Volume 5, Number 2, Fall 2025

EN:

This essay argues that America’s political and cultural landscape is fundamentally shaped by the two archetypal symbols of Freedom and Equality, which correspond to masculine and feminine, Republican and Democratic, and individualistic versus communal worldviews. John Fraim suggests that these symbols are not merely political ideologies but deep psychological forces that structure the stories we tell and consume.

Drawing on Marshall McLuhan’s “the medium is the message,” Fraim reframes genre as the hidden medium of political communication. Genres—such as Westerns, romances, thrillers, and fantasies—act as symbolic containers that naturally align with either Freedom or Equality

The paper calls for a more conscious application of genre knowledge in political messaging, proposing that successful persuasion depends not only on content but on aligning that content with the appropriate narrative form in the context of the event. By understanding which genres best symbolize Freedom or Equality, communicators can craft stories that resonate with target audiences, transcend partisan divides, and potentially unite competing symbols into new hybrid narratives. The essay bridges screenwriting theory, symbolic analysis, and political communication, offering a fresh lens through which to view the stories that define—and could redefine—American culture.

narratives. Using John Truby’s genre theory from The Anatomy of Genres, the leading authority on story genresFraim illustrates how different film genres express distinct worldviews and life philosophies, which can be strategically employed—or blended—to communicate political ideas effectively. Everyone says it’s about battle of genders today but it is really about a battle of story genres based around Freedom and Equality.

EN:

In Understanding Media, Marshall McLuhan says “the medium is the message.” The phrase became famous and then cliche. Today, the proliferating texts about the effects of social media, the internet, and smartphones are, for better or worse, a series of footnotes to McLuhan. Authors often parrot McLuhan more than they intend, and the philosophical work does not extend far beyond his initial insight. While some question McLuhan’s skills as a philosopher, given his enduring importance, the paper aims to interpret and evaluate McLuhan’s seminal claim from a philosophical perspective. It outlines the core meaning of ‘the medium is the message’; discusses McLuhan’s claim that the message of the medium is, in some sense, more important than the content the medium conveys; and, finally, considers whether the effects of a medium are good or bad.

EN:

This speculative essay examines the ideological landscape of the modern world through the lens of three dominant “grand narratives”: Christianity, Islamism, and Communism. Moving beyond superficial political conflict, the author explores the deep metaphysical, teleological, and societal differences between these systems—particularly the foundational chasm between theistic faith (in Christianity and Islam) and atheistic materialism (in Communism). Historical moments of tactical alliance between Islamist and Communist movements are acknowledged but shown to be provisional, rooted in opposition to common enemies rather than shared principles. The essay also identifies structural similarities—such as collectivism, utopian vision, and vanguard leadership—that make these ideologies totalizing forces competing for the soul of civilization. Ultimately, the author suggests that America’s unique historical role has been to synthesize seemingly opposed ideals (freedom and equality), and posits that the nation’s future may lie not in fighting these external “isms,” but in forging a new, higher synthesis from the clash of worldviews—a creative, almost Hegelian resolution that could define the next chapter of global history. This work offers a reflective, forward-looking analysis of the unseen ideological forces shaping our era and invites consideration of synthesis over strife.

EN:

The humanities are lauded as essential topics of study for individuals seeking a well-rounded education that will serve them in a litany of fields. However, the humanities are often relegated to the status of “soft skills” based on the notion that they are antiquated, irrelevant, and less necessary than “hard” technical competencies. The present article sought to address this perceptual gap by demonstrating how the humanities – specifically, the field of media ecology – can be integrated with particular tenets of management and leadership communication. To accomplish this task, the present article provided an overview of the key tenets of media ecology, offered a review of select perspectives in managerial and leadership communication, and demonstrated how the two seemingly disparate fields could be intertwined in order to create more well-rounded communicators in the workforce. Broad implications are drawn for media ecology, leadership communication, and the further preservation and advancement of the humanities in the 21st century.

