Introduction to Standard Issue

Abstract

This standard issue features six contributions from postgraduate and early career scholars working at the intersections of media, communications, education, sociology, and technoculture. The articles differ in their objects of inquiry – from sound in digital games, social networking sites, and digital technology in education, to broadcast journalism and romantic comedies, but they broadly converge around a common focus on temporality and time. Between them, the contributions present a good mix of empirical work and significant conceptual development, moving forward theoretical debates in the fields of media and communications. Concepts are either developed, through in-depth engagement with the extant literature (Amaral 2020; Martins & Piaia 2020), or tested through empirical studies using a variety of methods – from surveys (De Andrade & Calixto 2020) to digital ethnography (Polivanov & Santos 2020) to participant observation and interviews (Gomes, Vizeu, & de Oliveira 2020). In some cases, altogether innovative methodological approaches for analysing artefacts are proposed, as in Luersen and Kilpp (2020), whose article opens this standard issue of the journal.