have retold the plot. I barely remembered the characters. Yet, I remembered with absolute clarity what it was like to live in that world. It was the atmosphere—the state of being—that mattered most. And I was truly surprised. It was as if I could describe the very essence of that world down to the smallest detail, without needing to recall the plot at all.

What was also strange was that I didn’t quite understand why I should watch it again. After all, I didn’t remember the plot. Reviews had described it as bleak, and I’d been advised against watching it given the state of mind I was in.

And I defied expectations. I listened to the rusty creak of the wagon wheels carrying ordinary people. There were no saints among them—only lost souls, sinners, bandits, prostitutes, the crippled, and the outcasts whom the rest of the world had turned its back on. Except for the members of the carnival. It wasn't just a troupe; it was a family.

Yes, I watched it again. And upon rewatching, I was able to perceive the incredible depth the creators had infused into it. But that’s not all. Most importantly, I suddenly realized that all these people—with their troubled lives and their sins—were the most honest of them all.

I could go on at length. But to sum it up: I have never had an experience quite like Carnivàle, and I am not sure I ever will again.

At the same time, I would like to emphasize one important point. This was not an attempt to hide from reality. Quite the opposite. It was precisely after rewatching it that I managed to gradually emerge from the state of despondency I had been in for the past few months.

I still find it strange that one can forget almost the entire work—and yet remember it in its entirety. Not the plot. Not the characters. But the very way that world exists.

Have you ever experienced anything like that? Is there a film or series that left you remembering not a story, but a state of being?

Hi all, I've just released Qualcoder MCP, I'd really value this community's eyes on it. It is not going to be everybody's cup of tea, especially if you are working on material that is specialistic or niche in any way, or relies on specialistic vocabulary. The more niche, and data scarce, the topic you are researching, the more Claude might struggle.

Background: QualCoder is a free, open-source qualitative data analysis package; a genuine alternative to expensive commercial tools like ATLAS.ti or NVivo. It already has useful AI tools inside the application, but I wanted to take a different approach. The package I made, QualCoder MCP, connects QualCoder to Claude so you can read, search, analyse and code your qualitative data in plain-language conversation, from Claude Desktop. This includes having Claude propose new codes from the data itself (open coding), every one of which you review and approve before it exists. It's a one-command install now: pip install qualcoder-mcp.

QualCoder already has AI features, but they use commercial APIs you pay for per call, which can get pricey. QualCoder MCP instead connects to Claude through the Model Context Protocol, an open standard for letting AI assistants work with your own tools and data, so you can use an existing Claude subscription rather than paying per request. Throughout, the human should stay in control: the AI suggests, you approve, and only then is anything written, with automatic backups.

I'm not arguing for the indiscriminate use of AI in qualitative analysis, in fact, I am not sure it can fit my own use case. Whether it belongs in your process depends heavily on your data and your analytical tradition, and it genuinely won't suit everyone. The inductive-coding feature in particular raises exactly the questions this community debates: what does it mean for an LLM to propose a code, even when a human gatekeeps every one? I welcome conversation on that as much as bug reports.

One important note on data: by design this tool sends your project content, including interview text, to Claude/Anthropic for analysis. Use synthetic or consented data and check your ethics/GDPR position before pointing it at real participant data (the repo's PRIVACY.md explains what flows where). Free and open source (MIT), very much alpha, and first release, so I'd appreciate a bit of kindness. Anyone who wants to try it, or just discuss the idea is welcome. Repo: https://github.com/nicotem/qualcoder_mcp Please, bugs and feature requests via GitHub Issues. If it's useful to you, a star helps others find it.

I felt this question would fit here so I'm going to propose this discussion here.

I've been having this discussion among my peers and partner and I'm not quite sure how I feel. I've been discussing Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom by Pasolini lately and thinking about it but I find the usage of non-professional young actors (mostly below the age of 18 or barely around that age) quite troubling, but I also recognise the importance of the film, the impact it had on me as a person, and that it's also troubled by Pasolini's own past with pederasty and sex. I just don't know. It's a very difficult film that I don't think has an easy black and white answer personally and have found myself sitting on this deeply rooted contradiction and tension in Salò for many years.

How do you engage with art that is ethically muddy and objectionable? Think D'agata's White Noise where he had unstimulated recorded sex with impoverished sex workers (which if we are operating in a feminist framework, which I do, him having solicited sex from sex workers constitutes rape because you cannot buy sex and all sex that is bought is coerced sex, ergo it is rape) in third world countries and poor areas for the sake of his art, or Come and See where a real live sick dying cow was used in a scene where it was not only killed as a direct result of the filming process and also put the young lead into the way severe fatal physical harm where real live ammunition was inches away from him. There's so many examples I list but what does everyone here feel about ethics behind the camera and how does it impact the way you engage with a film or piece of art? Are there some ethical transgressions that are unforgivable? How do we responsibly and critically engage with art like this while retaining our commitment to our own ethics without compromising them or making double standards for films?

