Editorial: Media, racism, speciesism: issues and solutions for creaturely racism in the anthropocene

because of the historical roots of human-animal hierarchies and how colonial humananimal hierarchies reorganized relations leading to the increase of racial oppression; 2. because animal industries are deeply entangled with racialized labor exploitation; 3. because environmental racism, anti-immigrant violence, border regimes, and species displacement intersect; 4. because historically and today, legal exclusion, surveillance, captivity, and incarceration operate across race and species; 5. because non-consenting nonhuman animals are exploited as tools of oppression against racialized human groups; 6. and because speciesism functions as a framework for dehumanizing racialized communities and individuals, while excluding nonhuman animals from moral consideration.The media plays a key role in shaping how we see and value or devalue human and nonhuman lives. The current issue, therefore, addresses two core questions: First, how does the media shape the links between racial hierarchies and the mistreatment of nonhuman beings? Second, how do media portrayals of nonhuman animals reinforce or challenge racism? Addressing these questions requires examining the ethical standards the media uses to avoid or reproduce the two biases individually or in combination, as well as reflecting on issues and opportunities in this process.Ethical media standards emerge over many decades with contributions from the public, individual journalists, scholars, politicians, and related organizations. Scholarly studies are particularly noteworthy because they analyze the current state of the ethical standards, their social acceptance, their benefits or failures, and suggest effective revisions. The ethical media standards related to racism and speciesism separately are at different levels of sophistication and successful implementation. While ethical media standards addressing racism separately have a longer history and have produced at least some tangible effects, comparable standards concerning speciesism remain largely underdeveloped. So what are the ethical norms and userfriendly standards the media should be held up to when it comes to how it shapes attitudes and consequent behavior jointly impacting race and species?Decades of political struggles, public social pressure, and academic analyses have forced mainstream media to recognize how it contributes to harmful narratives about racial minorities and other marginalized populations and to course-correct. The Oscar Awards, for instance, implemented strategic changes after the #OscarsSoWhite controversy (2015-16) and the creation of the DuVernay test (2016)-a popular tool that evaluates diversity and race representation in the media, which follows in the spirit of the Bechdel test (1985) on gender representation. Prolific scholarship has also interrogated the media's role in representing diversity and reproducing racial and ethnic stereotypes since the turn of the century (Dixon Fuchs, 2011).This critical racial turn in media and communication studies is encouraging. These efforts remain incomplete, underscoring the need for sustained theoretical development and systematic analysis of algorithmic racialized bias, race and nonhuman animals, racialized affect in media, global perspectives on race, etc. However, similar to critical fields more generally, the violence directed toward nonhuman animals beyond a broad species focus has largely remained overlooked. Such omission often occurs even in studies emphasizing the interconnections of systems of domination, in other words, that the systems which produce representational hierarchies among humans also structure the ways the media renders nonhuman animals visible or rather keeps them invisible. How, then, should we investigate the ways in which media representations often obscure how human power operates in relation to the planet and its nonhuman inhabitants? How should we analyze the consequences and forms of resistance that such depictions generate (Parkinson Almiron et al., 2016)-has also helped critical communication scholars to overcome the narrow focus of humanism and social justice that exclude other species as morally irrelevant. Instead, analyzing speciesism allows us to acknowledge that nonhuman animals deserve moral consideration. Studies on nonhuman animals' representation in film (Parkinson, 2019;Malamud, 2016) journalism (Rossi, 2025;Khazaal Khazaal Freeman, 2009), advertising (Linné Stănescu, 2016), and social media (Lupton 2023;Linné 2016) consistently demonstrate processes of othering, distortion, and erasure of their lived realities. These studies show how unequal power relations frame mediated encounters with nonhuman animals and reduce them to human-serving categories-whether as symbols, companions, vermin, prey, commodities, threats, or machines-depending on what suits human interests (Almiron et al., 2016;Cole (2) when speciesism and racism have been connected, the connection has been unexplained and the terms used ornamentally; and (3) as a consequence the small number of articles that have taken the connection seriously have rejected it, defending speciesism and an alleged incongruence between anti-racism and anti-speciesism. Since this hierarchical dualism is central to colonization and to naturalizing the master-subject privilege, she concludes that we need a broad public conversation about how the two systems reinforce each other. Kinefuchi's research points to the great need for multiplatform media today-from reporter training to journalism ethics and practice-to reform how these interwoven systems are understood and reported. Her work offers empirical grounding for expanding media's ethical standards. It also illuminates how white privilege could be addressed within animal rights discourse, demonstrating how diverse constituencies can benefit from structural changes in the media.To advance efforts toward fostering a broad public conversation about how the two systems reinforce each other, Natalie Khazaal, Ellen Gorsevski, and Tobias Linné propose a new theoretical approach and a practical methodological tool to ethical media standards that capture the interconnection between racism and speciesism in their article "Media Analysis of Racism and Speciesism (MARS) Test Finds Oscars so AnthropoScenic in Contemporary Animated Films" in the current issue. So far, no practical strategy effectively integrating the analysis of both discrimination systems has been convincingly proposed. By creating a user-friendly illustrated test they call "Media Analysis of Racism and Speciesism (MARS)" test, the authors address this urgent need to equip researchers, students, and general audiences with a tool