Our final panel today brings together journalists working in South Africa to talk about the various forms of violence they report on, and the challenges they face. Nic Bothma, Vincent Cruywagen, Thomas Holder and Karen Allen

Questions now for our panel on how journalists manage risks and ethical considerations @mwcjournal.bsky.social

The final paper in this panel is Oleksandr Chubko talking about his ethnographic research with Ukrainian and international photojournalists noting how quickly the war is changing, and its unique intensity in terms of the sheer amount of soldiers and weaponry

Dzvinka Hanna Pinchuk presents on Ukraine as a 'laboratory for contemporary conflict reporting' due to its accessibility for foreign reporters. Through a survey with local producers, her research shows how central they are in story and editorial development, not just logistics

Hala Gupta, Maha Bashri and Carolyn Wallcot present their paper on three challenges Sudanese female journalists face in reporting the conflict. There is a tension between personal experiences and professional objectivity. How to make Sudan relatable for audiences who don't know Sudan?

In our afternoon panel our first paper from Lesego Phale looks at the persecution of female journalists in South Africa - how do they continue working despite ongoing threats? Are the public aware of this harassment? Lesego uses a podcast to explore these questions

(Typos courtesy of @richardstupart.com)

The current system, he argues, is mastering the form of the news, while cannibalising/ubdermining its public service purpose.

Omar al-Ghazzi talks next about the politics of war reporting in the Arab Media System.

How, she asks, do we think about (and visualise) war and peace? How does this affect our imagination? What else might be possible?

Isabel Prinzing is presenting next, with a discussion of "Witnessing the in-between"

The archive on TikTok, she argues, is a byproduct of women's work of mediating their daily lives.

Maha Bashri starts off with an exploration of witnessing and archive building on TikTok.

Our next panel is on practices of witnessing, memory and archive building.

GAI, he argues, is both used to make true suffering sanitary enough to pass through platform censorship, yet at the same time distrusted for its perceived synthetic falseness.

Examples include the use of AI to get around semantic filters, take advantage of lag in censorship response times and rework material to get around filters.

He asks how GAI is both a tool for activism and creates its own problems for trust and authenticity.

Tom Divon presenting "Synthetic realism, Palestinian activism, and the politics of 'Pallywood'"

For Al Jazeera, the politics and rules of platform censorship become an object of focus in the coverage itself.

Findings include shared framing through different approaches and journalism as an object of reporting itself.

How does platform editorialisation and structure affect the forms that journalistic evidence takes in the same organisation?

Next up are Reema Altamimi and Lise Dabrowski exploring the reporting of Gaza on Instagram.

Can Ertuna presenting next with "Embedded journalism in a sealed war zone: a comparative analysis of Gaza coverage"

Noha Mellor is presenting first, with "Sumud as a Palestinian journalistic practice" and the connections between grief, trauma and resistance as core parts of journalism in Gaza. A paper on the topic will be coming out soon in Journalism.

The preconference theme is largely focused on how contemporary conflict reporting is changing. Our first panel has scholars looking at the effect of Gaza on news reporting practices.

Kicking off our 2026 ICA preconference this morning. We'll be posting live skeets throughout the day!

For those headed to the 2026 ICA conference in Cape Town in June, there are still a handful of spaces for our preconference on the challenges to contemporary conflict reporting. We'd love very much to see you there! www.icahdq.org/mpage/ICA26-...

International Communication Association

icahdq.org

Our study "The architect of the invasion" vs. "a symbol of resilience:" How AI chatbots frame Zelenskyy, Putin and the Russia-Ukraine war is just out in @mwcjournal.bsky.social: doi.org/10.1177/1750...

“The architect of the invasion” vs. “a symbol of resilience”: How AI chatbots frame Zelenskyy, Putin and the Russia–Ukraine war - Nataliya Roman, Nataliia Laba, John H. Parmelee, 2026

This qualitative content analysis conducted in November 2024 examines how four AI chatbots – OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Microsoft’s Copilot, Google’s Gemini, and Anthrop...

journals.sagepub.com

Delighted to see this new review of my recent book The Routledge Handbook of the Influence Industry co-edited with @vianbakir.bsky.social in the journal Media, War and Conflict!!! Check it out! doi-org.proxy.library.nd.edu/10.1177/1750... @mwcjournal.bsky.social

I am happy to share that the article "Constructing childhood in the Russian-Ukrainian War: UNICEF's Instagram representations of children" by Marie Flügge and myself has just been published open-access in Media, War & Conflict :) journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...