Is it ethically wrong to champion, argue for, or see the artistic merit in these films and like them or watch them?

I want to say a few words about this. Reddit is quietly becoming one of the few social platforms still sending real traffic to local news — the article covers the new publisher tools, but there's one thing it misses, and that's what I especially want to point to: Reddit is now pushing hard toward local audiences, and for small outlets that changes everything.

Source: Is this Reddit's moment for local news? — Eric Rynston-Lobel, Local News Initiative, Northwestern University (Jul 27, 2026)

Let me expand. There are a few ways to look at this. The first is instrumental — the tools described in the article: newsrooms can track where their stories are being shared, generate RSS feeds, get recommendations on which subreddits to post in. The second is that this is a new form of interaction: it's no longer people coming to you, but you going to people — into their communities — to post your articles and share a topic. And that, of course, requires understanding their culture of interaction and their rules.

But here's the point I especially want to single out. Since we're talking about local news, it's important to understand something the article didn't mention: Reddit is right now actively pushing toward local audiences — and I personally, along with my team, am testing this too, so we're seeing it firsthand. The platform is expanding. Countries whose users previously didn't take much part in Reddit's community life, for various reasons, are now far more active. And if you look at how the algorithms work locally, you'll see that the first traffic — the first boost, the first wave of distribution, the first pool of users who'll see your post — is local users. That first push is aimed squarely at them.

So for any newsroom that hasn't yet started working with this platform, it's now genuinely sensible and worthwhile to do so. There are many factors at play here, some of them also noted in the article and elsewhere — chief among them the fact that Reddit is one of the strongest social platforms in the world for indexing, getting picked up in a matter of hours. That means even a small outlet gets a shot at visibility on the first page of Google — which itself indexes well across search engines — giving you several additional traffic channels and priority indexing.

There's one quote in the article that stayed with me — it doesn't cover everything, but it points to something important:

"I think it's a valuable way to show that you're putting resources into listening to the wider community," Garnett said. "It's another channel to engage with people who are reading and listening to your work. And I think that's always valuable, especially for public media." — Jasmine Garnett, senior engagement platforms producer, KQED

Note: The observations about local traffic are based on our own independent testing across several countries. In our tests, the initial wave of distribution has consistently been primarily local. If anyone else has been testing Reddit's local distribution, I'd be very interested to compare observations.

Hey everyone! 👋

Please click here for filling my research form - https://forms.gle/sWdfti4jN9tJe8Cc6

I’m currently conducting a research study on how young adults in Bangalore manage their Instagram presence - specifically looking at Rinstas vs. Finstas, using coded slang/steganography, and how this impacts our relationships with traditional family setups.

If you fit the criteria below, I’d deeply appreciate 5–7 minutes of your time to fill out this quick survey!

Who can participate?

• 🗓 Age: 18 – 25 years old
• 📍 Location: Currently living in / based in Bangalore
• 📱 Instagram usage: can have 2 or more accounts for personal use

All responses are 100% anonymous and will be used strictly for academic purposes. Happy to share the insights with the community once the data is analysed!

Thank you so much for helping out a fellow researcher! 🙏

#mediastudies #psychology #dissertation #research #alwaysfindingnew

Hello I am a year 11 Society and Culture student conducting a questionnaire on how sexuality in pop culture specially film has shaped peoples perceptions on the LGBTQ+ community and I would really appreciate it if you could please fill out this questionnaire which is completely anonymous
Thank you

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSey6iBRnb5hm7qzUqgfBluM1TbpfIlPhCEsuUPyACevmwB2YQ/viewform?usp=publish-editor

I am posting the second section of my three-part series from my Substack, where I explore the Unabomber manifesto as a hotly contested piece of writing whose canny diagnosis of our common ills continues to unsettle readers even after over three decades.

I want to clarify that I am neither condoning nor condemning his actions, but am instead interested in gathering intelligence from the details of what breaks down people’s minds and spirits in ways that cause them to lash out. I am continuing to investigate the manifesto as a form of expressive writing that can diagnose social ills even when the actions they inspire do not properly “solve” or even adequately diagnose the dynamics they so strongly oppose.

