Contemporary Challenges
The Disruptive Impact of AI Smart Speaker Interaction on Youth Mass Media Consumption: Exploring Auditory Engagement and the Domestication of AI-Enabled Media in Youth Households
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Konstantin D. Haensch, Carolin Baaske
The accelerating digitalization and ubiquity of smart speakers are increasingly shaping how young people engage with mass media. In light of recent advancements in AI, these devices have emerged as critical interfaces for content reception, raising questions about the shift from text-based and visual to primarily auditory formats. How does this transformation influence young audiences’ engagement with and interpretation of media? Furthermore, by applying the domestication approach, this study investigates the extent to which integrating smart speakers into everyday household routines—particularly through voice-based interactions—further amplifies media consumption and reshapes its cultural significance. In a pilot study employing a mixed-methods design, this evolving landscape is examined through guided interviews and the deployment of cultural probes. Combining perspectives from design, sociology, communication science, and technology, the study explores the social, cultural, and practical implications of using AI-enabled smart speakers as a primary medium for content consumption. Findings offer insights into how youth audiences adapt to, internalize, and potentially redefine media use in an era where voice interaction is poised to be a dominant mode of engagement.
Roughness, Rupture, and Heterogeneity: The Politics of Perception and Aesthetic Resistance in the Audiovisual Rhetoric of Joseph Pangmailang View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Kuan Li, Jiang Yu, Chuan Jia Zhang
Amid escalating digital aesthetic convergence and algorithmic discipline, how can grassroots performance art become “visible”? Taking the online abstract performance artist Joseph Pang Mailang as a case study, this study examines how his “rough aesthetics” pierce mainstream narratives and platform discipline to generate a politically charged regime of perception. In doing so, it speaks directly to media-cultural scholarship on marginal voices, multimodal rhetoric, and platform governance. Methodologically, the study combines critical audiovisual rhetorical analysis with digital ethnography. It conducts semantic coding and visual deconstruction of Pang Mailang’s lyrics and music videos and supplements these findings with in-depth interviews with ten core audience members. The analysis integrates Jacques Rancière’s concept of the “distribution of the sensible,” Byung-Chul Han’s theory of the “smooth society,” and Henry Jenkins’s notion of participatory culture, thereby constructing a “roughness–heterogeneity–resistance” communicative trajectory. Results show that technical glitches, fragmented narratives, and counter-mainstream performances form a negative aesthetic strategy in which contingency and intentionality intertwine. Audiences’ multilayered readings of his “madness” persona expose the structural dilemma of resistance-through-visibility within traffic logics and the cultural gaze. This finding foregrounds a pressing cultural question: How can we decide whether roughness truly resists algorithmic aesthetic hegemony? The paper concludes that “roughness” in artistic production functions not only as a stylistic register but also as a cross-modal mechanism of power expression. By proposing a workable analytic path for decoding post-subcultural meaning in the digital age, the study—rooted in a grassroots narrative perspective—extends the communication research’s boundaries of abstract subcultural art under platform conditions.
Swipe, Post, Protect: Rethinking and Exploring Women's Safety in the Social Media Era
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Nfn Diksha
Women’s safety has always been a topic of concern for our society. Before social media, the threat to women’s safety was mostly related to physical violence. The introduction of social media to our society has added another layer of threat to women’s safety. As social media continues to expand and attract more users, the issues faced by women online become increasingly complex and frequent. This work examines existing literature on women’s safety online and its long-term implications.
Digital Media Use by the Hadhrami Diaspora in Melbourne View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Yadi Ali
As southeast Asians of Arab descent living in a western secular nation, what media narratives and identities resonate with members of the Hadhrami community in Melbourne? Research has found Muslim Australian media use is fluid, generationally dependent and reflects attempts by existing power structures to connect with strategically important religious demographics. This paper explores media use and consumption within the small and little known ethnic community of Hadhramis or Arab Indonesians in Melbourne, Australia through case studies. It is part of a larger dissertation on the community, exploring different facets of its members’ identities.