Purpose

In this article, we propose a novel methodological approach to understanding the informational texture of climate obstruction and related issues by weaving together scattered but entangled data fragments.

Design/methodology/approach

Using a methodological allegory about skipping stones in a lake and noticing the resulting ripples, we draw on the literature on climate change denial online and previous methodological approaches to explore and analyse fragmented digital phenomena. We implement this proposed methodological approach by focusing on the effects of a stone hitting a lake of climate obstruction. This is done through a series of skips, including analyses of search engine results pages, hyperlink networks, podcast show notes and large language models' responses.

Findings

The methodology proposed and adopted allows for a simultaneous qualitative and quantitative approach to the interpretative analysis of content that is similar in meaning but takes a variety of modes and forms. We show how opposition to climate change mitigation fluctuates in the informational texture and thrives in the context of a recent controversial pseudo-documentary film. We also point towards further possible applications of the methodological approach in question.

Originality/value

Skipping stones and noticing the ripples extends present approaches to studying informational textures through interconnected data fragments representing the same phenomena across a multitude of information systems and platforms.

Capitalism produces dualisms, and these dualisms create ruin. There is an urgent need for critical communication studies to address such harmful separations as nature versus society, or human versus nonhuman, in order to better understand and respond to contemporary crises. This paper addresses this need by assessing five dynamic principles of critical communication that underlie an eight-year programme on environmental communication research, based in Sweden, and offers our ongoing work on these principles as a template for how we might reconfigure critical work in critical intercultural communication studies and beyond, to deal with these exigencies. The paper begins by establishing the consubstantiality of these principles with core work in critical inter-cultural communication studies over the last two decades, and discusses in detail how the five principles have shifted and adapted over time. It then outlines some features of a processual, performative ontology, focusing on the concepts of intra-action and more-than-human as a foundation for expanding these five principles in non-dualistic ways. Subsequently, it turns to a discussion of how each principle might be re-envisioned. We conclude with emphasizing the need to learn to think, exist, and act in/through ruins, even as we know that more ruins are already being produced.

Algorithmic recommender systems have become a regularised part of the current information infrastructure, as they have been increasingly integrated into many online platforms. This study aims to examine and thus improve our understanding of young people’s agency and their imaginaries related to algorithmic recommendations within the information infrastructure by applying Giddens’s (Citation1984) conception of resources to the domain of recommender systems. The study is guided by the following research questions: How do imaginaries of algorithmic recommendations shape young people’s agency? How do different resources constitute information and information infrastructure in this context? Thematic interviews were conducted with 20 young Finnish people, and the material was analysed using qualitative content analysis with a focus on agency, resources and imaginaries in relation to algorithmic recommendations on different online platforms. The key findings of the study depict the duality of power relations: recommender systems limit young people’s agency by offering them scarce opportunities for self-expression and determining how their data is being used, yet young people were able to use resources for their own benefit. The notion of allocative resources was useful for noticing how participants’ imagined their personal information being utilised to generate recommendations, while authoritative resources offered insights into how users expressed placing trust on different platforms based on their size and the kind of opportunities participants had for self-expression on these platforms. This study contributes new knowledge regarding the ways algorithmic recommendations shape the agency of young people by making them adapt to the logic of recommender systems.

Air quality apps are designed to observe air quality and inform publics about it, but also to elicit actions based on anticipated scenarios. As such, they may be seen as anticipatory technologies, cultivating environmental understandings and orienting users toward a specific future. This paper explores the anticipatory assemblages of these apps as well as users’ interactions with these apps and their implicit anticipatory practices. We argue that the assemblage of human and non-human actors that constitutes air quality apps presents air pollution as divorced from human action. Furthermore, proposed actions against air pollution accounted for in air quality apps may not be attuned to the diverse contexts of the users, such as less affluent actors. Moreover, apps have world-making powers, as users follow the advice and actions the apps provide, implicitly contributing to the vision of the future the apps present. The field of future studies thereby has a role to play in emphasizing implicit modes of anticipatory practices and their embeddedness in everyday items and actions.

In recent years, information disorders, including on environmental issues, have grown in strength and influence, making research involving detailed analyses of how they are organised increasingly important. This article focuses on a Swedish climate obstruction network and investigates the keyphrases (search queries) they suggest people should google. An analysis of keyphrases suggested between 2014 and 2022 on the network's blog and in other publications shows how these suggestions function akin to hyperlinks in organising an alternative media ecosystem. The article introduces the idea of ‘performative links’ as a way to conceptualise how strategically recommended keyphrases operationalise data voids. Performative links encourage users to ‘do their own research’ by suggesting specific keyphrases as search queries. They connect the technical properties of web search engines with society's demands for individual responsibility and media and information literacy, and they help to promote data voids and feeds into information disorders. The analysis of the keyphrases suggested by the studied climate obstruction network focuses on how these keyphrases are composed, where they are published, how they spread, and what search results and thus information they result in. The findings indicate that performative links are crucial in controlling cross-media alternative media ecosystems. They exploit ideological dialects to construct and maintain data voids but also amplify the climate obstruction message and its reach. The article concludes by emphasising the need for more research on information disorders across different media and platforms, as well as the potential risks associated with performative links and data voids.