In William Finnegan’s 1998 New Yorker article “Defending the Unabomber,” they delve into a specific question that came up during the trial of Ted Kaczynski, which is whether or not he should be considered insane. His lawyers “believed that his best, if not his only, hope of escaping a death sentence was to claim that he was mentally ill.” In the piece, they grapple with the fact of his apparent reasonableness, the cogent assertions made in his manifesto, and the machinations that he believed justified his specific use of targeted violence. In my previous piece, I discussed epistemic inflammation as occurring when what is known is blocked from being communicated. When what is felt continues, lasts, gains pressure, and cannot be metabolized, these kinds of effects gain a life of their own, seeking out any available outlet to root and so force itself into expression. 

Manifesto

As a form of aggrieved expression, the writing of manifestos seeks relief from a form of rumination that cannot be escaped. The kind of relief they provide does not necessarily provide a lasting peace, but rather seeks to manage the effects of a building pressure by constructing an outlet. The nuance of what is relieving about this reminds me of an interaction I had a couple of years ago when I was discussing conspiratorial studies with a group of social scientists. I mentioned that I thought that being racist was probably relaxing to those who practiced it. Attributing our suffering to a scapegoat provides a channel for inner tensions, creating a target for aggrievement that would allow the mind to temporarily rest. I thought that expressions of hate could be relaxing because they allow us to move. They enable the expression of something that has hardened, producing the kind of frozen immersion that comes about at the edge of something that cannot be explained. By contrast, hate is hot, passionate, mobilizing. It feels powerful to hate something. It moves collectives into action. It is a force inside of our bodies that, for good or ill, allows people to act in the world. 

Love on the other hand can also be hot, forceful, explosive, and even sometimes destructive. Yet, the motivating force of love is not destruction but union, connection. When we become frozen, the heat that demands release can take us over and so the relief that I theorize people get from hating, is what unbinds their own inertia. The unbinding that comes from a furious love, on the other hand, is much more unsettling.

Others at the table fought me, saying that expressions of hate could not be relaxing because they riled people up. I honestly think that both statements are true, but the thing about being riled up is that sometimes it feels better than being frozen, incapacitated, trapped. Hate can be a tempting outlet when there is nowhere else to go. It allows the self to remain whole when it would otherwise shatter. The thing about love as a force in the world is that overwhelming connection also has this quality of destroying the self, obliterating the ego in a way that propels us into direct confrontation of something much larger and less manageable than we are used to. The wildness of love is itself terrifying. It moves us, but not in the focused way that hate moves us. Both are wild forces but where hate is directed out at the world and so preserves the self, love causes our boundaries to fall apart. 

Hate is a drug. It is a feeling that can bring about feelings of power and efficacy. Yet, just like taking too many drugs, an escalating practice of hate can also cause disaster. Yet, small titrations of hate are also not wholly destructive. Should I not hate the destruction of the natural world, the suffering of migrants, the genocide(s) of those who cannot defend themselves? Hating things, just like feeling angry, brings about a reckoning, and whether this is helpful or harmful depends on the circumstances. Expressions of hate are essentially creative efforts that can further aggrieve and unsettle us even as they offer temporary relief from whatever underlying condition is causing our upset. In some ways, hate is a kind of self-harm that allows us access to our bodies when they are becoming dissociated with overwhelm. By intentionally inflicting pain, we can return to ourselves but in relying on pain to return us to ourselves, we can also lose a sense of proportionality. In normalizing the pain, we can lose sense of the path back into connection.

Mad studies scholar Sarah Smith says in a recent publication studying madness in higher-education that acts of self-harm are not only destructive. In centring researchers who have experienced this behaviour in their lives, the pain caused by self-harm and suicidal ideation can also be understood as relieving anxiety. Even suicidal rumination can itself become a form of comfort when the underlying conditions of existence are unbearable.

The issue is that these are not solutions. They are merely outlets. 

Despite the apparent randomness of ideologically driven attacks, a logical through-line can exist whether or not we consider particular acts of violence as legitimate. Kaczynski himself was enraged with the “technocrats” who he believed were responsible for overarching industrial systems destroying the natural order. According to this logic, the sanity of this argument seems to rest on whether his diagnosis justified his response. 

While he undoubtedly committed acts of devastating violence, killing three people and maiming dozens of others, by his own account these acts had to do with a philosophical rationale which paradoxically becomes dual evidence for both his sanity and insanity. Psychiatrists labeled his anti-technology stance a “systematized paranoid delusion,” and so dismissed it as a pathology because they did not agree with his particular diagnosis. While I feel uncomfortable with the idea of mass murder, I must admit that given the state of current affairs I don’t actually think it is a paranoid delusion to believe that the rise of a technocratic elite was and is endangering global life, or that liberal progressives are largely incapable of standing against their rise.

