Journal of Language, Media and Society

About

Journal of Language, Media and Society is a peer-reviewed academic journal devoted to advancing interdisciplinary research at the intersection of language, media, and society. ​We welcome original research articles, theoretical inquiries, critical essays, and interdisciplinary studies that investigate how language both shapes and is shaped by mediated environments from traditional mass media to emergent digital ecologies. The journal particularly values contributions that examine global, transnational, and non-Western contexts, challenge dominant epistemologies, or offer fresh perspectives on digital communication, platform politics, and algorithmic culture.​ All submissions undergo a rigorous double-blind peer review process to ensure fairness, scholarly integrity, and constructive dialogue between authors and reviewers. By adopting an open-access model, we are committed to removing barriers to knowledge and making high-quality academic work freely available to readers, educators, and researchers around the world.​ The journal is published twice annually, in the spring and fall, and aims to serve as a space for critical thought, cross-cultural exchange, and creative intellectual inquiry in a time of complex social, technological, and communicative change.

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Current Issue

Volume 1, No. 1Spring 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.66056/jlms.v1i1

Published April 30, 2026

Issue description

The inaugural issue of Journal of Language, Media and Society brings together interdisciplinary scholarship exploring the complex intersections of language, media, technology, culture, and power in the digital age. The issue features studies on social media–mediated ... See the full issue

Full Issue

Articles

  1. Xin Zhao (Author)

    SOCIAL MEDIA-MEDIATED STRATEGIES OF ANTI-RACISM FOR THE ASIAN COMMUNITY: A SYSTEMATIC LITERATURE REVIEW

    Urgent action is needed to combat the rise in anti-Asian hate exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. This systematic literature review examines previous studies on social media-mediated anti-racism strategies, given the increasing scholarly interest in the role of social media in addressing social justice issues and the need to empower both Asian and non-Asian communities in anti-racism efforts. The paper reviewed 38 peer-reviewed studies, categorizing them based on key attributes such as publication outlets, geographic focus, and methodological approaches. It also reviewed the identified anti-racism strategies in the papers, as well as their interrelationships with agents, effectiveness, and outcomes. The review also documented the associated challenges. Based on the findings, this review proposes four key directions for future research: (a) expanding the scope of strategies through diverse scholarly perspectives, (b) deepening understanding of these strategies across different national, socio-cultural, and platform-specific contexts, (c) identifying patterns of effectiveness by triangulating findings from multiple methodological approaches, and (d) systematically examining the challenges of leveraging social media for social justice initiatives.

  2. Lijing Gao, Ruanjia Liu (Author)

    WHEN SYSTEMS MISRECOGNIZE THEIR USERS: A SEMI-SYSTEMATIC REVIEW OF COMMUNICATION, IDENTITY, AND BIAS IN LLMS

    Large language models (LLMs) offer vast computational power yet consistently overlook cultural nuance. While often praised for bridging language gaps, recent research highlights a deeper issue: LLMs largely reflect Anglophone and Western European cultural values, which are embedded in the English-dominated data that shapes them. This review synthesizes findings from 2020 to 2025 to assess the implications of this technological spread for vulnerable groups, particularly immigrants, refugees, and international students, who must navigate adaptation within English-centric and Western communication norms. Using insights from cultural cognition and identity-protective cognition theories, the analysis identifies five central forms of bias: (1) representational bias that undermines non-Western perspectives; (2) linguistic inequity that amplifies challenges for low-resource languages; (3) authenticity failures, with stereotypes substituting for real cultural understanding; (4) identity erosion as users’ voices are homogenized; and (5) reliance on LLMs that may hinder independent language skill development. This “equity paradox” means that the very systems marketed as democratizing global communication can actually deepen exclusion and sameness among those who are most reliant on them. Ultimately, the review concludes that current governance and policy efforts are insufficient to address the underlying power dynamics that shape LLM development. Authentic cross-cultural communication, the evidence suggests, depends on human qualities absent in LLMs: presence, vulnerability, and the openness to change that underpins accurate understanding. In an AImediated world, recognizing the limits of these tools is not a matter of nostalgia, but rather necessary wisdom.

