Pawel Popiel

@ppopiel

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Pawel Popiel@ppopiel· 10d

Just some preliminary data for context, looking at the creative labor impacts of the Paramount-WBD merger: the combined entity would acquire nearly half of all US scripted TV creative labor and nearly one-third of live-action creative labor. Below-the-line jobs would face one less big employer.

Paramount-WBD post-merger labor concentration scenario - the entity acquires the largest concentration of TV creative labor

Creative labor concentration by craft - Paramount-WBD concentration would be highest in camera, below-the-line crew, directing and producing

Pawel Popiel@ppopiel· 22d

www.nytimes.com/2026/07/22/w...

The announcement comes a day after a Florida-based pastor sued the company for giving a near-fatal suggestion not to consult a doctor.

Pawel Popiel@ppopiel· 27d

Pawel Popiel@ppopiel· Jul 10

A product of collaboration among scholars concerned with and studying media consolidation, this report empirically dissects the dangerous implications of the Paramount-WBD merger across several media markets and policy domains, and to the media system more broadly. macrolab.ucsd.edu/paramount-wa...

Decades of mergers and acquisitions have reduced the number of major U.S. media companies to a handful of transnational conglomerates that dominate the production and circulation of news, film, television, sports, games, and other forms of media and culture. If Paramount Skydance acquires Warner Bros. Discovery, not only will this newly-formed conglomerate be burdened with $79 billion of debt, it will struggle to respect competitive safeguards, serve consumer needs, cultivate the media industry’s long term health, and act in the broader interest of the public.

A team of more than 20 media experts from universities across the U.S. and Canada have collaborated on this research to encourage the courts, government regulators, non-governmental organizations, legislators, and citizens to challenge this deal. While this study addresses some of the quantitative impacts of this potential merger, our scope is far wider. The thirteen sections of this study define consumer welfare, public interest, and healthy competition more broadly, and consider democratic objectives like fair media access for non-profit and public-serving organizations, the preservation of community cultural spaces like theaters and of community social events like sports, and the support of a diverse range of stories and storytellers. Having spent decades researching the many (often non-quantifiable) ways that media and culture shape our lives as citizens and individuals, we enumerate here what kinds of impacts we can expect from this deal, and why policymakers and the public should be so concerned.

Table of Contents
Introduction
The Impact of this Merger on U.S. Consumers
Market Shares
Foreign Ownership & the FCC
Labor
Political Discourse
Sports
Tax Incentives
News
Libraries, Research, and Public Access
Video Games
Animation
Movie Theaters
Diversity
Distribution & Media Antitrust
Conclusion

AUTHORS
Andrew deWaard Associate Professor of Communication, UC San Diego
Shawna Kidman Associate Professor of Communication, UC San Diego
Miranda Banks Professor of Film, TV, & Media Studies, Loyola Marymount University
Pete Johnson Visiting Assistant Professor, Gallatin School, New York University
Rodney Benson Professor of Media, Culture, & Communication, New York University
Cale Epps PhD Student, Cinema & Media Studies, University of Southern California
James Fleury Senior Lecturer in Film and Media Studies, Washington University
Kate Fortmueller Associate Professor of Film and Media History, Georgia State University
Dawn Fratini Lecturer in Animation, Loyola Marymount University
Michael Gainey PhD Student, Communication, University of California San Diego
Jennifer Hessler Assistant Professor of Cinematic Arts, University of Southern California
Pete Kunze Assistant Professor of Communication, Tulane University
Deborah Jaramillo Professor of Film & Television Studies, Boston University
Annemarie Navar-Gill Assistant Professor of Communication, Old Dominion University
Charlotte Orzel Visiting Assistant Professor of Communication, Tulane University
Karen Petruska Associate Professor of Communication Studies, Gonzaga University
Pawel Popiel Assistant Professor of Communication, Washington State University
Jennifer Porst Associate Professor of Film & Media, Emory University
Michael Reinhard Visiting Assistant Professor of Film & Media, Emory University
Alex Russo Ordinary Professor of Media & Communication and History, Catholic University
Christine Smith Associate Librarian, Concordia University Library
Ethan Tussey Associate Professor of Film & Media, Georgia State University
Caleb Ward PhD Student, Film & Media, Georgia State University

Pawel Popiel@ppopiel· Jul 4

Happy 250th!