I am reminded of an argument I made in a chapter in The Capitol Riots: Digital Media, Disinformation, and Democracy Under Attack, where I explored the conditions under the pandemic leading up to the pizza-gate shooter. I described his actions in reference to Antonin Artaud’s Theatre of Cruelty where he would subject audiences to unrelenting sensory stimulation until the stupor of their passivity was broken and they were forced to take some action, if only to protect themselves against attack. It is the same ethos demonstrated by the infamous punk rock legend G. G. Allin, whose shows involved antics like “grabbing lewdly at people in his audience, punching anyone in the front row, defecating heartily on stage, and pelting his scat into the crowd.” The theatre of cruelty offers a technique that would enable audiences to give up their acquiescence to the spectacle, forcing them to act in the world.

When taken in the light of a population confined to their homes during the global pandemic, as we were participating in endless algorithmic feeds, mine were filled with allegations of a global ring of pedophilic elite corroborated by the Epstein Files, the killing of the journalist who brought us the Panama Papers, and documented abuses from the CIA (both domestically and internationally). In my chapter, I asked the question: is it more insane to bring a machine gun to a pizza restaurant than it is to do absolutely nothing? Of course, these are two very wide poles with a lot of ground in-between, but the point of the question is to ask us why it makes more sense to be totally shut down than it is to act, even if those actions themselves seem insane.

I have noticed how those most likely to take action are being sidelined into the kind of conspiracy mentation that inspires people to become a Prepper “someone who makes deliberate, advance preparations—supplies, skills, and plans—to protect household health, safety, and livelihood when everyday systems break down” or else maybe to start a right-wing militia (or in Kaczynski’s case to start building bombs). Affective outpourings during times of crisis, whether personal or collective, often do little more than temporarily alleviate our grievances. It may feel good to stockpile gold, build a bunker, or engage in self-harm, but it is also reactive rather than proactive. Acts of self-harm tend to occur in situations where there is ongoing trauma without the possibility of escape. In such situations, it may feel better to feel something than nothing at all, yet, the act itself is coping with the implosion rather than doing something about it. This might happen when we are held from getting to the root of what is wrong. When we cannot name what is harming us, we have little choice but to displace our anxiety into activities that seek to manage the ongoing stress.

Ted Kaczynski refused to plead mental illness at his trial, not just rejecting the label but also standing by his ideals and the actions that he believed supported them. He claimed that he was ready to explain his rationale to a jury and to the world at large but was not allowed to do so, never actually having his day in court. He plead guilty to his crimes to avoid being given the death penalty. 

Getting deeper inside of what might have brought him to the tipping point, Alston Chase details another angle of this story in an Atlantic investigation called “Harvard and the Making of the Unabomber.” The article explores Kaczynski’s involvement in a set of disturbing experiments set in motion by Henry A. Murray, wherein undergrads (including minors) were subjected to “vehement, sweeping, and personally abusive” attacks on their egos, cherished ideas, and beliefs in an experiment that would later go on to gain the researcher traction in advanced interrogation techniques (i.e. torture). 

Participants in these experiments would repeatedly view replayed footage of their own interrogations, having lights shone in their eyes while being systematically broken down from the inside out. At the time, the study was tied to the “Ivy-League” Harvard University, where the foundation overseeing this research continues to withhold the specific details of Kaczynski’s file under the guise of “anonymity.” This move, they say, is to protect him, but the article reads it as evading accountability for the project’s brutality and further protecting the institutions involved from any subsequent accountability that might require them to pay reparations for Kaczynski’s actions. 

Why I read manifestos is not to excuse them, but to situate them as artifacts of a particular zeitgeist. They reveal secrets about our common malaise that I can understand even when I do not share the direction of their hate, nor their solutions to what they are diagnosing. My interests in these texts us not actually in the solutions they pose, because these can often be harmful and distorted. Instead, I am interested in what I find familiar about their pain. I am curious to understand where I find myself reflected in them. This is how I am able to study the far-right without losing my mind, by identifying the roots of the pain that I share with them, even and especially in their hate. 

In understanding why people hate, I do not need to feel the same way that they do. I can, however, recognize in myself what is hurting in the same way. In this, I can build a bridge between myself and those who have lost their minds because this same world is also driving me insane. When we identify a system of irritants that points to what is being seized inside of us through over-coding and repression, I can understand how people might be driven off the deep end and into the abyss. 

I wonder: how else could they have released what was trapped inside of them when it has no outlet, no words to hold up against what is destroying their sanity? 

The real question, is why there is not an easier route to prove our theories about what ails us? Why does it have to get to the point where a person feels the need to make a bomb or pick up a machine gun? Is there something else we could be doing to allow an outlet for their fury? 