for evidence-based analysis of the uses of racism and speciesism in the media. To assess the validity of the MARS test, the authors apply it to one of the most impactful global arenas where racism and speciesism are fused-Oscar-nominated films, with a focus specifically on animation (the MARS test could also guide exploration of media fields beyond animation). Based on a nine-year sample (2016-2024), they show that animated short and feature Oscar nominees lag behind current trends in audience preferences (#OscarsSoWhite, etc.). With its three sections (Animated Nonhuman Animals, Animated Humans, and Animated Intersections) and a total of 15 questions, the illustrated test and the accompanying guide to its application represent a convenient technique to assess the presence ("Yes" answers) or absence ("No" answers) of injustice as applied to portrayals in animated media that encompass human characters and nonhuman animal characters. Bringing in considerations such as nonhuman animal standpoints (perspectives) and lifeworlds, successes/failures to address the marginalization of minoritized humans, and how negative attitudes toward nonhuman animals can reify racist harms, this article charts a new course in theorizing and testing for the shared roots and impacts of racism and speciesism.Turning ethical guidelines into common practice faces challenges. Indeed, there are numerous examples of how news, entertainment, and social media continue to spread unethical, inhumane, and even violent accounts of nonhuman animals as "humorous" stories and memes, often also reinforcing racist narratives (Plec, 2016). Emily Major's article, "Slayers, Rippers, and Blitzes: Dark Humor and the Justification of Cruelty to Possums in Online Media in New Zealand," discusses this issue with examples from online news published in New Zealand between 2016 and 2023 about the brush tail possum-an alleged "pest" often portrayed as a national enemy. These marsupials were introduced by colonial settlers from their native Australia to the largely mammal-free New Zealand in 1858 to establish a fur trade but escaped into the wild where they were able to multiply without any natural predators to keep their populations from impacting local flora or fauna. Major's article looks closely at the framing of possums through language and images that were used to support, reinforce, and police speciesist narratives after the creation of the Predator Free 2050 eradication campaign that sought to eradicate all invasive rats, stoats, and possums. Confirming previous research showing themes of militancy and economy, she also explores discourses that employ dark humor, which trivializes the cruel treatment of possums and creates a culture of transspecies racism and speciesist xenophobia that presents cruelty as patriotism. Importantly, as Major illustrates, the representation of "pest" animals in mass media can reflect wider societal attitudes about human belonging, race, and purity. These media representations contribute to and legitimize forms of cruelty not only to possums and other species stereotyped as "pests," but also to those human beings ostracized as condemned "others." However, as Major also points out, it is possible to imagine this differently, envisioning a new media ethics through critical readings. Instead of being represented as invasive villains and the target of jokes that poke fun at their mistreatment, possums could be reimagined as unwilling victims of colonization, who were forcibly introduced to an unfamiliar land, where they were exploited, consumed, and persecuted-a story painfully familiar to many human groups.In addition to "humorous" stories, prejudices and violent ideologies like carnivorism often use speciesism to assert racism. Two articles in the current issue expose this trend's intertwining of racism and speciesism. The first is the article "Long Live the Liver King: Right-Wing Carnivorism and the Digital Dissemination of Primal Rhetoric" by David Rooney, S. Marek Muller and Cecilia Cerja. In this rhetorical study of alt-right online texts and their links to the consumption of animals as food, the authors analyze the production and dissemination of "carnivore diets" and the associations between diet, fitness, muscularity, and masculinity. Taking a theoretical starting point in the discursive intersections of animality, hegemonic masculinity, and white nationalism, the authors use empirical material posted online by Carnivore Diet gurus the Liver King and the Raw Egg Nationalist to show how the political right's fascination with animal consumption is intimately tied to circulating cultural narratives about masculinity-in-crisis, and white masculinity in particular. Importantly, they point to how what they call "Primal rhetorical networks," concerned with narratives mythologizing Modern Man's physical and spiritual downfall and the potential for his resurrection through the consumption of nonhuman animal flesh, function as "carnivorous radicalization pipelines." While such wording and symbols may begin with diet and wellness, they ultimately end at cis-heterosexist white nationalism as the carnivore influencers on digital platforms beckon followers toward speciesist worldviews reliant on racist tropes.Likewise, Lauren Corman's article "'Pageantry of Aggression': QAnon, Animality, and the Violent Pursuit of Whiteness" explores the connections between far-right movements, racism and speciesism. Extending the theme of primal rhetoric premised upon reclaiming a spiritual "wild-ness," Corman finds these discourses and symbols work to tie the consumption of nonhuman animals to white nationalist ideals. She analyzes U.S. media reports and commentaries published shortly after the January 6 th , 2021, Capitol insurrection. Attention centers on the striking images of Jacob Chansley, the so-called "QAnon Shaman," during the January 6th riothis face painted with the American flag and his body draped in faux regalia evoking a virtual menagerie of animals, including coyote, buffalo, and eagle. As Corman argues, the politics of QAnon are infused with the politics of whiteness, and Chansley showcased a curated animality, a sartorial representation that was anything but benign. Rather, it could be seen as a tool of white supremacy, an "animalized physicality" that became an emblem for the far-right. The article shows how this animalized attire and Chansley's ability to play at the borderlands between human and animal, civilized and uncivilized, can be read not only as an enactment of white supremacy, but also as a racism conjoined with speciesist legacies. White men like Jacob Chansley have never had their humanity questioned, nor likened to animals to degrade them. 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