"Mr. Johnson felt chagrined by how easy it was. He recalled that for years he read the print edition of the local newspaper to come up with his own sense of which candidates most closely matched his values.

“I felt a bit lazy for not doing more,” he said. “It felt easier, but I am not sure that everything was correct.”"

Pawel Popiel@ppopiel· Jul 4

The risk is what makes it so good. www.nytimes.com/2026/07/04/u...

"‘Who Should I Vote for?’ Voters Turn to A.I. Before Casting Their Ballots
It takes effort to be an informed citizen. Artificial intelligence tools offer an alluring shortcut — but they’re not without risk."

Pawel Popiel@ppopiel· Apr 12

That Vance bump! 🔥

Pawel Popiel@ppopiel· Mar 16

"Our findings suggest that privacy regulation has facilitated, rather than curtailed, platform data enclosures—enabling platforms to assert de facto control over data in the public domain." ‼️ journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....

As digital platforms are increasingly shaping access to information, their control over platform data has profound implications for research, innovation, and accountability. This article presents the first comprehensive empirical study of how digital platforms have used contractual terms to enclose publicly available data over the past decade. Analyzing the Terms of Use of 279 platforms from 2012 and 2022, we identify a systematic increase in both restrictive and permissive clauses governing access to data for research purposes. We find that platforms adopted a dual contractual strategy: restrictive terms limit third-party access to data for research, while permissive terms preserve the platform's own ability to use and share data with selected partners. This strategy emerged alongside the rise of consent-based privacy regulation, especially the EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which, despite its objective of protecting users, inadvertently expands platforms’ discretion over data access. Our findings suggest that privacy regulation has facilitated, rather than curtailed, platform data enclosures—enabling platforms to assert de facto control over data in the public domain. We contribute to the literature on data governance, platform regulation, and contract theory by documenting how platforms adapt boilerplate contracts in response to regulatory change and leverage privacy obligations to restrict independent research. These findings carry significant implications for legal and policy debates surrounding data access, transparency, and the future of platform accountability. They underscore the need to regulate the privatization of publicly available data to ensure equitable access for research serving the public interest.

Pawel Popiel@ppopiel· Mar 14

Draws heavily on Habermas Often forgoes Habermas’s considerations of the bourgeoisie as a hegemonic coalition and instead reads the public sphere in terms of abstract Foucauldian discourse.

Pawel Popiel@ppopiel· Mar 10

Why is Grammarly stealing from dead writers?

Me: Why are we stealing content from dead people?
Grammarly: Lawrence Lessing says "Frame the ethical stakes..."

Pawel Popiel@ppopiel· Mar 10

This is some downright theft Grammarly: Joan Didion has a style recommendation

Me: This is some downright theft
Grammary AI: Joan Didion: Anchor the opening in a...

Pawel Popiel@ppopiel· Mar 10

People are gonna be pissed Grammarly: Sheila Jasanoff recommends clarifying symbolic power

Pawel Popiel@ppopiel· Mar 10

www.nytimes.com/2026/03/07/a...

When the Trump administration went looking last spring for National Endowment for the Humanities grants to cut, it turned to a familiar scourge of professors: ChatGPT.

Last March, two employees from Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency arrived at the agency with the mandate of canceling previously approved grants that ran afoul of President Trump’s agenda. But instead of looking closely at funded projects, they pulled short summaries off the internet and fed them into the A.I. chatbot.

The prompt was simple: “Does the following relate at all to D.E.I.? Respond factually in less than 120 characters. Begin with ‘Yes’ or ‘No.’” The results were sweeping, and sometimes bizarre.