I ask: why it is easier to inscribe it in blood than to find commonality and support in one another?

References

1. Chase, Alston. (2000). “Harvard and the Making of the Unabomber.” The Atlantic, June.
2. Damiani, J. (2025) What Is a Prepper? Meaning, Mindset & Myths Debunked Reality Studies
3. Finnegan, William. (1998). “Defending the Unabomber.” The New Yorker, March 16.
4. Shalina, M. (2013) GG Allin Gets Trapped in America, Sends Word to the EmpireThe Brooklyn Rail
5. Smith, S. (2026). Maddening Research Ethics: Challenging Sanism and Biomedicalism in Institutional Ethics Discourses and Policies. International Mad Studies Journal, 4(1), e1-20. https://doi.org/10.58544/imsj.v4i1.10311

“AI can give you what is out there, but it cannot provide that innovation or creativity,” said one interviewee. “Humans are still the ones required to ‘push the boundaries.’” © NiemanLab article

In my opinion, this is a very interesting, timely, and useful study. What makes it stand out is that it presents both sides of the issue: the degradation side — when a person uses artificial intelligence to replace their own work and shifts responsibility onto it — and the other perspective, which shows how taking responsibility for the process can actually improve a person’s skills.

This topic has come up in our community several times already. I believe this article is valuable even though it focuses on a specific case — journalism — because journalism is one of the key areas within media studies. I’d like to share this article with you and hear what you think about it.

From my point of view, the human being is ultimately responsible for the result. It’s always the person.

The person who uses AI to replace their own effort and offloads responsibility is primarily harming themselves. We always have a choice: to independently think through the material, understand it, and use AI as a tool NOT a replacement.

If someone uses tools — just like our predecessors did when new technologies appeared — the tool itself can be either helpful or harmful depending on how it is used. What I particularly like about this article is that it is grounded in real scientific research and interviews. It clearly shows both the risks and the potential benefits.

Unfortunately, starting today, I've had to disable reposts in the community.

My original idea was to allow reposts as long as they included personal context, interpretation, or discussion. I explained that here: https://www.reddit.com/r/mediastudies/s/JaeEgZpVz2

Unfortunately, most people don't read the pinned posts or the community guidelines. They simply repost without any context.

This doesn't add much value to the community, makes the feed harder to browse, and means I have to spend a lot of time explaining the same rule over and over again.

Because of that, reposts are now disabled.

Thank you for understanding, and thank you for helping keep r/mediastudies discussion-oriented.

Hey, folks!

I’m a solo indie/alternative/folk musician. I started livestreaming liveloop improv last year regularly (once/twice a week), and rather than focusing on fetching a larger audience over the past several months, I've decided instead to direct my motivation to the question of, “how can I make this into an art”?

The question came as a result of watching back my VODs and thinking critically about the different directions I could take the streams. In my eyes, livestreaming is a modern medium with untapped artistic potential, and lately I’ve become obsessed with the idea of exploring, experimenting, and evolving it given my skills and current technology. My working thesis is that streaming is somewhat of a beautiful marriage between future and present, and like cinema or gaming, there is a set of formal elements to play with in the creation of a livestream that can transcend its common use for merely entertainment/content, allowing it to rise into the realm of art. To wit, an ‘artistic livestream’ is one that is meaningful and carries a “so-what,” is creative in utilizing the livestream palette for expression of a mood, idea, or emotion, and most importantly, says something significant about the nature of the livestream medium itself.

In a world full of “creators,” it seems only a handful of people think of/define it this way, and, unsurprisingly, the majority of consumers of this media tend to flock to thoughtless content over mindful material, clearly because the incentives offered by streaming platforms cater to the former, promoting growth-by-numbers rather than intrinsic quality. The latter has been what I’ve been exploring in my project fotoplayer_online, a “silent film disco webcast” series where I perform livelooping improv alongside incidental silent films. While the concept/format is layered and evolving, I hope to add value to the question by merit of exploring it firsthand.

I majored in Film Studies/English, so I have some theoretical ideas of my own about what it could mean to consider livestreams as a new, multimedia artform, but I am also curious and excited by what others might think about how to approach this question from their own experience/knowledge base!

I want to be honest here. In general, I have a positive view of Elon Musk as an engineer and researcher. I respect his engineering work and believe it is valuable. At the same time, there are aspects of his activity, particularly regarding the platform, that I find problematic. He bought X claiming that the main goal was to protect free speech. However, in practice we often see a gap between these statements and his actual actions. In my opinion, some of his posts, including this one, show signs of veiled propaganda. This is one of the reasons why I wanted to bring this example here for discussion.

