Exploring Global Advertising Creativity Trends Through Cannes Lions 2025 Grand Prix Winners
Article
This study examines the evolving landscape of global advertising creativity through an analysis of the 2025 Cannes Lions Grand Prix winners. As the advertising industry navigates technological innovations and shifting societal values, understanding contemporary creative excellence becomes essential for both scholars and industry practitioners. The research employed a content analysis method to examine 28 Grand Prix-winning campaigns across 36 categories, identifying emerging creative trends and their strategic implications. The analysis revealed 13 notable advertising creative trends, with Social Responsibility & Brand Activism emerging as the most prominent pattern, appearing in nine campaigns that address critical issues, including domestic violence, healthcare equity, and beauty standards. Technological Innovation ranked second with eight campaigns utilizing AI, data science, and immersive digital tools to enhance storytelling and accessibility. Purpose-Driven Marketing & Inclusivity and Human-Centered Storytelling each appeared in seven winning campaigns, emphasizing authentic emotional connections and systemic social change. The findings demonstrate a fundamental transformation in advertising excellence, characterized by the strategic integration of genuine social purpose, advanced technology, and authentic human narratives. This convergence reflects the industry’s evolution beyond traditional commercial objectives toward meaningful societal contribution, establishing new benchmarks for creative leadership in contemporary global advertising practice.
From Crisis to Credibility: Institutional Isomorphism and the Evolution of Indian Fact-Checking Organizations
Article
In the Global South, particularly in populous democracies like India, misinformation and disinformation have become persistent features of public discourse. False narratives in this country don’t just appear during moments of political tension, they’re often deployed strategically to tap into identity-based divisions and sway public sentiment. Understanding how institutions respond to these dynamics, this study investigates the organizational trajectories of fact-checking entities operating in India’s National Capital Region (NCR) using the lens of Institutional Isomorphism. The study examines how external pressures and normative influences have shaped their institutional behaviour. The three dimensions of the theory —coercive, mimetic, and normative, were employed to understand the forces guiding their evolution. Coercive pressures from elections, communal unrest, and the COVID-19 pandemic pushed many into reactive, short-term responses, and over time, with international standards and lessons borrowed from global peers, these organisations were encouraged towards more stable institutional practices like multilingual outreach, broader thematic coverage, and new verification tools based on platform-integration and Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning. Drawing on 24 interviews across 13 NCR-based organizations, the findings suggest a discernible shift from reactive crisis response to strategic institutionalization, positioning fact-checkers as emerging pillars within India’s media accountability ecosystem.
The Role of Representation, Relation, and Identity in Reinforcing Local Wisdom Values in Indonesian Television Documentaries
Article
The Indonesia Bagus television documentary program is a form of media that consistently showcases the diversity of Indonesian local culture, including in the episode “Bromo,” which explores the life of the Tengger tribe on the slopes of Mount Bromo (Aderia & Yosiie Marlia, 2014). The phenomenon underlying this research is the challenge of the media in presenting authentic local cultural narratives without falling into tokenism or mere symbolic representation. This study aims to analyze how local wisdom values are represented in documentary programs through representation, relationships, and identity. The research uses a qualitative approach with multimodal analysis methods, including iconographic analysis, visual mode (attribute, setting, salience), and audio mode (narration, background sound, film judgment). The results show that producers position local speakers as the center of cultural representation through language styles, visual attributes, and narrative relationships that strengthen the local identity of the Tengger people. The representation of local wisdom becomes a narrative element, fostering an emotional and educational connection with the audience. In conclusion, this documentary succeeds in showing local values as part of the national narrative, with an inclusive production approach oriented towards cultural preservation.
Abstrakt
Program dokumenter televisi Indonesia Bagus merupakan program televisi yang secara konsisten menampilkan keragaman budaya lokal Indonesia, termasuk dalam episode “Bromo”, yang mengeksplorasi kehidupan suku Tengger di lereng Gunung Bromo. Fenomena yang mendasari penelitan ini adalah tantangan media dalam menyajikan narasi budaya lokal yang otenFk tanpa jatuh ke dalam tokenisme atau representasi simbolis belaka. PeneliFan ini bertujuan untuk menganalisis bagaimana nilai-nilai kearifan lokal direpresentasikan dalam program dokumenter melalui representasi, hubungan, dan idenFtas. PeneliFan menggunakan pendekatan kualitaFf dengan metode analisis mulFmodal, melipuF analisis ikonografi, mode visual (atribut, seLng, salience), dan mode audio (narasi, suara latar belakang, penilaian film). Hasil peneliFan menunjukkan bahwa produsen memposisikan penutur lokal sebagai pusat representasi budaya melalui gaya bahasa, atribut visual, dan hubungan naraFf yang memperkuat idenFtas lokal masyarakat Tengger. Representasi kearifan lokal menjadi elemen naraFf, menumbuhkan hubungan emosional dan edukaFf dengan audiens. Kesimpulannya, film dokumenter ini berhasil menampilkan nilai-nilai local sebagai bagian dari narasi nasional, dengan pendekatan produksi inklusif yang berorientasi pada pelestarian budaya.
