Political and economic pressures in newsrooms, “fake news” and increasing lack of trust from the part of the audiences are some of the recurring problems professional journalists have to face today, closely linked to the “retreat” in democracy and to the fast-paced media environment pushed by technology advancement. How can journalism education adapt to the accelerated changes affecting the media landscape? Some of the provisional answers to this central question imply encouraging flexibility and adaptability in managing information across different platforms, struggling to highlight relevance and making the best of the up-to-date technological tools, while keeping in mind that “journalism’s first obligation is to the truth” and “its first loyalty is to citizens” (Kovach & Rosenstiel 2003). Entrepreneurial and technical skills should empower future journalists to master transmedia storytelling, crowdfunding and crowdsourcing, get used to the mobile status of the profession and envisage their own media business initiatives, as well as stay true to ethical values.

The 21st century has witnessed astonishing transformation in the way the world functions, especially regarding the integration of technology in the educational landscape. Hence, in keeping with the goal of developing a highly educated populace, the educational system is currently under immense pressure to adapt to the digital age, aiming to produce graduates who can excel not only academically but also in their personal lives, professional careers, and employment. Therefore, the 21st century learning environment is receiving attention to achieve the goals of developed nations in Malaysia. A quasi-experimental research design was performed to examine the effects of the 21stcentury learning environment based on 21st Century Acculturation Module on 21st Century Skills and Academic Achievement (AA). The study included 120 form-four students who took Science subjects from secondary schools in Malaysia. Data analysis included means, standard deviations, independent sample T-test, and PLS-SEM. The result shows there were significant differences between the control group and the experimental group in terms of 21st Century Skills enhancement. Research findings also show a substantial difference in students AA between the experimental and control groups. The results gathered from PLS-SEM showed that the developed module moderates the Life and Career (LC) skills and AA relationships. It is evident that the module produced by the amalgamation of Dale’s Cone of Experiences and Revised Bloom’s Taxonomy Frameworks along with the use of technology in a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) improved students’ 21st Century Skills, and the students also performed better in AA.

The current paper aims to review the most relevant currents of thought in studying mass-media audiences and connect them with the concept of “automodernity,” as developed by Robert Samuels in his book New Media, Cultural Studies and Critical Theory after Postmodernism. The first section of the paper provides an analysis of the evolution registered in the field of audience studies, from regarding audiences as a vulnerable crowd of media recipients to viewing them as empowered groups of media consumers, who are able to select and intervene inside the media products they prefer. From the surfacing of audience studies research in the 1940s and the development of the “hypodermic needle” theory to the contemporary theories regarding active audiences, the first section of the paper observes how the field progressed over time. Building on these ideas, the second section introduces the concept of “automodernity,” used by Robert Samuels to describe Western culture after postmodernism, and explores its relevance to understanding contemporary media audiences

Constructed as a collection of interlaced home videos arranged into a narrative that explores the development and legacy of post-communist female migration, Otilia Babara’s documentary Love Is Not an Orange represents a veracious and profoundly emotional investigation of gendered transnational practices. The film not only delivers intimate accounts from the lives of several families affected by female migration from Moldova into Western Europe following the country’s independence from the Soviet Union in 1991 and its subsequent economic crisis, but also gives insight into the unique capability of home videos to mediate transnational family ties. Using a multimodal analysis framework to investigate how archival footage is used to construct a layered narrative of family separation, adaptation and evolving identity, this study highlights the employment of home videos as “microhistorical” devices that offer intimate insights into the social realities of migration, and explores their role as non-monetary reverse social remittances.

Death and the mass-media represent two recurring and connected presences throughout Don DeLillo’s fiction. While his canonical novel White Noise is themed around the paradoxical link between the pathological fear of dying and consumerism, his latest novel Zero K is about the deferral of death through cryonics. Using the analytical tools of critical theory, the current paper aims to analyse how the portrayal of death appears in the media saturated and consumer-driven environment in which DeLillo’s characters evolve, and how technology contributes both to fuelling the obsession with dying and to feeding the illusion of immortality.