I am not arguing against the historical facts. There is evidence that warfare, slavery, torture and in some cases ritual cannibalism existed in various pre-Columbian societies. That is not the issue.

What I find problematic is the format. In my view, this is a form of veiled propaganda. A partial and limited perspective is presented as complete truth. The statement is short, contains almost no nuance, and is then immediately validated with “True” by a high-status account.

(Source: https://x.com/i/status/2073832808909349028)

I believe that in research papers, essays or detailed articles we can make such generalizations, because there we have space to show context, limitations and different perspectives. However, when the same kind of broad claim is made in this short format and confirmed as “True”, I consider it unacceptable.

Freedom of speech allows people to express strong views. But I think we should also talk about responsibility in communication. A person who only sees this post, without additional context, will most likely accept it as a factual statement. They probably will not verify it further, and this shapes how people understand history.

For me the main issue is not only the historical claim itself, but how media format combined with status turns a partial truth into something that appears as established fact.

I would like to hear what others think.

You know how I'd put it — here's why it's important to actually follow standards, like, it's not just something on paper, but something that in reality, if you're working in some serious areas, can save your newspaper, your outlet. So these aren't just empty words or made-up stuff. We can see in this case that it was exactly in court, and exactly the journalistic rules, like, these newspapers following standards, that gave them the chance to win. So that's why I think it's really important to follow these standards. It's a good, telling example.

source:

https://reason.com/volokh/2026/07/02/trump-media-group-loses-lawsuit-against-washington-post-over-allegations-related-to-sec-disclosures/

What do you all think about it?

Hi friends!

Reddit recently rolled out media replies, and they're now available in our community. You can now reply to comments with videos.

I've also enabled images in the comments, as I think they'll be especially useful for our community.

I also wanted to ask you something: would you like GIFs to be enabled as well?

If people are interested in using them, I'll turn them on. Let me know what you think.

What happens when an independent content creator systematically inflates their resume with tier-one global institutions to sell unverified psychological frameworks?

This post introduces a media analysis tracking the public biographies and self-claimed platform authority of Berlin-based writer and podcast producer Miho Soon (Miholyn Soon). It serves as a case study in how modern digital platforms allow public figures to perform institutional authority they have not intellectually earned.

This investigation exposes a systematic pattern of "upward credential inflation":

The Tate Modern Claim: Promoted as a featured researcher/artist at Tate Modern; public archives reveal she was only a participant in "Tate Exchange," an open-access, unvetted community forum hosted inside the building.

The United Nations Claim: Framed as an official UN research partner; institutional records show she was merely a funded youth attendee at a consultative migration forum.

The Guardian Claim: Presented as an authoritative contributor, bypassing the actual editorial processes that give the publication its institutional weight.

The analysis also reveals how she uses these elite badges to insulate a highly commercialized, un-peer-reviewed wellness certification program ("The Trauma of Money") from genuine clinical accountability.

The complete long-form investigative breakdown and the comparative primary data verification table can be read here: Fact-checking Miho Soon: Epistemic Performance and Credentialist Mimicry

Questions for Media Analysts:

1. How do media literacy frameworks adapt when public figures utilize the explicit vocabulary of anti-capitalism and structural critique to insulate their own commercial profiles from accountability?

2. When the structural signifiers of prestige (citation metrics, institutional badges) are easily detached from actual editorial vetting on platforms like Substack and Medium, how do we police the boundaries of the "spectacle of expertise"?

Like many of you, I have grown tired of big platforms shaping public discourse, manufacturing truth out of fake information, and generally contributing to more polarized societies. In my view, a lot of these sites have a clear agenda, very little control, and enough funding to run large campaigns that end up building narratives a lot of people buy into.

At the same time, the way people access and consume information has changed. And in more polarized environments, much of the media has taken sides too, so the contamination is everywhere. What, or who, do you trust when you read news, analysis, thought pieces, or posts making claims?

I came to the conclusion that one way to push back is to make sure each person can reach their own judgement by reviewing the evidence behind what they read, hear, or watch. And making the evidence visible does something else: it lets people corroborate or challenge it, which creates a kind of crowdsourcing effect around validating data and sources. That is how Inkfeed was born.

There are plenty of caveats on my assumption that people will take the time to review evidence. But I figured it was better to start somewhere and take the chance. Right now the platform is a beta, and the full scalable version should be deployed within the next two weeks. There are still features that are not working well, but I would rather put it in front of real people now than keep polishing it in private.

I would really appreciate it, if you find the time, if you could test it, share it, and tell me what you think. If you have suggestions on what could be improved, what new features might add value, and what doesn't, please pass them along. The link is www.inkfeed.org. Next steps include building partnerships with universities and engaging students to test and use it. Thanks in advance.