  3. Yu Xiang (Author)

    RUMOR AS CRISIS DISCOURSE: MEANINGMAKING AND MICRO-RESISTANCE IN SHANGHAI’S DIGITAL PUBLIC SPHERE

    This article examines how digital rumors functioned as crisis discourse during the 2022 Shanghai lockdown, serving both as improvised meaning-making and as fragmented acts of microresistance. Drawing on digital ethnography and discourse analysis, the study investigates how residents in a middle-class compound used WeChat groups to circulate, interpret, and act upon rumors amidst strict state censorship and material deprivation. Rather than approaching rumors as mere misinformation, the article conceptualizes them as emergent discursive practices that filled communicative voids, generated grassroots knowledge, and temporarily disrupted dominant state narratives. Grounded in Gramsci’s notion of common sense and Shibutani’s theory of improvised news, the analysis highlights the dialectical nature of rumor as both a survival mechanism and a contested form of bottom-up discourse in authoritarian settings. Framed within the global condition of the post-truth era, this study foregrounds the role of digital platforms specifically WeChat as sites where discourse, power, and control are simultaneously produced, circulated, and contested. In contexts where traditional information infrastructures are compromised, platforms become critical battlegrounds for meaning-making, where rumor emerges as a form of user-generated epistemology. The Shanghai case offers broader insights into how platform architectures, algorithmic visibility, and moderation regimes shape the formation and suppression of alternative discourses during crises. By tracing the micro-politics of rumor in Shanghai’s digital public sphere, this article contributes to transnational debates on crisis communication, platform governance, and the shifting dynamics of voice and resistance in digitally mediated authoritarian and post-authoritarian societies.

  4. Jun Yan (Author)

    THREE VEHICLES OR FOUR VEHICLES? A HERMENEUTICAL EXAMINATION OF EARLY INTERPRETATIONS OF THE PARABLE OF THE THREE CARTS

    The Parable of the Three Carts in the Lotus Sūtra, also known as the Parable of the Burning House, has been interpreted differently in Chinese Buddhist exegesis, with a division between the ThreeVehicle School (sanche jia 三車家 ) and the Four-Vehicle School (siche jia 四車家 ). The distinction lies in whether the ox-cart among the three carts is identical to the final great white ox-cart, which essentially reflects different understandings of the relationship between the Three Vehicles (triyāna) and the One Vehicle (ekayāna). This division already existed before the emergence of sectarian Buddhism. Early proponents of the Three-Vehicle interpretation include Huiguan, Sengzhao, Sengrui, Daosheng, and Liu Qiu; those of the Four-Vehicle interpretation include Fayun and Huisi. Fayun represents a crucial turning point, pioneering the Fourth Vehicle interpretation. Huisi, building upon this foundation, used his own contemplative experience and tathāgatagarbha theory to develop a second path for the Four-Vehicle School. The fundamental cause for the emergence of the Four-Vehicle School lies in the further polarization of the relationship between expedient means (upāya) and reality (tattva), which consequently granted the One Vehicle an independent status with concrete content.

  5. Jinpu Wang (Author)

    FRACTURED SILENCE: PROPERTY ANXIETY, INTERNAL DIVISION, AND THE SELFDISCIPLINING MIDDLE CLASS IN POSTLOCKDOWN SHANGHAI

    This paper examines the political behavior of China’s urban middle class during and after the 2022 Shanghai COVID-19 lockdown through a longitudinal digital ethnography of WeChat groups in a residential compound from 2022 to 2025. Extending an earlier study of “bounded resistance” during the lockdown crisis, this research tracks the evolution of community dynamics through the subsequent economic downturn. Contrary to theoretical expectations that middle-class expansion leads to political liberalization or that economic grievances catalyze collective resistance, the study finds that Shanghai’s middle class neither pushed for political change during prosperity nor mobilized against the state during decline. Instead, residents actively participated in maintaining social order through three mechanisms, namely surveillance-induced self-censorship, peer discipline against “defectors” who emigrated or sold property below market price, and displacement of economic anxieties onto inter-stratum conflicts between homeowners and renters, locals and migrants. I argue that China’s “middle class” functions in this context not as a unified political actor but as a fragmented aggregate defined by property ownership, without the shared interests or collective capacity that class-based theories assume. The concept of “cynical entrapment,” a condition where both exit and voice are systematically blocked, leaving neither genuine loyalty nor viable alternatives, helps explain the paradox of widespread grievance without mobilization. These findings contribute to debates on authoritarian resilience by demonstrating how the Chinese state achieves stability through minimal intervention, leveraging social divisions and property-based identities to generate self-policing communities.

Book Reviews

  1. Lijuan Xu, Juan Zhang (Author)

    FROM FAIRY TALES TO YOUNG ADULT: A REVIEW OF THE ROUTLEDGE HANDBOOK OF TRANSLATION AND YOUNG AUDIENCES

    This review evaluates The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Young Audiences (2025), coedited by Michal Borodo and Jorge Díaz-Cintas, a landmark volume that formally establishes Translation for Young Audiences (TYA) as an independent discipline. The authors analyze the handbook’s contributions across theoretical, methodological, and practical dimensions. Its primary significance lies in driving a paradigm shift from text-centric to audience-centered approaches, introducing the “agentic reader” and “double dialogue” models. By integrating corpus stylistics, neurocognitive eye-tracking, and multimodal analysis, the handbook propels TYA into a rigorous empirical stage. Ultimately, this work is of profound importance for redefining translation as a creative, intergenerational cultural practice within contemporary media and society.