EN:

Over the last decade, mental health hospitalizations among young people (particularly Generation Z and the emerging Generation Alpha, born after 2012) have surged, with growing evidence linking this rise to problematic smartphone, social media, and now AI relational or companion use. Canadian data shows significant increases in hospital admissions for eating disorders, self-harm, and anxiety during high-risk periods such as the COVID-19 pandemic (Roumeliotis et al., 2024). Concurrently, research implicates the structure of digital platforms themselves in exacerbating depression, anxiety, disordered eating, and identity disturbance in Gen Z; appearance-driven platforms like TikTok and Instagram intensify social comparison, FOMO, compulsive self-monitoring, and cyberbullying (Shehab et al., 2025). As Gen Z has aged within this crisis, while Gen Alpha enters the same crisis a decade later, rates of underemployment, debt, emotional dysregulation, and overall life dissatisfaction continue to rise.

Despite this now well-documented developmental emergency, mainstream mental health care models have not meaningfully adapted. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), and standard psychiatric assessments continue to overlook digital behaviours, algorithmic feedback loops, and AI-mediated interactions, both for Gen Alpha currently in crisis and for Gen Z living in its aftermath. From a media-ecology perspective, smartphones and social media are not neutral tools but environmental forces that reshape cognition, social perception, emotional regulation, and identity formation. Persistent engagement with interactive, appearance-focused platforms emerge as the Fourth Person (Robertson, 2025): a digital identity layer that exists alongside, but psychologically separate from, the offline self. This fragmentation amplifies anxiety, compulsive posting, regret, low self-worth, and interpersonal instability, yet it remains absent from clinical assessment frameworks.

Emerging evidence further shows that AI “cyber-companion” systems cause psychosis, and/or intensify identity fragmentation by reinforcing the emotional, perceptual, and cognitive needs of the Fourth Person. These dynamics reveal a profound gap in current mental health care: digital and AI-mediated behaviours are not lifestyle preferences but core mechanisms of contemporary psychopathology. This thesis proposes a comprehensive, multi-level adaptation of mental health care that systematically integrates smartphone, social media, and AI use into assessment, diagnosis, and therapeutic intervention. Without such integration, the system will continue failing the very populations most harmed by the environments they were raised in; Gen Z after the crisis, and Gen Alpha entering the same crisis in real time.

EN:

Working to expound upon Braga and Logan’s conception of humor as a device, we explore the intersectionality of humor, death, and differentiation in technological ages. Humor, in a mediated and technological age, informs the rhetoric discipline’s long tradition of honoring significant historical discourses that include legacy orations focused on the delicacy of life, which correlates with this study making the case for a rhetorical function of rhetoric serving the pursuit of survival. As death’s organic response, we argue for a conception of rhetoric that shows its permanent intertwining with life’s end where humor more readily flourishes as part of shared communal discourse, with the case being made in war oratory in early industrial times compared to contemporary, humorous epigrams about death. The rhetorical telling of human history can be understood as a collective effort to escape the inevitability of what is always threatening and always coming: mortality as threatening or as humorous play.

EN:

In 1937, the British novelist Phyllis Bottome published the anti-Nazi novel The Mortal Storm. In 1940, Metro-Golden-Mayer brought out the anti-Nazi movie The Mortal Storm, starring Margaret Sullivan and James Stewart. In 2010, thew DVD version of the 1940 MGM movie The Mortal Storm came out. In 2024, Alexis Pogorelskin published the book Hollywood and the Nazis on the Eve of War: The Case of The Mortal Storm. In the wide-ranging 6,169-word “Probe: Alexis Pogorelskin’s 2024 Book Hollywood and the Nazis on the Eve of War: The Case of The Mortal Storm, and Walter J. Ong’s Thought,” I mention the American Jesuit scholar Walter J. Ong (1912-2003; Ph.D. in English, Harvard University, 1955) of Saint louis University, where, over the years, I took five courses from him by name 61 times.