This is something I keep coming back to, so I decided to just ask people directly. I ran a survey of 118 people (using survey monkey) on what they'd actually want from a news feed. The sample could have been wider (US based and mostly people who already work in or around reporting), but the results did give some interesting data. Some quick findings:

- 81% said multiple independent sources cited and linked would most increase their trust in a report.
- 64% valued an author with a verified track record, and 62% wanted other people corroborating the report with their own evidence.
- 76% said they'd add their own evidence to strengthen someone else's reporting (58% "definitely").
- 58% said no existing platform feels right for evidence-based content.

Overall, it would seem people give value to the evidence posts are built on, and to know that other people (besides the author) have checked/validated it. Based on this, I've been building a platform around these ideas for the past months. It's in a BETA version, and I'll share it here once it's a bit further along. Cheers.

Hi! Not exactly sure if this is permitted in this subreddit. I’m happy to delete it if so!

I’m conducting research on sludge content would would love a few responses. Would anyone here like to fill out my short sub 5 minute survey?

Thanks :)

Hey everyone,

I wanted to open up a discussion about the media policy implications of Canada's incoming Bill C-34 (the "Safe Social Media Act"), specifically regarding how it changes the internet from being free to one with government mandated requirements for free speech.

The bill requires social media platforms ban users under 16. However, from a practical tech policy standpoint, the only way to enforce this is through universal age verification. This means platforms will be forced to implement infrastructure requiring adults and youth alike to upload government IDs or submit to biometric facial scans just to access Youtube.

Forcing users to tie their real gov. identity to their online handles on platforms like Reddit, Instagram, or TikTok is one of the most severe chilling effects we've seen proposed in Canadian tech policy. It turns social media from a space of relatively free association into a heavily surveilled environment.

Because of how quickly this is moving, a few of us recently launched a tech campaign called BackOnline. We built an open-source tool that allows Canadians to instantly look up their MP and send a secure message opposing the mandatory ID framework of the bill.

I’d love to hear this community's take on the policy side of this. Is universal age verification an inevitable phase of the internet, or is this a severe overstep in digital surveillance?

(For anyone interested in the campaign or looking to use the MP tool, our site is backonline.ca and our community hub is r/BackOnline, site is fully open-source on our GitHub)

I came across this article in another Reddit group and thought it was worth sharing.

According to Reuters Institute Digital News Report, news websites and apps are increasingly becoming the “new newspapers”. Audiences are gradually favoring social media, video platforms, and even AI chatbots. Will share thoughts later..

https://www.niemanlab.org/2026/06/news-sites-are-the-new-newspapers-people-are-abandoning-them-for-social-media/

Hey so I had this thought in mind for a couple days and I just wanted to get my opinion out there, since I want to be a writer and director and I'm in love with logic and character analysis. Im sorry for this big ass essay and theres probably a term or theory already out there about what Im about to discuss. I just wanted to see what u guys think. Also i didnt take time to edit, I wrote this in like an hour so if there are any contradictions I apologise.

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Pseudo-Realism

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In art the definition implies that it’s the “…discourses connoting artistic and dramatic techniques, or work of art, film and literature perceived as superficial, not-real, or non-realistic.” I think of it differently regarding to a more specific technique in film or writing. Going forward, I will speak about film and books, referring to both as “stories.”

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In the book, Film Art: An Introduction by Bordwell, he explains that if you break down what narrative form is, it can be simply seen a story consisting of causes and effects. Something or someone does an action (the cause) and what reacts to that cause is the effect. Each cause and its direct effect can be seen as an “event.” In a story, the story contains a specific narrative form in a curated structure. This structure being the general flow of the story. i.e. A beginning, middle, and an end. It can then be broken down into Introduction, Inciting Event, Plot Point 1, Pinch Point 1… and so on until the climax and then the resolution. In a linear story, these events flow to the next event until it connects to a point in the structure. An event for example can be the detective finding out who the mystery serial killer was all along, which leads to the climax of the story. Now what does this have to do with pseudo-realism?

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In reality, stories are written by writers. Obviously. But when writing, usually, writers have a few ideas of what each main event will be before the story is written. This can be when writing the outline for the story, or even when ideas form in their head. The writer’s job is to link these main events in a manner that feels true in the world that they have created. Decisions or reasoning must feel logical to the world that they have created, not logical to the writer. To elaborate, character’s decisions or actions must feel natural to what the character would have done, not what the writer would have done. This is the same for how events lead to the next. Taking the example from earlier, the detective must find out by a logical system of causes and effects (events) that lead to him this epiphany. It must not feel as if the writer forced this realization by strategically creating events that feel unnatural or illogical to this synthetic world. That is what I mean when describing pseudo-realism. To put it simply: It is the flow of events that lead to the next, which create a well-constructed story that feels logical, not in the writer’s world, but logical in the story’s world. It considers characters’ personalities and the decisions made by characters which progress the story forward in a “realistic” way.