Pawel Popiel@ppopiel· Mar 5

Please use the sharing tools found via the share button at the top or side of articles. Copying articles to share with others is a breach of FT.com T&Cs and Copyright Policy. Email licensing@ft.com to buy additional rights. Subscribers may share up to 10 or 20 articles per month using the gift article service. More information can be found at https://help.ft.com/faq/gifting-and-sharing-an-article/what-is-a-gift-article/.
https://www.ft.com/content/97bda2ef-fc06-40b3-a867-f61a711b148b

In the note, which is likely to complicate negotiations, Amodei wrote that much of the messaging from the Pentagon and OpenAI, which struck its own agreement with Hegseth on Friday, was “just straight up lies about these issues or tries to confuse them”.

Pawel Popiel@ppopiel· Mar 3

www.nytimes.com/live/2026/03...

"Iran succession: Asked who he would like to take over Iran, Mr. Trump gave a strikingly blunt answer. “Most of the people we had in mind are dead,” he said. “Now we have another group, they may be dead also, based on reports. So you have a third wave coming. Pretty soon we’re not going to know anybody.”"

Pawel Popiel@ppopiel· Feb 18

www.pymnts.com/cpi-posts/wa...

Warner Bros Discovery Gives Paramount One Week to Improve $30-Per-Share Bid as Netflix Deal Advances

Pawel Popiel@ppopiel· Feb 12

Good stuff. www.pewresearch.org/journalism/2...

About half of Americans say they are worn out by news, and many have tuned out

Pawel Popiel@ppopiel· Feb 4

A truly revolutionary call to arms

Pawel Popiel@ppopiel· Jan 26

Pawel Popiel@ppopiel· Jan 25

This is irresponsible. It's not a clash - state investigators are being prevented from investigating a killing of one of their residents by a federal agency.

NYT headline: State and Federal Officials Clash Over Shooting Inquiry

Pawel Popiel@ppopiel· Jan 20

Good piece by Nathan Yaffe: "Immigration Agencies Are Openly Defying Federal Courts" lpeproject.org/blog/immigra...

"Given the scale of the deportation agencies, there is simply no way for legal responses to keep pace with the lawless mass lockup. Unlike ICE, the habeas bar did not receive a multi-billion dollar investment to underwrite limitless expansion. Moreover, law’s traditional tools for situations like this, such as classwide injunctive relief, are unavailable thanks to jurisdiction-stripping provisions (see 8 U.S.C. § 1252(f)), which the Supreme Court underscored in Garland v. Aleman Gonzalez when it rejected classwide injunctions against illegal ICE detention.

Any meaningful response must confront ICE’s power directly. As others have explained, the bipartisan multi-decade provision of an “unconditional flow of money, equipment, and resources to DHS … allowed [it] to operate with minimal accountability.” The answer, then, must be to take away ICE and CBP’s money, headcount, and guns. In my view, the only politically sensible way to mount this direct challenge is by dismantling the agencies"

Pawel Popiel@ppopiel· Jan 17

Amateurs.

“He said, ‘Make sure you guys don’t cut the tape, make sure the interview is out in full,” Ms. Leavitt said in an even tone, according to a recording of the exchange obtained by The New York Times.

“Yeah, we’re doing it, yeah,” Mr. Dokoupil responded.

Ms. Leavitt replied: “He said, ‘If it’s not out in full, we’ll sue your ass off.’”

“The moment we booked this interview, we made the independent decision to air it unedited and in its entirety,” CBS News said in a statement on Saturday.

Pawel Popiel@ppopiel· Jan 11

Pawel Popiel@ppopiel· Dec 30

New piece out with @christopherali.bsky.social @sydneyforde.bsky.social @theine.bsky.social examining the shifting terrain of US wireless competition policy via the T-Mobile / Sprint merger, and noting "performative competition" supplanting empirical analysis. journals.sagepub.com/eprint/ZB3CG...

