As Leavy (2015: ix) writes, arts-based research is “a set of methodological tools used by researchers across the disciplines during all phases of social research, including data generation, analysis, interpretation, and representation.” Its emphasis on doing (making) brings in the idea that knowledge is or, expressed more modestly, can be embodied and produced through the creation of the artistic practice itself. To use Cooperman’s (2018: 22) more poetic formulation, “Arts-based research is a research of the flesh where our source material originates from the closeness and collaboration of the bodies and voices of one another.” Slowly but surely, arts-based research is making its entry into Communication and Media Studies, moving away from our rather exclusive focus on the written text. There is, for instance, the work of the multidisciplinary Collective for Advancing Multimodal Research Arts or scholars at the Communication Studies Department of Concordia University (Chapman & Sawchuk, 2015). Communication and Media studies scholars also publish their non-written texts in such specialized journals as the Journal of Video Ethnography; Tecmerin: Journal of Audiovisual Essays; and Audiovisual Thinking, the Journal of Academic Videos. Moreover, both the International Communication Association (ICA) and the International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR) have featured exhibitions at some of their recent conferences, the former with the 2017 Making & Doing exhibition and the latter with 2018 Ecomedia Arts Festival, taking gentle steps toward (the acknowledgment of) non-written academic texts.

The relationship between communication and environmental sustainability has come to the forefront in recent years with renewed impetus. The explosion of Internet-connected devices and the dramatic challenge (and visibility) of climate change have deeply impacted how we communicate environmental risk, stimulate behavioral changes, coordinate individual and collective environmental action and monitor environmental governance. Massive amounts of environmental information of unprecedented quality and resolution are made available by technological, social and legal innovations; at the same time, long-standing issues – such as public trust in environmental communication or the uncertain ability of communication itself to stimulate behavioral change in individual and collective subjects – not only remain on the table but appear heightened and complexified by the new context.

The new guide for the authors about the submissions of articles is available, please read the instructions carefully.

CS special issue 2/2018, edited by Mariagrazia Fanchi, Alexandra Schneider and Wanda Strauven, aims at analyzing Post-Millennials’ cinema experiences and practices.

This issue focuses on the artistic, social and political resources invested by the performative arts into socio-cultural inclusion, aimed at facilitating collective processes of dealing actively with the complexities generated by the recent migration trends.

Using different starting and entry points (based, inter alia, on journalism studies, organizational communication, game studies, discourse theory, visual communication), the collection of articles included in this special issue sheds light on the logics of political struggle. In particular, this special issue allows reflecting on the distinction between struggles over and struggles through, very much in line with Plekhanov’s distinction between the means and aims of political struggle, and his argumentation for the alignment of both in socialist strategy.

With the aim of studying how the new technological context is changing current tendencies, this special issue will focus on the strategies and outcomes of European cinema distribution beyond national borders.

Many thought Brexit would not win and Donald Trump could not be elected. An entire media apparatus that was increasingly certain came to produce confusion instead. We are now said to be in a “post truth” time, one where debate over truth has been replaced by a chaos of facts. The more information grows, the more knowledge seems to retreat, and the thought vacuum is increasingly filled with hate speech, hoaxes, and so-called fake news. The aim of this issue is to introduce a critical perspective amidst this wave of anti-inclusionary and counter-informative forces, without falling in the equally undesirable opposites of cynical functionalism (truth is merely what works) or a new, patronizing positivism: truth as a matter of numbers, a sovereignty of data that ends up killing reality, by neutralizing its uncountable aspects.

This special issue will devote particular attention to Post-Millennials’ cinematic experiences within different media, social, and national landscapes, by valorizing new methodological approaches and theoretical frameworks.

The special issue addresses the development of the media system and creative industries in relation both to the major economic crises and to the role played by innovation in making the media – with respect to the crisis itself – assume a cyclical or anti-cyclical role.