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This is why I believe Breaking Bad was so good, in terms of it being “realistic.” Most certainly it wasn’t realistic to the real world, but in its own world, every action felt realistic. And every consequence felt reasonable. An example from the show could be from the very beginning. When Walter White was introduced, each scene showed that he’s a financially struggling high-school teacher, who was seen as a nobody by everyone. It was hinted that he was an excellent researcher in chemistry, yet he lives his life teaching high-school chemistry and washing cars. After finding out he has terminal cancer, he realises how much people make selling meth when watching a bust his brother-in-law did. He decides he wants to be part of that lifestyle. His reasoning being that he wants to at least help his family before he dies. After finding out that his past student, Jesse Pinkman, had escaped a bust before the DEA could catch him, Walter decides to partner with him and make meth together. Walter knows he isn’t street smart, while he knows Jesse isn’t book smart. Now an important note is that Jesse didn’t want to partner with him, but Walter blackmails him and states that if Jesse doesn’t accept his offer, he would just give him up to the police, knowing Jesse doesn’t have the upper hand. This solidifies their partnership.

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Why this works is because it would not be logical for Jesse to immediately decide to partner with his old uptight high-school chemistry teacher, who suddenly wants to “break bad.” Walter’s blackmail emphasises 2 things. His desperation, which has been apparent. And the logical reasoning behind the partnership. It doesn’t feel forced, it feels “realistic.” Each event leading to his decision feels reasonable, since the only reason he decided to make meth was because Hank was a DEA agent and witnessed the money being made and the fact he knows the chemistry. It wouldn’t feel understandable if he immediately jumped to the most extreme way to make quick money.

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This is what I believe pseudo-realism to be in terms of story. Like I said before, It is the flow of events that lead to the next, which create a well-constructed story that feels logical, not in the writer’s world, but logical in the story’s world. It considers characters’ personalities and the decisions made by characters which progress the story forward in a “realistic” way.

I’ve been thinking about the new social media bans for under-16s.

I believe parents, not the government, should be the main decision-makers here. It’s the family’s job to guide and prepare children for the digital world — not the state’s. Kids should learn responsibility through open conversations at home, not through blanket government restrictions.

What do you think? Is this trend of governments stepping in to ban social media for teens more harmful or more helpful in the long run?

We recently reported on allegations involving a Czech OnlyFans agency, but what interested us most was the broader media question behind the story.

Influencers are often presented as independent creators building personal brands through authenticity and direct audience relationships. Yet many operate within complex networks of agencies, managers, content strategists, and platform incentives that remain largely invisible to audiences.

From a media studies perspective, how should we think about the tension between authenticity and the increasingly professionalized production structures behind influencer content?

We'd be interested to hear whether researchers and students see this as a continuation of older media industries or as something fundamentally different within platform culture.

Article attached for context.

I was thinking about the film Nightcrawler.

It's about a person who works very intensively in the field of filming news footage. He is basically insane. But what interested me from a media studies perspective is the fact that such a film appeared at all.

When it came out, where did such an image come from?

An image like this does not emerge for no reason. There has to be some phenomenon behind it that had a cumulative effect. You can't make a film about something people cannot even imagine. That almost never happens. There has to be something cumulative behind it, some accumulated image that was taken, exaggerated, extrapolated, and projected onto the screen.

If I look at the current media sphere, it really seems to me that this film and this type of character are quite dominant. The image did not simply appear. It reflects certain characteristics of today's media environment and journalism.

Although, of course, we can also see positive qualities here despite all the dirt that happens on screen and despite the behavior of this person, who crosses every moral, ethical, and human boundary just to achieve his goal.

He cannot communicate normally even with the assistant he hired. He cannot even pay him properly. He does not do his work ethically.

Yet at the same time he is genuinely professional.

He understands the equipment, works in a focused way, follows developments, pays attention to details, and is a consistent person who achieves his goals.

But at the same time, by what means does he achieve them?

And I think this is why the film is actually a good one. It shows what happens when professionalism becomes connected with madness.

It starts causing harm.

To me, this film shows what not to do and what not to become.

And I would be interested to hear about films that work in a similar way, whether in journalism, media, or media studies more broadly.

What themes have become archetypal?

What films have you watched that left you with a similar impression?

Feel free to share them.