We examine the evolving political economy of the U.S. wireless communications market through a case study of the 2020T-Mobile/Sprint merger. Drawing on industry data from the Global Media & Internet Concentration Project and policy documents from the merger review, we show how the merging parties and regulators worked to construct the perception of competition to justify the transaction's approval despite clear evidence of oligopolistic concentration. We conceptualize this strategy as performative competition, involving regulators downplaying antitrust concerns, reframing consumer harms, and emphasizing speculative promises of 5G deployment to approve a corporate merger. We argue that performative competition is an increasingly necessary regulatory strategy, which emerges from policymakers’ neoliberal deference to dominant industry actors in a political economy marked by the growing consolidation of wireless markets; entails an increasing decoupling of communications policymaking from regulatory empirical analysis; and fulfills a discursive policy function of legitimating policy decisions to policy stakeholders.

Pawel Popiel@ppopiel· Dec 24

"You Should Be Skeptical of the TikTok Deal" www.nytimes.com/2025/12/23/o...

Mr. Trump’s deal preserves many of the ties to China that the law was designed to sever. ByteDance would reportedly license or transfer its recommendation algorithm to the new U.S. entity. TikTok would continue to manage “global product interoperability,” meaning the American app would remain integrated with TikTok’s worldwide platform. Oracle, the app’s U.S. cloud provider, would serve as a “trusted security partner,” monitoring the system and eventually retraining the algorithm. Make no mistake: In this new arrangement, Beijing will still have leverage over the newly structured entity.

Pawel Popiel@ppopiel· Dec 2

🚨 In a new article, Yoonmo Sang and I theorize platform governance as a communicative process via a case study of Australia’s Online Safety Act, to understand why and how (via a collision of macro/ meso / micro forces) governance develops differently in different contexts. doi.org/10.1386/jdmp...

Although a core concept in the field of communication, discourse and how it operates in policy-making has not received much attention from platform governance scholars. Accordingly, this study theorizes the relationship between platform governance and policy discourses, drawing on Julia Black’s work on regulatory conversations and Vivian Schmidt’s discursive institutionalism framework. We use the framework to conceptualize platform governance and attendant power relations between policy actors as constituted through institutionalized policy discourses. We apply the framework to examine Australia’s Online Safety Act, which introduces a co-regulatory platform governance approach to tackle illegal and harmful content and behaviour online. Our analysis situates the policy as a communicative constitution of platform governance and a product of the interplay between institutionalized power dynamics and policy discourses. Our framework and case study have implications for platform governance scholarship, offering insights into the role policy discourse plays in shaping and legitimating co-regulatory platform governance initiatives.

Pawel Popiel@ppopiel· Nov 21

Some Thanksgiving reflection. www.nytimes.com/2025/11/21/o... www.nytimes.com/2025/11/21/o...

Annual after-tax wage growth compared with inflation. Only high income exceeds inflation rate.

But the reason for her detention was a guess. “Never once did we receive any written notice for why she was officially detained,” Mr. Pomerleau said. Border Patrol “wouldn’t answer phone calls. They wouldn’t respond to emails, written letters. It got to the point where I sent three associate attorneys to the airport after nearly four days of her detention, demanding to see her.” But, he said, “they wouldn’t even acknowledge that she was there.” (In a statement to Times Opinion, D.H.S. said that Ms. Rosa “was detained by C.B.P. at Boston Logan International Airport after her records revealed a conviction for possession of a controlled substance in 2003,” adding, “While in custody, Rosa had access to water, bathroom facilities, medicine and food.”)

Pawel Popiel@ppopiel· Nov 12

Pawel Popiel@ppopiel· Nov 8

variety.com/2025/film/fe...

"Paramount’s leadership has not shied away from making its views on the war in Gaza public. In September, it became the first major studio to denounce a celebrity-driven open letter signed by A-listers like Emma Stone and Javier Bardem that called for a boycott of Israeli film institutions implicated in “genocide and apartheid” against Palestinians. (Warner Bros. followed, but cited legal reasons for its decision.) And sources say Paramount maintains a list of talent it will not work with because they are deemed to be “overtly antisemitic” as well as “xenophobic” and “homophobic.” Whether the boycott signatories are on that list is unclear. [Update, Nov. 7: Other sources intimately familiar with Paramount said that while an itemized list does not exist, the management team shares a set of values and has no desire to work with anyone who expresses hate in public and damaging ways]."

Pawel Popiel@ppopiel· Nov 5