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The next speaker in this IAMCR 2023 session is Justin Martin, whose interest is in news junkies – or people with a ‘need for orientation’ (NFO), which has traditionally been measured in a simplistic, US-centric way as interest in and uncertainty about the choices in US presidential elections. The present study replaces this with a new NFO scale that better explores news junkies’ intrinsic need for orientation (INFO).

The next speaker in this IAMCR 2023 session is Sara Monteiro Machado, whose focus is on social media use and youth political participation in Portugal. She notes that political science has failed to keep up with emerging forms of political participation in the current environment; such forms traditionally include institutionalised participation, protests, and volunteering, but now also consumerist participation, digital political participation, and lifestyle politics.

The final paper session at IAMCR 2023 starts with Julia Gabriella Nogueira Munhoz, whose focus is on the culture of sexism directed at women in politics in Mato Grosso, Brazil, which is also part of a broader pattern in Brazilian politics. Mato Grosso has a conservative profile and the highest femicide rate in Brazil.

The final paper in this short session at IAMCR 2023 is Sofia P. Caldeira, who is exploring the imaginaries of feminist activism on Instagram. Digital and social media platforms are essential for everyday encounters with feminism, which exists on these platforms side-by-side with interpersonal and entertainment uses. Instagram is one of the most popular social media platforms, with a particular emphasis on visual aesthetics and its own cultures of use – what feminist imaginaries does it enable and support?

The second presenter in this session at IAMCR 2023 is Runxuan Tua, and her focus is on gender and body metaphors in digital fitness platforms in China. Such platforms have become immensely popular in China in recent times, but also contribute to the disciplining of beauty standards and the commodification of fitness. This can be read through a Foucauldian paradigm of discipline.

The second session this morning at IAMCR 2023 is on cyberactivism, and starts with Dongwook Song. His interest is in the financialisation of daily life through stock market apps. He notes that Korean young adults were in a stressed social situation before the pandemic, and after COVID-19 there was a boom in investments, cryptocurrency and stock market speculation, and other financial activities in order to get ahead – everyday life has been financialised.

And the final speaker in this IAMCR 2023 session is Madhavi Ravikumar, whose interest is in the way the Indian press frames environmental issues. This is against the backdrop of the severe air pollution crisis in New Delhi, and the present study builds on interviews with Indian journalists.

The next speaker in this IAMCR 2023 session is Donald Matheson, whose focus is on the journalistic reporting on invasive species in the US and Aotearoa New Zealand, as a case study of reporting on the biodiversity crisis more generally. Globally, some half a million non-native species have been introduced to new ecosystems; this demonstrates the impact of human factors such as colonialism, globalisation, tourism, and climate change. This in turn impacts on agriculture, health, and Indigenous cultures, and drives accelerating biodiversity loss.

The second presenter in this climate change-themed session at IAMCR 2023 is Henri-Count Evans, whose interest is in South African press coverage of climate change negotiations. Climate change is a global threat, of course, but disproportionately affects poor and marginalised countries; there have been global efforts, facilitated by the UN, to address the crisis since at least 1995 and the start of the COP summits.

The final day at IAMCR 2023 starts with a paper by Hannah E. Morris, on climate journalism in the United States. There has been what seemed to be a striking shift in coverage in recent times, with the New York Times unusually highlighting the role of capitalism and neoliberalism as driving the climate crisis, for instance.