Digital Storytelling Discourses in International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies’ Mobile Cinema Campaign Against the 2024 Cholera Outbreak in Nigeria
Article
This study examines the potential of mobile cinema and digital storytelling as innovative strategies for public health campaigns in response to the 2024 cholera outbreak in Nigeria. Employing the critical discourse analysis (CDA) method, the study undertook three layers of analysis of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies’ (IFRC’s) mobile cinema titled How Cholera Spreads (produced in collaboration with the Global Health Media Project). Besides the video’s popularity and wide circulation across digital media platforms in Nigeria, its rich treatment of thematic issues relating to the nature, history, symptoms, spread, and prevention of cholera necessitated its adoption for analysis. The health-themed narratives embedded in the mobile cinema suggest the need to create awareness and orient the public to make informed decisions in the face of the cholera outbreak. The study revealed the IFRC mobile cinema’s portrayal of the significance of systemic and socio-environmental approaches as key to addressing the underlying causes of the cholera outbreak. From an interpretive standpoint, the digital storytelling discourses sustained in the mobile cinema reflect strategies for behaviour change through the tendentious portrayal of preventive measures that, when adhered to, may have a profound impact in preventing/reducing further incidence of cholera disease.
“Representing a country of multiethnic voices:” Ang kontradiskurso ng grupong Alamat laban sa monokultural at kolonyal na nasyonalismo na umiiral sa Pilipinas
Article
Abstrakt
Ang Filipino boy group na Alamat ay isang multietnikong Filipino boy group na nabuo noong 2020 na may mga miyembrong Tagalog, Ilokano, Kapampangan, Sebwano, Hiligaynon, Bikolano, at Waray. Layunin ng pag-aaral na ito na suriin ang mga orihinal na awitin, covers, at collaboration videos ng natukoy na grupo. Sisiyasatin ng papel na ito ang pagsusulong ng Alamat ng kontra-diskursong lumalaban sa monokultural at kolonyal na nasyonalismong umiiral sa Pilipinas sa pamamagitan ng paggamit at pagkilala sa mga rehiyonal na wikang katutubo, ang pagkilala sa nagbabagong kultura na may paghahalo ng tradisyonal at makabagong kulturang Filipino, ang pagbuo ng kontra-oryentalistang pagbasag sa mga negatibong imahen ng Filipino, at ang pagpapalaganap ng multi-rehiyonal na musikang Filipino.
Abstract
The Filipino boy group Alamat is a multiethnic Filipino boy group formed in 2020 with Tagalog, Ilokano, Kapampangan, Cebuano, Hiligaynon, Bikolano, and Waray members. The purpose of this study is to analyze the original songs, covers, and collaboration videos of the identified group. This paper will examine the promotion of Alamat’s counter-discourse that resists the monocultural and colonial nationalism that exists in the Philippines through the use and recognition of regional indigenous languages, the recognition of changing culture with a mix of traditional and modern Filipino culture, the development of a counter-orientalist breakdown of negative Filipino images, and the spread of multi-regional Filipino music.
Alliance Building as a Communicative Action by Anti-Mining Advocates in the Philippines
Article
As we assert the role of communication as an empowerment tool (Rowlands, 1997) and perceive how effective democracies depend on an understanding of the sources and mechanisms of public discontent (Matejova, 2023), this study mainly focuses on how communication enables alliance building of environment advocates, especially in a deeply polarized issue of anti-mining as applied by Alyansa Tigil Mina (ATM). In gathering the data, a combination of procedures was employed to capture a rich picture of the phenomenon: (1) document analysis, (2) participant observation, (3) photo-elicitation, and (4) in-depth interview. Data analysis was performed by following the steps in grounded theory. The findings of this study are presented in a theoretical model that demonstrates that the advocates’ communicative approach is a complex process consisting of motivations of the advocates for joining in the campaign, intervening conditions, use of various communication strategies, and outcomes, which are all constitutive to how alliance building as communication for development operates.
